When I penned the article, “Moving On,” about nine months ago, I wrote it with no delusions and notions as to where it’s author would be in the following days and months.
It started as a pitch that sounded appealing to a reader, and it helped that our SPM editorial staff was receptive to a story about the writer.
In the case of said pitch, it was a hypothetical fascination of a tangent ventured by my classmates in the Western American Literature class only months earlier, which got the boulder rolling.
The content of which obviously sparked something within me to cause it to resurface soon thereafter. I significantly curtailed myself from driving in the five years since my accident to evade the possibility of revisiting that awful day in May again.
When I penned that revelation down in February, I hadn’t given much consideration to it other than a baseline.
For a while, I lived by a timetable for others and public transportation. Not anymore.
I missed out on the opportunity to drive to class on my first day of college.
I was absent for the many occasions I could have devised colorful swear words for the drivers who dared to wrong me on the road, which I’ve learned is a fun pastime.
But most of all I missed out that social calendar. Movies. Dates. Concerts. Everything. The freedom of movement, was how I referred to it in the article.
In other words, the joy and the ecstasy of driving.
Writing the preceding piece brought out these considerations, why I still pigeonholed myself into this dogmatic inevitability, etc.
It was therapy.
But, it still isn’t Kwan quite yet. I still avoid the intersection where it all went down. And I take side-streets, to bypass major intersections of traffic.
This still doesn’t stop me from trying them though, even if I have kick my own ass to do it. I’ll just turn off the AC when I do.
My mind always processes things I shouldn’t do behind the wheel to avoid repeats.
Basically, just dealing with it. Something I didn’t understand or comprehend doing for so long after the accident.
Reach the writer at tccoste1@asu.edu or @TaylorFromPhx
