I didn’t tell many people when the car got hit. My fiancee, obviously. The police, because that’s the law. The rest of the editorial staff at Yorkton This Week, because I received a message while waiting for the police and went ahead and complained in reply.
But after that, I didn’t tell anyone until I found out that the car was a total loss. It was a conscious decision, because I was fine, so there was no reason for anyone to know. Unless something drastic happened, like my car becoming blue suddenly, I didn’t see the need to answer any more questions about it. After all, I answered all the questions of the police (who were very helpful) and I didn’t need to answer more questions.
If there’s one thing this entire mess has taught me, apart from to be wary of pizza delivery, it’s that I really don’t like it when people ask if I’m okay.
I did go out of my way to avoid the question after all, and I continued to try to avoid it since. I did admit that I could be better when searching for the replacement car, mostly because if it was going great I wouldn’t have had to search for a replacement car, but otherwise I didn’t really want to talk about it. I told people my old car was toast in a Facebook post so they wouldn’t be confused when I showed up driving something else, but I still really didn’t want to talk about it or answer if I was okay or not.
It’s strange, because I should probably be happy that other people are concerned for my health and wellbeing. I mean, I’m sure I’d ask the same question in response if the same thing happened to someone else, it’s natural and human to want to know that the people you care about are doing fine, especially after something traumatic happens. But in this case I really didn’t want to talk about it any more than I absolutely had to.
In all honesty, it’s probably just because I wanted to forget it ever happened. All I wanted was to get my car back and move on. It would be ideal if this was just a minor inconvenience that I didn’t have to worry about any more. Even if it’s an amusing anecdote, it was one I didn’t especially want to repeat, at least not for a while.
It’s not that I’m annoyed by people asking if I’m okay, it’s that I don’t want to think about the reason I might not be. Dealing with the collision and the aftermath was stressful enough without having to talk about it over and over again.
That said, a week later, it’s not so bad. Knowing that I’ll have to explain a suddenly blue car may make it better, but I’ve actually brought it up on my own in the week after, and I wrote this whole thing about it. After enough time to accept that my poor car is lost forever, I can admit that it’s an okay anecdote that showed just how icy it was this week, since it was caused by another driver sliding through a stop sign and into me.
So maybe I wasn’t as okay as I thought I was, but that has healed as well.
