That Time I got Hit by a Car

I remember the day it happened pretty well. December 11th, 2025. 5:45 is when I was hit by the car, but we can’t start there. We have to start with my day.

I woke up and it was finals week, so I didn’t have standard class. Today was the day I was going to go home from college break. I was getting started kind of late because I was still reeling from the horrible karaoke performance I did at the dining hall the night before and I didn’t have someplace to specifically go.

I was hungry, so I was going to go to the Academic Forum to get lunch before I finished by research paper for Dr. DeLong’s Romantic Movement class that night. A cashier in the building was always kind to me, so I felt the urge to give her a little gift. She gave me free sweet tea once a twice, so I felt that urge to do something nice for her. A strong, almost overwhelming urge. So I grabbed a little tiny sloth plushie I already had and went over there.

She really appreciated the gift and I sat in the Academic Forum to eat my food and drink my sweet tea.

I then quarantined myself to my room to write said research paper. It was the final paper due that night. My paper was on the critiques of capitalism present in Wordsworth and Clare’s work in their poetry. I was hurrying for the most part because I was going to go home that night. My mom was coming up after work to pick me up and take me on the drive back to Virginia. I had to finish my paper before she came since we’d probably be back in Virginia after midnight.

I was writing pretty well and decided to call my mom after she got off work to see if she was on her way yet. She was, and was going to be there around 7. She told me we could go to Outback in Reading or York. I was excited and hungry. In the middle of the call, I get a text from my boyfriend, now ex, that we can meet up for a final hug and kiss goodbye before break (my request.) I was emotional about being apart from the college break.

I went to meet him near outside Old Main after hanging up from my mom real quick. This was around 4:45. I had him take a picture with me too. I hesitated leaving him again; he had to pack. So I made him give me another hug and kiss. It was a bittersweet moment; I didn’t want to say bye but taking time out of his day to do so for me made me feel loved. I ran back to work more on the paper and call my mother back after my mysterious, abrupt “I have to go” hang up.

We talked more, and she told me I should go return that library book I had for Krieg’s class around then. I said I would, and she said to call her back at around 7 to see how close she is. I agreed it was a good idea, but I worked more on my paper until I felt more satisfied with my progress. I only had a paragraph left and I had to add my fourth and final source.

I took a small break. I doodled in my notes app mine and my ex’s name, which is so stupid now, but I did because of the love I felt from earlier. And I decided if I was struggling on the rest of the paper that I should go to the library now and not do something silly and romantic like writing his name like a school girl anymore once I did that enough.

I grabbed the book I needed to return. It was a poetry book named Guillotine by Eduardo C. Corral. We had to do a small paper on a response to a collection of poems and I picked this one because the title intrigued me. I like the dark and mysterious. A lot of the poems were on the treatment of illegal immigrants, being Latino and American, and queerness. I was done with the paper for a while and had to turn it in before going home because the due date was in the middle of break.

It was darker than it was at 4:30 earlier with my ex, and raining a bit harder. I was thinking of my plans. Turn in this book, get a snack from the library’s vending machine to hold me over before Outback Steakhouse, finish paper, clean my room, and pack before leaving at 7. I reached the crosswalk in front of Old Main: the middle crosswalk. I picked this one because it was easiest to walk to the library from. It was the one I usually used.

In the day there was crossing guards, but at this time of night, there was none anymore. They left around 4:30 that day, most likely.

The roads were pretty busy, being dinner time and parents and students starting to leave for winter break. I stopped at the road though. I looked both ways. The road wasn’t going to be completely empty to cross any time soon, but to me the cars looked far enough way with enough time to stop or slow down until I am out of that intersection.

I started crossing with my book in hand. I walked forward thinking of my day. I started seeing lights in the corner of my eye but just assumed they were getting kind of close to the crosswalk but were going to stop. I was almost out of the lane.

Suddenly I was hit. I don’t really remember the exact moment. According to the police report, I flew up and hit and shattered the windshield on the driver’s side, and I flew 6ft from the crosswalk. I didn’t know I broke the windshield at the time, or how far I flew. I immediately started crying.

My thoughts were everywhere: I need to lay here in case I snapped anything (spoiler: I didn’t, but it was a thought.) Why did this happen to me? Of course it happened to me. I needed to clean up my room. Fuck. Am I dying? What is my life now? I wanted Outback Steakhouse. Is my hug with him the last one? Did I say enough? Did I do enough? What are my last words to people like? I’m sorry. I want my mom. I was supposed to go home today. That paper won’t be getting in by midnight. What about that library book? My leg hurts so bad. Oh my god. My leg hurts so bad. My poor mom. I’m sorry. It’s so cold. It’s so wet. Am I going to die? What about him, my love? I don’t want to die. I am scared. I am alone. Am I dying?

The driver got out of her car and said I am sorry I didn’t see you. Another mom, from the opposite direction, got out of the car and called 9/11. She held my hand, asked me questions. Who are you sweetie? Anything hurt? You’ll be okay, your mom is going to be here. Do you have any siblings? What are their names? What dorm do you live in? What do your siblings do? What’s your major? You’re being so brave just hold my hand.

The police arrived and asked me much of the same questions, but some more like what my birthday was, how old I was, if I was a student. If I hit my head, I didn’t know. I was still sobbing the whole time. My leg hurt. I was cold. I was getting wet. The road was cold and wet and I had my phone out in front of me. It would flash on from the rain drops or the notifications I was getting (from just random, normal life going on at KU. Like my club’s e board SnapChat group just existing and typing, not knowing what was going on with me.) It would flash a picture of me and my boyfriend at the time. My favorite one. The one of us kissing. I loved that photo normally. The cops put a blanket on me. I heard over the radio that Dixon Hall was also on fire.

The ambulance arrived. Inside the ambulance they cut my clothes. Panties and all. My Dan and Phil Terrible Influence tour long sleeve shirt I just got in November. My comfy, black Kutztown University sweatpants. They asked me questions as well. I sobbed in the back of the ambulance.

The EMT had my cell phone and began calling people. My mom didn’t answer. Then she didn’t answer again. I learned she was on the phone with someone else and thought I was just calling for no reason because we just agreed not that long before to call each other back around 7. He called my uncle, he didn’t answer. The EMT held up my phone. The picture of me and my then boyfriend.

“Is this your boyfriend?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“Can I call him?”

I hesitated. He didn’t have a car so it’s not like he could come see me, but my family wasn’t answering. My mom was already traveling up from Virginia. Maybe her service wasn’t working. Maybe she’d somehow get here to pick me up without finding out what was happening. If no one knows, at least he would. My mom would track him down somehow to ask about me or maybe he could find her somehow and tell her. I mumbled a “if you want” back to the EMT and told him the stupid contact name I had for him and he called my then boyfriend.

I didn’t really hear his responses, but he answered at least. The ambulance was too loud to hear what people were saying. He called my mom again, and she didn’t answer and sent a “I’ll call you back” text. The EMT texted her back that no she can’t, she must call now because I was with the paramedics essentially. He kept trying to calm her down when she called him.

Eventually I arrived, naked, in the hospital. They took me to trauma bay. They started examining me. I was covered with a bunch of blankets, but I was still shivering from the feeling of laying on a cold, wet road in the rain. I was moved to get a CT scan as well, and eventually moved up to the ER. During my CT scan I laid and dissociated as I was spun around in that machine, finally learning tranquility. They put a neck brace on me while we waited for my CT scan results in case anything there was broken. I didn’t have my phone yet because it was given to security. My uncle came and he noticed I was naked and called my mom to tell her I needed clothes and she finally got to hear from me since. I asked him to also get my phone, and my items were released to him. My cell phone. A damaged poetry book. My boots. My coat (the only item not cut up) still wet.

I then got x-rays on my leg especially. When I got back in the ER room, I finally had access to my phone again. I texted my then boyfriend that I was okay, who I’m sure I worried to death. Sometimes I wonder if part of him being called is why he eventually left me, but I try not to think like that. I texted my work group chat, remembering I needed coverage for tomorrow. For some reason. I just said something like “I got hit by a car on Main Street. Can anyone cover me 2-5 online?” because it didn’t feel like a real event. My dissociative powers from the CT scan must have still had an effect on me.

I then posted to Instagram a picture of me and struggle typed a message (it was hard to type because of the neck brace) “feeling like I got hit by a car after that final…because I did!” and posted something similar in response to a YikYak post asking if the chick that got hit by a car was okay.

I kept making jokes to people who asked me what happened. Feeling like Bambi, deer puns, someone hit me for rejecting their Shoofly submission probably, someone hit me because they hated my bad karaoke the night before, dumb jokes like that. I was also jokingly asking if the library was going to charge me for that library book for the water damage or the late fee considering I got hit by a car for that book.

I muttered a lot about how lucky I was. Most pedestrian getting struck incidents make you think of death, or a TBI, or a broken bone. But I ended up getting some gashes on my hands and bruises over my body. Didn’t break anything. Didn’t get a concussion somehow. I fell the right way, I guess.

Knowing that was a weird feeling. I had this traumatic event with nothing to show for it once the bruises faded and once the gashes closed up. The only reminder now is my pinky knuckles are just a little more pink than normal, but that is barely visible. I was so worried in the road I was dying and faced my own mortality, only for my body to somehow be miraculously fine?

I choked my random luck down to karma. Maybe the gift to the older woman at the Academic Forum. I felt extremely strongly about doing it. Like I had to do it. I wondered if that was the last good karma point I needed to still get hit, but not get completely crumpled by being struck in the crosswalk.

There was also the poetry book. Guillotine. There’s a poem in there about someone hitting people with their car on purpose. Granted, it is in the context of hitting Mexicans on the side of the road for being illegal and hitting them for free grease, but still. Weirdly thematic. Was this meant to happen to me?

I was extremely lucky though, whether we want to bring karma into it or fate or not.

I was released from the hospital and we drove all the way home. Mom thought that’d be better before I got super sore. We also stopped at a Wawa, my hands still bleeding as we walked in, but I needed to eat. I was able to turn in the research paper late. Dr. Colleen Clemens dealt with the library book for me, telling me it is mine now and hopefully I’ll write great things from it. Ronan let me turn in my rewrites for his class and my final reflection on Sunday instead. I got an A on the research paper, but part of me felt like it was pity points. I thought it was terrible since I gave up finishing it 100% properly because my hands were sore and I was falling asleep and dissociating while i was typing. Ronan gave me an A and later said I ruined excuses for people to not do content since I still did all of that instead of taking an incomplete. I felt weird after the incident. I knew how lucky I was to turn out not that injured.

It certainly changed me though. I had panic attacks about cars in my 2nd story bedroom, I don’t cross the road unless I have to, if I cross the road I get scared and start running, I gasp in cars at other vehicles pulling risky moves or if there’s people in the road, I get distressed if the incident is brought up, and I feel like I’ve been split into two people. The me before, and the chick that got hit by a car. I used to ground myself thinking of my boyfriend, but he broke up with me, and I felt like that cemented me into being That Chick. The one hit by a Hyundai Elantra, and survived just fine because she’s a cat, or deer, with nine lives at this point. Or Eight now. If we’re still okay with inappropriate jokes about it.

I have the stress of dealing with a lawyer in between classes. The driver’s insurance, Erie Insurance, does not want to pay the 50,000+ hospital bill. So now I have to sue Erie Insurance. I dissociated when he was explaining the 51% plaintiff rule on if I can get coverage. Otherwise, I must pay if I lose. I was in the middle of the road already, didn’t run out, and pedestrians have a right away. So I should be fine, but the fact the police report didn’t want to blame either of us concerns me. He wants me to get my medical records from the hospital. I have to call him. I don’t remember his name so I call him Saul Goodman in my contacts as a joke.

Seeing Saul Goodman between class and being told I have to deal with that bothered me. I further feel like the chick that got hit. Someone said to me once, “you’re still obsessed with that incident?” but it happened to me. It’s my identity now. I say it like it’s a fun fact sometimes. Like the time I was drunk at a party, “yo by the way I am the chick that got hit by a car last semester!” And make some dark joke. Because it is funny. For the most part. It doesn’t feel real at all.

I wanted to write more for my blog, but felt I couldn’t until I addressed this. I tried writing a poem about it, got halfway done and stopped. It’s amazing I sat down and wrote this blog now.

This semester is certainly weird, reeling from a break up aside on the first day of classes. I feel more foggy in what I am doing, but I guess I’m still doing golden. I got an A+ on my Tenant of Wildfell Hall paper, which I posted here this morning before I wrote this. I’ve done fine everywhere else so far. I feel a different person from being hit, and despite the negatives, I think I am doing remarkably well. I write the same and that is what matters. I still do everything I am supposed to do, even if I waste time taking the shuttle now out of fear instead of walking places myself. Like the extra thirty minutes spent on the evening shuttle after Feminist Film Theory, since evening doesn’t just loop around campus but instead goes to the apartments and up Main Street.

I’m still the Queen Overlord of the English Department. I try to take the hit to mean something, surviving for a reason. Maybe I am meant for greatness. Certainly, my pipe dream of being famous must mean something if I got this much personal lore. A crazy story or background events is usual for brilliant people. My Wikipedia page will go so hard.

Hopefully I can get some good writing content from it, either literally or indirectly. Once I can explore the fear factor I felt more creatively rather than a direct recount.