Personal Narrative - Hit by a Car Essay -- Injury Disability

The Living Shadow I want a lot, and there's a lot I don't. But I'd rather I not want at all. To want - such a human thing to do! You know, a trait of those organic markers who demarcate and deface—then there are those gray areas. Like an epidemic, the smears spread from one to another.. I apologize. I'm making the murky waters murkier. To elucidate: A yellowing calendar page materializes before my own eyes. As I ponder above the black-and-white chessboard splashed with gray, I glance as an inexplicable draft flattens the page momentarily over a dusty dividing line. The page reads, "August 18, 2008." Immediately, the sheet transmutes into a pane of glass. Nonchalant, I stare as the pane rises up over me, and shatters against my head. The glass pieces disintegrate upon impact, and I stand among showering particles, examining my new environment. The board has become a garden, one partially teeming with life and mixed with utter death and destruction. I reach out and lightly grasp a blurry leaf. Did I touch it? Did I imagine it? As if in answer, I feel it—and then, it's gone. I went into a coma on that day. At least, that’s what they say. They say I was crossing a street near my school on the way to my home. I was jay-walking. More correctly, I was breaking the law. Yes, the irony soaks that calendar page. Yes, a car hit me, sending me flying. No, the actual impact wasn’t that damaging. Two fractured clavicles, I think. But obeying the laws of gravity, I fell. Apparently, my head landed on a concrete edge. More correctly, the back of my head collided with stone. Yes, that was damaging. A debilitated cerebellum, I think. Since my brain stem incurred damage, it meant that I would possess a physical disability for... ...I raise my pen and jerk it downward. Paint is a temporal dress at best, right? At the moment before the knife-like tip strikes a knife-like slab, my movement is halted. Flabbergasted, I try again. What else if not the same end that meets me? I relax the utensil. It’s an unspoken rule: I can’t know some constitutions. A draft inexplicably evinces, and as a reminder, a page materializes: ‘What matters,’ it states. â€Å"Life matters,† I retort. What I believe is life, is what I see—what humans see—and what they see defines what they choose to do: it’s the human way. I choose to believe what is important. And what a human thing to do! So be it, I am an organic marker. I spread the epidemic. Just an organic marker, scribbling and smearing. The murky waters stay the same, as I run my course. Like an unspoken rule, physical constraints run with me. It’s the human way.