Stories We Tell Ourselves

How a life-changing accident shaped my relationship with memory and trauma

Anonymous

I woke up to nylon fabric burning my chest. After frantically pushing the airbag off my body, the only sound I could discern from the ringing in my head was a man to my left shouting orders through the crumpled door. He was a motorcyclist wearing an entirely leather get-up, and he was demanding that I do not move.

“Breathe in! Do not turn your neck, do not panic!”

In front of me were two other cars, one was in flames. Metal scraps covered southbound I-5.

Next thing I knew, I was sitting on the shoulder of the highway crying hysterically. There were police cars and ambulances and people running around, and two men in stretchers a few yards away from me, strapped down. The motorcyclist was gone.

I remember calling my dad while crying, officers next to me. I remember him cursing in the most panicked voice I have ever heard him make. Beyond these fragments, the rest of the accident is a blur.

I was told that I ran into a slowed car while going 65 mph. That car, which was half of the weight of my dad’s Toyota Sequoia that I was driving, spun into I-5 and clipped another car. The officer told my mom that neither person in the car I hit were wearing seatbelts from the looks of their injuries.

I remember the officer telling me that had I not been driving my dad’s car and instead been in my Subaru Legacy, which I still drive to this day, I would likely be dead.

After reciting these events to friends hundreds of times in the past six years since the wreck, I began to question myself. Did the motorcyclist actually look like Daryl from the AMC show “The Walking Dead”? Did the car I hit actually “spin” into I-5 before hitting the other car, as I’ve often described it? Had I been falling asleep at the time of impact, or do I simply not remember the moments prior to the wreck? Did the airbag even burn, with the three layers I was likely wearing at the time? Was there one or two men in stretchers? Did my entire narrative that I’ve told others, and had inadvertently been telling myself, happen the way I think it did? The insurance battle between my family and the people I hit only concluded a year or two ago, and I was never told the specifics of the case whatsoever. When I talk about it with my parents, I only gather that the incident was horrible and scary for everyone involved.

These detail-doubts I’ve been experiencing for the past several months have been applying themselves to other childhood memories in my head. How much of my fundamental understandings of my life events actually occurred the way I’ve perceived them? Through the process of recounting this story over and over, have the details changed to match the person I see myself as now, or to fit a narrative that makes me feel better about myself and my role in past events?

Perhaps these doubts have began to surface in my thoughts through the process of studying journalism. Seeking the truth and reporting it is a fundamental, driving principle in my field, but was also raised on my mom’s famous quote, “Why ruin a good story with facts?” Maybe my current understanding of this accident has been sculpted by lies I told to fill in the narrative at the time, so much so that they have filled in the gaps in my own understanding.

According to “Traumatic Memories are Not Necessarily Accurate Memories,” a study published by the University of California Irvine Psychology Department in 2005, “Various manipulations can be used to implant false memories — including false memories for traumatic events. These false memories can be quite compelling for those who develop them and can include details that make them seem credible to others. The fact that a memory report describes a traumatic event does not ensure that the memory is authentic.”

Maybe my own lack of understanding, paired with my brain’s need to flesh out the events that shaped my relationship with automobiles and my concern for friends’ safety on the road, wrote a half-fictional tale for my own peace of mind. The only thing I am certain of is that my account of the incident is all I will have to serve me as a lesson, and those who hear about it, for the rest of my life.