tl;dr: I was in a car accident this weekend. Nobody died. I'm still screaming. It's unclear how much of the screaming was already there before this happened.

So hey I'm writing this so that I only have to say all this stuff once (okay this is the fourth time I've said this so four times maybe five) but anyway what happened is that I was in a car accident on Sunday where a woman literally ran out into the middle of the road in the dark/rain and well she ran into the path of my car.

Thanks to the impact angle (I hit her with the front corner of my car and she basically rolled along the side for a little bit and then fell on the floor) and the low speed she's as okay as someone who was hit by a moving vehicle and then writhing on the floor in pain can be. The first responders got there super quickly and from what they told me she's gonna be okay.

And I don't think they're lying both from my own assessments (using my limited first aid knowledge) while calling 911 and from my own experience lying on the middle of the street possibly about to die. If they even thought that the situation was dire the EMTs would have done things very differently.

According to literally everyone who was there---like a half-dozen eyewitnesses including someone who nearly hit her on the other side of the street while she was running across and the police---this wasn't my fault and there was literally nothing I could have done to stop this. I think I'm internalizing that now and have been working through all the guilt.

And you know after years of therapy and learning how to deal with three decades worth of depression and repressed guilt I'm actually getting really fucking good at this. It's like, hey I am fighting the entire host of inner demons every single day already so what's one more?

I'm still feeling terrible about the whole thing, and probably will to some degree for the rest of my life. That's apparently a symptom of a new condition my therapist diagnosed me with called "not being a self-centered fucking piece of shit". I think she had a more polite medical name for it though.

Anyway after all the things happened the police officer in charge of the whole thing told me that, as far as he's concerned, none of this was my fault and as long as I feel like I was able to drive I was free to go. The woman that got hit was getting a jaywalking ticket though. I wanted to be like hey okay maybe this was completely her fault but like even then wouldn't a broken leg and rib or whatever the hell else she got from being hit by a car be enough can we maybe like not make her day even worse?

But I didn't say anything because, well, okay, I mean, I'm a femme-presenting trans person of color. There's a reasonably well dressed definitely not homeless white woman that looks like she's literally dying on the floor next to me. This is one of those situations that Doesn't Fucking Bode Well when the cops arrive. None of this occurred to me consciously because I have a large (unfortunately also necessary) amount of crisis management training and it kicked the fuck in, but there were very definitely moments of "huh why am I not handcuffed?" or "I wonder if they'll put me in boy jail" during the whole thing.

None of it actually happened, because Only Some Cops Are Bastards, but holy shit.

After all the things, I ended up driving my car to some very nearby friends' house and they gave me a ride home---after giving me enough time to come to my own conclusion that no I wasn't going to drive myself home. Especially since my car wasn't legal to drive anymore---for good reason since one of the side mirrors was ripped right off.

Today was spent dealing with insurance and tow trucks and car rentals and such. Tomorrow is more of that plus a physical checkup just to make sure that all the extra pain is from the stress and hysteria and not actual impact related.

It's kind of a very good thing that I could literally put my life on hold for two days to get this stuff sorted out.

Looking back, I've done as well as I could all things considered. It's like there's literally nothing I could have done that would have make the situation or its fallout measurably better. I did about as well or sometimes even better than any decent human being has the right to be in a situation like this. I don't think I would have been able to do this in the past, without the years of therapy and/or the right drugs in my body to compensate for that whole not having ovaries thing.

Like I mean things are shit and will continue to be shit for a while (moreso for the other lady) but the shit is contained and placed away from all fans so.

Anyway to end this story on a non-scatological note: It turns out that the first person to arrive on scene (besides me) and also one of the people who saw the whole thing happened was literally the only cleric in the city I know. You know how some people are like "God sends his angels" or something like that? Well, I didn't get an angel. I got a tiny middle-aged lesbian pastor and that's worth like at least ten thousand angels.

At some point after all the cops and EMTs showed up, she gave me a hug and told me that none of this was my fault and there's nothing I could have done to avoid this. And then, while standing in the middle of the street with sirens blaring all around us and rain pouring down, she said, "you know I never actually asked this... what *are* your pronouns?"

What I thought at the time was okay seriously I appreciate you asking this but maybe this is probably not the best time to ask?????

In retrospect though, it was the perfect time to ask.