1. A Simple Mistake While Climbing
Watched my friend fall almost thousand feet to his death while rock climbing. No idea why he switched ropes when he was watching me secure them. He even asked me to yell when secure. Took almost 45 minutes to get down to his body. Haven’t climbed since.
2. I Drilled It And Everything Went Black
A car ran a stop sign right in front of me one night when I was heading back from a friend’s house. I drilled it going at about 50 mph. Everything went dark and when I came to I was facing the opposite way on the other side of the road I’d been traveling down.
I kicked my door open, got out, and it was the most powerful sense of derealization/depersonalization I’ve ever felt. I was totally out of body just standing quietly in the middle of the street on a peaceful summer night. Glass everywhere. My Ford Explorer in front of me just fucking destroyed beyond belief.
I start coming to my senses and hear a car horn, I look around and realize it’s coming from the car I hit, so I start sprinting as fast as I can toward it. I get up close and see that the driver’s side is totally crushed, the window shattered.
I look inside and there’s an elderly man facedown against the steering wheel, laying on the horn, blood all over the place. To this day I can’t play GTA at all because of that particular feature.
I start shaking him like crazy and yelling “Are you ok! Are you ok!” There’s no response. So I pull his body back toward the car seat away from the wheel.
And it’s an old woman, not a man. Completely dead, face smashed up. Someone’s mother and grandmother just lifeless and maimed sitting right in front of me. Most terrible image. Just totally terrifying and numbing to see something like that.
I stumble down the street and up toward the closest house and knock on the door. This woman answers in her pajamas and I can’t even talk straight or anything, I’m just crying hysterically at this point and finally get out that there’s been a bad wreck. By this time people are pulling over and pouring into the street.
I remember the emergency responders having to use the jaws of life to get her body out of the car. And then my mom showing up and seeing my car and holding her hands on her head and yelling “Oh my god” over and over as though she couldn’t even grasp what had happened at all.
As far as aftermath, I think about it maybe once every 3-4 months now. I have a ton of repressed memories from childhood/youth and that’s another one that is buried pretty deep. I don’t feel a sense of guilt per se as I was obeying the speed limit and did everything I could, but I still tear up now and then thinking about some kid losing his or her grandmother that way. Or someone losing their mother like that. Or an old man losing his wife and best friend in such a horrible manner that late in life. I just hope she immediately passed away on impact and didn’t feel any pain, didn’t suffer at all.
