#drivinghigh

“Imagine if tonight was the night I died. That’d be a weird thought,” I thought to myself as I got behind the wheel. You never really think about those kind of things, right? Usually you’re so focused on just getting home safe that you don’t even factor in the thought of risk. But it’s okay because you’re never THAT far from sober. You can totally drive, easily. You put on some good music like Sublime or Dirty Heads and get your jam going to ease the tension. At least that’s how it is for me when I smoke and drive. It’s okay too because weed helps you concentrate and stuff. So I’m driving and going along with no problem; it’s just like any other night. I want to change the song, so I grab my iPhone and quickly glance at what song is playing – no harm no foul. It’s “PCH” by Sublime with Rome, a pretty decent song. It just ended and I skip ahead a few tracks to find a song I deemed a good choice to listen to. I’m handling the turns pretty well, but I’m a bit weavy and wobbly around curvy parts of the road. It sucks that there’s one coming up ahead, but I do this every night, so it’s all good. I go back to my phone. I quickly open Snapchat and look at someone’s Snap that I had gotten. Oh well, it was stupid, but I did it as I was entering the curvy part of the road. I began feeling a bit dizzy, but I handled the curves nicely and went to the straightaway. I look down and switch my phone back to the Music app. I look up and see that I’ve got a green light – nice. Straightaway’s easy compared to those curves in the road back there, so I focus on finding this one song called “Collie Man” by Slightly Stoopid. I hit play on the song as I get closer to the intersection. There’s another car coming, but it’s slowing down – I can see it out of my perif because I’m just cool like that. I adjust the volume on my phone and click the power button off just in time to see that the person rolling straight into the intersection. I slam on the brakes and look at my speedometer; damn, I’m going 50. I might be able to slow down to at least 40 before impact with the other car. The passenger’s probably fucked, but she might live. We hit pretty hard, a straight t-bone, but it felt like just a really hard shove to me. Well, a shove and a pop and a crunch. Shit, my neck’s popped, and I think those are the vertebrae crushing like watermelon in there. We both come to a halt, and I’m not sure if my head is spinning from my high or from the impact. It’s probably just the high enhancing the shock, probably. I’m hanging my head limp as to not cause any sudden jolts, but I need to lift my head to assess the damage. I start getting worried that this might be really serious. I lift my head to a stinging crack and pinch, and I can feel this tingly warm fluid leaking out. Crap. I my head fall back, causing another pinch feeling that runs along my spinal cord. I guess I sent some bone fragments in there too. My high starts to get serious; I get woozy and everything’s spinning. Then the dreaded thought of death creeps from my spine into my brain, and I know that I have just a bit of time left. I took a short first aid class last summer, no more than two weeks and I knew from that experience that I had just seconds left on this earth. It’s a weird feeling, knowing that you’re about to die. I knew that when the time came, probably about 10 seconds from now, I’d have to fight death for as long as possible before succumbing to my shredded neck. I wasn’t looking forward to fighting a battle I knew I was going to lose, so naturally I wanted to enjoy the last seconds I had left on this soft earth I have called my home. I think about my family, how upset they will be since Christmas Eve is tomorrow. Mom, Dad and my sister will definitely have me as a bitter reminder every Christmas until they die and join me. I then think about the people that I hit. There’s a good chance that my front bumper is probably lodged into the now-compressed intestines of the woman passenger that I hit. It was two women driving together, I believe.  That’s going to be hard for their families too, they’ll probably hate my family until the end of time. They looked pretty young too – probably in their mid-20’s based on my knowledge of flinching and terrified faces. Then I think about God and where I am going now that I screwed up. Would be still accept me in the state I’m in? Killing someone while texting while high seems like a pretty big sin. I worry that it may be too big for Him to accept me, and my guilt wrenches at my gut for the last time. I apologize verbally as I whisper, “I’m sorry, God”. And those were to be my last words. I’m satisfied with that – it seemed microscopically admirable. And the time has now come for me to fight for as long as I can. My head, hanging, begins to pulse, and between my high and my throbbing neck I manage to fight off the darkness that was swallowing what was left of my brain activity. I’m pushing against the darkness for one last hope that maybe someone will have come over and snapped my neck back into place and everything would be fixed perfectly. As I realize the absurdity of this thought, the darkness overtakes me and swoops in on the little dim light that still emanates inside of my head. I gasped a quick bout of air out of surprise from the darkness, and I knew this would be my final breath. My thoughts get woozy and I lose control of the pulsing and spinning. This isn’t how death was shown to me in movies and stuff. There was no flashback of my life for me, only the primal carnage of what was a young healthy fit body just a minute ago. I was caught up deciding what my final thought should be when the darkness crushed the lightbulb. I don’t know where I go from here.