All Control

I can still feel the wheel as it spun around and around. There’s a scene in “Uptown Girls”, where the woman is spinning around in circles on a carnival ride, the camera angled at her spaced-out face, clearly having lost all control of her life, of herself. That’s not what I was thinking about on interstate 91. No. I was thinking: I hope there aren’t children in the car behind me.

This particular SUV had the audacity to be driving the speed limit on the highway, and of course I immediately decided, like deciding to swat away a fly, to pass them. Going 90 mph, I tried to cut in front of them. However, the slick rain that night, shimmering under my tires, made me skid. It wasn’t a slow skid to the realization I had lost all control of my car. It was the thought: I have lost all control of my car.

The SUV remained oblivious, seemingly, as it stayed behind me. I realized turning the wheel was futile, so I pumped the brakes. This made me skid more. Now, my car was jerking to the right and then the left, and back again. I pressed the gas. This made my car do almost a half turn.

For some reason I still don’t understand, a grassy patch of pasture off the highway appeared. I’m talking, a hundred feet of it. Up until this point, there had only been guardrails surrounding me. I had been certain to crash into them and bounce off. But when this grassy patch appeared, I finally lost all control. I skidded off the highway. The SUV, still going about 65 mph, passed me in the blink of an eye.

Everything had stopped. It was done, an afterthought; after just a couple minutes of skidding, I was back in the present moment, physically unaltered by it. I looked behind me, in front of me, to the side of me. But before I did that, I stared straight ahead. Everything had mentally come to a hault, too. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I was more worried a cop had seen me, hence the head swivel a few seconds later. But for those first few seconds, I realized I had lost all control of myself. I was out of control. More than that: this was who I was.

It took about three or four minutes, but I pulled back onto the highway. I had, incredibly, been on my way to see my therapist. I was late, but she would understand. She would have to, because I was about to hand over my driver’s license.

I still remember the moment my car stopped and I was left with my own thoughts. That was the worst part of the entire thing.

I reflect on that moment a great deal. That was in 2016. It’s funny, when we lose all control, how those moments stick to us. I wanted to get off the carnival ride.