Painted Prison Walls - Part 1
Understanding in a car crash
Not even sure how to start this… Guessing it’s going to take days… Maybe weeks to get through it all…
I’ll start by saying that I’m really enjoying writing and putting some of these events in my life into words and sharing them with the world. And thanks everyone so far for the feedback, I deeply appreciate it.
Some will know, most won’t know that I crashed a car when I was 18 and this resulted in me going to jail for 6 months.
The entire ordeal was extremely taxing on me at the time but also taxing on everyone around me, friends and family whether they were directly linked to the incident or not it was a heavy, emotional time.
From the time of the crash to me being sentenced was about 10 months because if you’ve ever dealt with the court system, you’ll know it is a slow beast.
Then I was jailed for 6 months with 12 months parole. The impact of this year and a bit still ripples through my life to this day.
Still don’t know where to start.. I guess the start… haha
The night of the crash was no different then many other nights of my late teen years. Except that maybe I wasn’t drinking… I had chosen not to as I was starting a new job at Coles the next morning and didn’t want to be hung over.
So myself and a group of friends had been driving around the northern beaches, everyone was drinking except for my friend who was driving and myself. After a while we ended up parking in the back of the industrial area in Cromer. A spot we regularly hung out as there was usually no one else around.
At some point my friend who owned the car asked me if I would drive everyone home so he could have a drink. I was happy to oblige even though I was only on my learners at the time. His place was about 5 minutes up the road so I saw no harm. We never saw police in the area at night anyway… Plus I loved driving and was never too concerned with breaking the rules.
When it came time to leave everyone asked if we could go to Quix a nearby servo to get munchies, I was happy to do it, it meant I got to do more driving and it wasn’t that far away. We were invincible.. what could possibly go wrong.
So we all hopped in the car. My friend who owned the car was in the passenger seat and my three other mates in the back seat.
We left at around 3am or so.. hard to recall.
Being the lead foot I was, I drove with little regard for road rules.
We entered South Creek Rd headed towards Pittwater Road Dee Why. I took a bend in the road and cut the corner slightly, as we came around the bend I noted headlights coming toward me, as we got closer we noticed it was a Paddy Wagon(Police)… I remember, “Please don’t turn around” being said… can’t remember if it was me or someone else in the car or just in my head. (Wow my heart is racing recalling this.. )
But sure enough they hit their brakes and put their lights on and did a u-turn. At this point I did the right thing and pulled over, the tension in the car at that moment was nuts, everything was in full slow motion… Adrenalin pumping… I remember asking what should I do and thinking about how much my Dad would kick my arse for this.. what to do.. everyone in the car was saying go, just go, the cops were quite a way back down the road. I’m not sure what happened next and why I decided to go, but I did. Wheels screeching and I was flying down South Creek Rd towards Pittwater Rd adrenalin pumping.. I can hardly remember any of this… it’s a blur, I do remember however that we were all excited and I do remember, we were getting away. WERE.
I turned left onto Cumberland Ave and took off. The next thing I remember is seeing another left hand turn and deciding I would take it. This was Coutts Cres… And was not what I was expecting… I don’t think I realized where we were at the time in all the chaos and thought the corner was a sweeping left… But no… It was a tight left turn, almost hairpin corner. By the time I realized it was too late. I hadn’t compensated at all for it and I’m pretty sure I hadn’t compensated for the extra ½ tonne of weight in the car from us 5 boys. The brakes locked up, I was no longer in control. In that moment I remember thinking I had killed everyone in the car. The car mounted the curb and went straight into a sandstone retaining wall, it did not even scratch. I later found out from the police report that they suspect the car was still doing 70km/h at the time of impact.
The impact was intense; the sounds not just from the car but from everyone in the car rang in my head for a long while afterwards. The car hit on the driver side front. The rear flew up in the air and came back to rest. Then there was nothing but the sound of my friends moaning. I asked if everyone was okay and everyone responded. What a relief but everyone sounded in pretty bad shape. The next few moments are a blur but quite soon I had a police officer with his gun pointed in my face screaming something at me. I don’t think they even realized how bad things were because quickly they went from aggressors to calling for an ambulance and checking that we were all ok.
I don’t really know what happened from here but pretty soon we were all out of the car, everyone standing. Clearly we were all still pumped full of adrenaline. It wasn’t long till some of my mates started complaining about pains and eventually my mate in the passenger seat said his back was sore, at which point the police got everyone to either sit or lay down. I refused as I had hit my nose and apart from a little blood I felt fine and I continued to pace back and forth, I don’t know how to describe the state I was in, actually I hardly remember any of this, just flashes of memory and a general overtone of shock.
I remember the ambulances showing up and them loading us in. My friend who’s back was sore was put on a back board. I think I was just terrified; I had no idea what the hell had just happened or what was going to happen. My friends were hurt and it was because of my actions. At my hands they lay in ambulance beds and my friends car, that was a gift from his grandfather who had passed away months earlier, was a total write off.
We arrived at the hospital and we were all taken in to have checkups done.
I was given the all clear and waited to hear about my friends. At some point my Dad showed up, I was expecting him to rip me a new one but he was silent, he knew, I knew, I had fucked up. I don’t remember what happened.. I feel like I broke down crying but I don’t remember.
I don’t know if it was before or after my Dad arrived but one of the doctors informed me that 2 of my friends had internal bleeding from their seatbelts and needed to remain in hospital and possibly have surgery.
I can’t remember when I found this out… if it was on the morning or later that day but my friend in the passenger seat had a fractured spine and would remain in hospital for months and possibly may not walk again. As you can imagine hearing this crushed me, there aren’t words in our shitty English dictionary to describe feeling responsible for that. It’s just a feeling, a sound that resonated in my head.
I don’t remember the rest of this day, I got home and I remember getting hugs from my family and crying but I just have no idea what else happened, if anything.
Well yeah.. that’s the accident part; I may add more before sharing this…
that was freaking intense that was like being teleported back to that day and reliving all of it… Fwar… Writing that I think allowed me to recall things I think I have never recalled. Or maybe just not thought about in a long time… Kinda a bit out of body right now, need a good slap!
I don’t think I have really thought about how much just the crash alone traumatized me. The events that will follow in later writings are what I have focused on more. Why I don’t know.. But after writing this and putting my self back there. I definitely feel like I need to do some digging into this day and find some peace about what happened.
Because right now I feel I have a lot of disrespect or distrust in myself for what happened.
Think I might just leave it here… Don’t really feel like digging back into the rest just now. Will do the next part tomorrow or soon enough.
Once again i would love your feedback or comments, critical or not.
Thanks for reading.
Actual blog post can be found here: https://byodiversity.wordpress.com/2018/03/08/painted-prison-walls/