Detour

It happened so quickly.

I had left work and was on my way to the grocery store. The road was icy and a light sleet and snow mixture was falling steadily. Suddenly, a pickup, towing a small trailer, came sliding down a hilly street into the roadway in front of me. Instinctively, my right foot mashed the brake to the floor as I curled up my body and turned my face to the right, fearing both the airbag exploding and the impending collision I assumed would crush me. There was no veering around the truck, and I knew my car would never stop in time to avoid hitting it, so I braced myself for anything, and crashed.

However minor an injury it may be, whiplash hurts. And because of the pain, I wasn't able to work for two weeks, which gave me time to look closely at my life, thankful that I still had one to live. I'm a hard-working person, unaccustomed to, and rather uncomfortable with inactivity, but everyone (my friends, my family, and the incredibly kind staff at the health center where I was being treated) assured me that my only job was to heal. I watched a lot of Netflix in bed, endured shocking ice baths (good for reducing overall inflammation, from which I was suffering profusely), and indulged myself in many long hours of massage, acupuncture and chiropractic treatment. I doubt I've ever before been touched that much in a two-week period, and it was rather blissful.

As enjoyable as it became to be so pampered, each time I closed my eyes to sleep, or even rest, an image of that pickup appearing in my path rose up in my mind, unsettling me. I began to have dreams, tense and vivid, of escaping, by myriad means (though never a car) from all manner of emergency. I would awaken from these dreams out-of-breath, my body feeling drained and numb, my chest weighted against the bed, panic pounding in my heart. I lay awake at night, wondering what was happening, worried about how I would go forward if I couldn't do the only work for which I am fully trained.

It took about ten days to get an answer.

One afternoon, I was on the phone, telling a friend about the accident, and I said, "I couldn't go around the truck and I couldn't stop; I had no escape route!" Bells, blinking lights, and a siren went off in my head. "That's it!" I thought. "An escape route!" Oh, brilliant unconscious mind, working away on the tough stuff while the rest of me simply lay quivering in shock! The accident was giving me an escape route! I have been in food service since the age of 14- that's 32 years! Anyone who does what I do will tell you: it's tough, physically demanding work. Laying down that heavy burden for two weeks illuminated my reality: I could not go back to a job that was breaking down my body and stealing my joy. Later that night, I laughed out loud in an empty room. "Couldn't we have left this one in the metaphoric realm?" I asked. "Did it really take a huge, heavy, metal object blocking my path entirely to get me to alter my course?" It seems that we humans don't change, individually or collectively, unless life pins us to the wall, its forearm to our windpipe.

The next day, I went online and began researching schools. I sent out a couple of emails, made some phone calls. By the end of that day, I had applied to a small, women's college located 20 miles south of my home. I knew that if I didn't immediately take action, I might let doubt and insecurity hold me down as I had a hundred times before. Within a week, I was accepted. Days later, I met with an admissions counselor who was overjoyed by the idea of having me transfer into her school. A month later, I was offered full financial aid, which I accepted, and had enrolled in classes for fall of this year.

It happened so quickly. One minute I was driving to the grocery store and the next I was careening into a future unforetold. Egotistically, and perhaps foolishly, I like to believe that I am always on a path of my choosing and that my intentions dictate my course, so I appreciate what a friend once told me, somewhat consolingly, so long ago: "Always remember- detours are also part of the journey."