Listing Ourselves--My Brush with Death

I tend not to be overly dramatic about events in my life, but I have had a few brushes with death  Certainly the closest brush with death I ever had was when I was in a head-on car accident.

I was driving alone on a country road not far from where I was living in upstate New York when I saw a car coming around a curve and right at me. There was absolutely nothing I could do to avoid being hit head-on. After the other car hit me, I ended up in a ditch facing in the opposite direction from where I was going. My car looked like an accordion, and I looked like I had been in a fight with a heavyweight boxer. Miraculously, though, I was not badly hurt. The worst aftereffect of the accident was that I suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. I could not come to terms with the fact that my life could have ended in a millisecond, when all I was doing was going to the store on a clear Sunday afternoon. I replayed the accident hundreds, if not thousands, of times for months afterward. The many bumps and bruises I had went away fairly quickly. The anger, feeling of having been violated, and depression took much longer to heal.