I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anyone (Narrative)

My pocket vibrated with a subtle but alerting sensation. I reached down and my nerves calmed down when I realized it was just my friend. We caught up for a minute and decided on going out to a local boba store to visit for a while. We met at the usual corner near both of our houses, and in no time we saw each other. As we began riding to the boba cafe, we took a route that I am not very familiar with. I looked down at my pedal, making sure my bike was running smoothly, and saw a faded bike lane line, realizing that the road we took may not have been the right idea. As we continued riding I felt the uneven ground underneath my bike and realized that the root damage to the road was so bad that it was unsafe. We were close to the store when I saw that my friend’s foot had a small scrape on it that pointed upwards where his pedal was. I alerted my friend that it may be a good idea to ride on the sidewalk to avoid hurting ourselves saying,

“Hey, we should move on to the-

I could see the driver looking at oncoming traffic, all I could see was the bumper. I could feel my skin burning against the ground and the stinging pain in my elbow. I remember everything moving so slowly as I kept asking myself if this is the end. As I was under the car I yelled for my friend but I felt as though I was underwater no longer able to speak loud enough. The stem of my bike was snapped off, and all I could think of was what could happen to my legs. My friend sprinted to the window banging and banging trying to get the driver to stop creeping forward. Then I heard a snap. I could feel the pressure in my legs and prepared for the worst and hoped for the best. All of a sudden I felt free, free from the prison that I was kept in while under the car.

Over the next couple of months, I allowed my body and mind to heal from the trauma of being hit by a car. I was able to experiment with different forms of transportation but in the back of my mind, I always thought about cycling. The day I started riding my bike again was one of the scariest days of my life. It wasn’t the riding part that scared me, it was the unpredictableness of the cars on the road around me. I was overwhelmed by the number of cars around me that I had to turn back around and go home. The next day I tried cycling again, this time I made sure to take it slow and ride on the trail near my house. This involved still riding on the road but making sure I wasn’t on it for too long. I continued riding on the same trail for the next couple of weeks and started building up my confidence again. Two years after the accident, I was going on the longest ride I had been on in a while, which was around forty miles. We rode cautiously but calmly. We passed where I had gotten hit and all the memories rushed back. Then there was silence. I told myself that even though what had happened there was horrible, I was able to overcome the trauma by building up my confidence and continued doing what I loved.

Even after this trauma, I was able to apply this same mindset to other things like my education and my creative side. When working on projects, I have to remind myself that even if I am having a problem with what I’m doing, I can work hard and learn from those mistakes to build my confidence and not give up. Looking back, I am glad to have gotten in that accident, aside from the pain that went along with it, because I was able to teach myself how to build up confidence by working hard and not giving up. To this day I still ride my bike as my main form of transportation, despite having my driver’s license. This experience taught me that nothing can hold me back from what I love to do, and with grit and determination, I will keep doing what I love no matter what.