I Can't Stop Thinking About Car Crashes
2026-03-03
I can't stop thinking about car crashes.
I've been driving for a few years, only. I got my license at 19. I was terrified of driving, and I was disabled - I have a fatigue condition that, at that untreated time, was nearly narcoleptic in how easily I fell asleep. Even with my first year behind the wheel, I was in a trance state driving to work, swerving between the lines on the highway, barely sentient enough to worry about some cop thinking I was drunk at six a.m. I was medicated after a while, and given a CPAP machine to treat the concurrent sleep apnea, and I did not drive after that without making sure to take my medication first.
My first car accident, though, was after that, and it wasn't my fault; the other driver was only a little older than me, and she didn't check her mirrors and merged into me. Our cars were driveable, if dented, and we were both okay, and we parted ways after exchanging information. Both of us called our parents to ask what we were supposed to do. We'd never been in an accident before.
Let's establish something before we continue. I've never been in any kind of car accident that was over, let's say, twenty miles per hour. This is why it's so strange that my fixation is on high-speed crashes. I'm talking the ones that leave chunks of bumper scattered across the highway, rubber burnt into the road, metal crumpled like a soda can. the ones where the warning signs' dotted displays tell you the left lane's closed up ahead, the ones where you pass by and slow, even if just to make sure you don't run over the debris in the road and hurt yourself, too. I'm fixated on crashes that change your life.
I'm no stranger to life changes. My dad has bipolar, as do I, and he spent my childhood unmedicated and moving us all over the country for different jobs. I'm on track to doing the same. I've lived in a new residence every year, sometimes multiple in a year, since I turned 18. The job I have now is the only job I've kept for over a year, a sex shop that aligns with my values, and I'll stay there as long as I can afford to work at that pay. They forgive me for being a little too talkative, flirty, distractable. Even hooking up with my coworker hasn't been a crime. Going to work feels safe, and the work I do - helping people find safe, healthy pleasure - is something in which I take pride.
Parallel parking is another point of pride. I spent my first driving years parking an absolute tank of a minivan - a 2007 Toyota Sienna, named Iridium - into the streetside gaps left by cars much smaller than mine, and I did it without having a backup camera. When Iridium's transmission failed and I accepted the fate of getting an upgrade, my compact Prius and its delightfully 2015 technology allowed me to finagle some truly impressive parking jobs. I can park a car. But it remains the truth that the most scrapes I've ever gotten are from parking. In fact, the worst night of my life was because when Iridium's transmission failed, it was while un-parking, and while I'd put it in drive, the gears didn't shift out of reverse and my poor Iridium rammed into another car. It was one in the morning, and we spent hours with a completely broken vehicle waiting for a tow right in front of the house of the other car's owner.
We'd been leaving the BDSM club that late. We hadn't been drinking. That club is for other, better thrills. I probably should have had *more* accidents given how often I'd been driving tired, though. I started volunteering there some months later, as the club is volunteer-run to stay legal, and I'd drive home afterwards in the wee hours of the morning, my medication wearing off and the exhaustion kicking in, after taking out the trash and scrubbing down the red vinyl massage tables. I started becoming more recognized at the club. Other volunteers didn't remember my name, but they did remember my face, and knew I was around a lot. Patrons of the club recognized me, too. They'd show up to my sex shop job and talk to me like we knew each other. *I saw you at the femdom party last week. You looked like you were having fun!*
I drew back from attending the club due to the cost, but I still struggled with being recognized at work. I used the sales tactic of rapidly becoming the customer's friend in order to gain their trust, and I was so genuine and loveable that I came off as a flirt - especially when the other person was someone I'd normally flirt with. Three shifts in a row, someone would give me their contact information or mention going to the club and seeing me or spend some time chatting with me flirtatiously. It kept happening. I felt like, even if I could stop it, I didn't really want to. I liked the attention.
Real car crashes in my life have been painfully slow, but not that hard. Waiting for the tow. Waiting for insurance to process. Taking rideshares until I have a car again. But they've been forgivable sins and fixable problems, my parents helping tell me what to do on the phone when someone's hit me, getting financial help with the repairs or the new car, my friends still hyping up my parallel parking. And yet, I dream, in obsessive lust, of driving out of control. I want to speed through the streets and careen across lanes on the highway until I hit something, someone, anything. I want the force of the impact to distort my colliding object and myself into unrecognition. I want irreparable change.
The other driver in that first car accident went after me to claim it was my fault and she was injured. I provided a witness and a clear, honest description of what had happened, and she lost that fight. Sometimes I wonder if it was her decision to pursue blame, or if it was someone she trusted in her life, who was advising her to protect herself and get the money. Who knows? What if she really was injured, and it only showed up much later? Is my diminishing of her claimed injury wrong? It's all in the rearview, now. Years have passed, and the debris was cleared away a long time ago.
It shouldn't be okay that I've gotten in these accidents and nothing truly irreparable has happened to *me.* Between the money I've gotten to patch up my cars and the "just don't make it a habit" talks from my boss about flirting and fucking through my job, nothing has happened to truly stop me. Someday I'm going to drive away into the sunset to another residence, another job, another life, and reinvent myself again, consequence-free, and maybe on that drive I'll send my little Prius through the barricade on the highway. Do you understand how satisfying that would be? Like, God, something stop me. I'm going so fast and I don't know how else to slow down.