Old Dogs and New Tricks

How Rolling a Car Helped Me to Become More Understanding

On a Saturday night in October of 2020, my wife, Trena, and I were in a car accident that, over the course of the next few weeks, would send her spiraling into a mental health crisis. Before I get too far into this, I want to let you know that Trena has given me permission to write about our experience and that with treatment, her mental health is better than it’s ever been.  

We were in our little Kia Soul on a two-lane one-way street in what passes for the historic part of town. I was driving, and Trena was poking around in a Ziplock bag full of cigars we had just picked up, and we were both looking forward to a quiet evening sitting out on our back patio sipping whiskey and smoking.

There was a bang. I’m not sure if it was the passenger side-curtain airbag deploying or just the impact, but it sure the fuck was loud. I know it's cliche, but everything just seemed to slow down. I felt the passenger side lifting and tried to steer away from it to get it to sit back down. And I remember thinking, how the fuck do you roll a car that’s this low to the ground. From there, all I could do was watch as the curb and a strip of brown grass came up quickly toward the driver’s side window.

To help you understand Trena’s reaction to this accident, I need to give you a little of her backstory. First, she's beautiful, but that's probably the least interesting thing about her. At 39, she became the Director of Financial Aid at a graduate school. She is tough as nails and a fantastic partner who puts up with all my artistic shit and video games.

But I think many people would be hard-pressed to understand or cope with things she grew up thinking were just a normal part of life. Her home was raided, you know, cops bustin’ in the door with guns out, more than once when she was a child. Trena was in the house when her dad’s friend was shot and killed, sitting in his car in their driveway. And in the close to 18 years we've been together, we have known more people than you could count on both hands who have been murdered, including her brother, who was killed in November of 2021.

When I regained consciousness, the car was on its side, and Trena was hanging in the passenger seat above me. I turned my body to brace her with my shoulders and realized that she was already talking with the 911 dispatcher.

“Did the car blow up?” she asked. Which, in retrospect, with the smell of smoke and the thin blue haze in the air, seems like a pretty good question. What had happened was that a woman in an SUV didn’t see us and tried to make a hard left turn from the right lane. She clipped the front passenger side quarter panel and forced us to roll up on our side.

We both crawled out of the car, and Trena was taken by ambulance to the hospital. I declined treatment because I wanted to sit with her while they checked her out. She was fine other than a mild panic attack, and we were both sore as shit the next day.

A few nights later, she woke me up screaming. She was kicking and throwing punches, and when I finally got her to calm down, she wrapped her arms around me so tightly that it made my kidney ache. I don't think I mentioned that I bruised my kidney in the accident, and let’s not tell Trena that I was peeing blood for a couple of days.

Anyway, she kept saying, “They were trying to kill you.”

The nightmares didn't let up, and while Trena has always had more bad dreams than I think is normal, these were different. She started losing her ability to focus and became obsessively concerned about my safety at work. And she was jumpy as hell all the time.

And here is where I get to the important part of this whole damn thing. You see, Trena and I were actually in two separate accidents, not literally, but the effect is the same. For me, it was a fender bender. Yeah, the car flipped onto its side, but it was at such a low speed, maybe 35 miles an hour, that it may as well have just fallen over sitting in a parking space. I've been hit harder playing hockey.

For her, it was a traumatic, violent collision that took her back to a place where she wasn’t safe. A place where people that you know, not just people on the news, get shot and killed all the fuckin’ time. We had deliberately left that place, that life, behind, and this accident dumped it all right back into her lap.

She was diagnosed with PTSD, not from the accident; that was the event that dredged it all up, but from all the trauma she suffered as a child and teenager. The treatment has worked wonders. The nightmares have all but gone away, and she can relax and let down her guard. 

I learned a thing or two about her, and contrary to that old troupe about old dogs and tricks, I also learned some things about myself. You see, I’m from a generation and culture where you suck things up and keep on moving. Your best friend kills himself, or your wife decides to leave you for a bartender she's been putting it to when you travel for work; ah, it's just another thing. But, helping Trena get through this shit, I realized that's not everyone.

In truth, I understood that before. The accident just shined a light on the fact that two people, because of their life experiences, can process the same event in completely different ways. What I'm saying here is that we all need to give each other a little extra rope. Know that just because someone looks like they have their shit together doesn't mean that they're not struggling to get through the day. So fuckin’ be kind.