The car won’t start and I have to help him again. I take care of getting a tow truck and am watching now as the guy towing my dad’s car maneuvers his truck to try and make it fit in this ridiculous parking lot. My dad tells me that we might have to manually push the car. I feel a flutter in my stomach that ascends and suddenly nausea floods through my body. I back away; hoping to not have to take part in this.

The tow truck guy knows what he is doing; he knows how to maneuver the car and his truck. He connects his cable to it and asks us to put into neutral. I can’t do it. It’s not even my car. I hand over my copy of the keys and let him do it. The cable starts pulling the car backward, no one is in the car, I feel like no one is controlling the car. Two and a half years ago the control of another car has been lost. I am alone in a parking lot and this car swerves toward me in reverse. I’ve fallen down.

I watch the car being lifted up onto the tow truck; I am fixated on the wheel that wobbles with no weight on it to keep it still and no pavement under it. It is free to move about. I am hit and suddenly feel the crushing weight of the left front wheel. I could not get out of the way on time. I see the wheel running over my leg and then my torso and coming toward my face as my head hits the pavement. “Oh shit” is all that runs through my head. I feel a panic as I watch this car moving. I am not in this car; I am not in control of this car.

My shoulder starts to hurt again as I try not to remember. The wheel is turned and so does not roll over my head. I feel the side of it so close to my face as it crushes my shoulder and I feel the scraping of the loose bits of muddy pavement under me. The car is gone. I lay in a silent parking lot suddenly aware that my flesh is touching the ground, not my sweater, a shoe is gone and there is a distinct stinging in my right foot. I feel nothing else, there is no pain yet. I can’t be late getting back from my break. I jump up, find my shoe, walk back into work. I do not understand why everyone is staring at me. I am dazed. I look down and notice the mingled blood and dirt covering most of my body. I start to feel it.

We have delivered the car to the repair shop and I am driving my dad home. He is talking but I have no idea what he is saying. I am numb; I am stuck in my head, in that memory. A haze has settled and I can’t see past it. “I’m going to have nightmares tonight,” I think to myself and then I am back, fighting the haze. Remembering the tread mark bruises and scars I still have, I smile. I like those scars, they remind me that the worst possible thing did happen and I am still here. I can still fight it. I am regaining my life.

It never quite goes away. You think that everything is fine and dandy and suddenly you are confronted with it again.The fight gets smaller and smaller as tiem goes on, but it is still there. I still have the scars to prove it. Maybe weight loss will be a little like this (now I’m just trying to tie this into something actually relevant…) the fight will feel less and less as time goes on and as forced actions become habits, as the neurotically researched and planned becomes part of daily life and knowledge, as I get a little healthier in body and mind.