The Phoenix
‘Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the same as you’d been before the fall.’ – Jodi Picoult
“… Beep… Beep… Beep…”
I was gradually gaining back my consciousness, but I wasn’t really thinking. My mind felt empty and blank and I wasn’t feeling anything --
A wave of pain hit me, hard. It was everywhere and I could feel it now, but I couldn’t speak at all because of my body’s condition. The angry beeping sound kept echoing; the painful struggling groan in the room seemed to be nonstop. A nurse came in to check on me, and then I remembered what had happened. I had gotten into a car accident. When my doctor came later that day, he told me about my condition. “You are paralyzed. You can’t walk anymore. You’ll need to use wheelchair from now on, “he said.
This happened in 2008 in Taiwan, where I am from. I didn’t really realize what it meant at that moment since I had just woken up from a two-week coma. “Okay I can’t walk” was all I could think. But things turned for the worse when reality started coming back. I got into the accident because I was arguing with my boyfriend (well, ex-boyfriend now, thank goodness) over the phone when I was driving to his company. He was angry with me because I was late when bringing him his lunch. This was not unusual as we never had a healthy relationship and we fought a lot. We were often mean to each other. The conversation became more and more intense and I stopped paying attention to the road. There was a huge truck behind me when I cut the lane, hitting my car in full speed, making my car crash into the pedestrian island and turn over in the air. I fell out through the broken car window. Then my car exploded.
This was where my memory of the accident ended. A month after I woke up, I could finally leave the ICU and started receiving physical and occupational therapy. Everything was different. My body had shut down and was not functioning well. I just couldn’t handle my body anymore. I didn’t know how to balance my body and I would fall when I tried to sit up. I couldn’t even hold a cup. I needed to spend most of my time on bed. Every time when I wasn’t able to do these simple tasks, I couldn’t help feeling this pain inside me – I was not a normal person. Every day when I went to therapy, I expected that things would get better, that I would walk again. But nothing seemed to have changed. I was hopeful at the beginning of the day, but then the hope was lost when the day ended. My parents also had a hard time accepting the way I was. They kept telling me I would eventually walk again as long as I was willing to try. But no, nothing happened. I couldn’t feel my body parts under my chest anymore, and I lost everything I had: my healthy body; my well-respected job as an English teacher; my plans for the future; my boyfriend who already found a new girlfriend within a month after the accident; and most importantly, myself as a person. I felt like I could do nothing on my own. I had to rely on other people and had to stay in bed all the time. I honestly didn’t know what to do with my life anymore.
My boyfriend did not find me after the accident. After I left the ICU, I tried to contact him right away – but he never answered my call. I was so angry at him. He should be responsible for my accident! It happened because of him! I couldn’t do anything on my own now, so he had to take care of me! At that time, these were the only things I could think of. Every day I woke up at 5am to start dialing my boyfriend’s and his family’s number, until the end of the day when I had to sleep. Basically I would call him and his family whenever I was awake. When he finally visited me in the hospital two months later, I was so happy – having him see me was all I asked for. I thought he still cared about me. But very soon, I figured out his real intention: he wanted me to lend him money. When he asked me, I couldn’t even yell at him. I was just too heartbroken. He made it seem like money, only money, was the sole thing that was left in our three year long relationship. I didn’t know what to say. I could only reply with a ‘no’. That was it.
He stopped contacting me after he realized I would never give him any money, and I started the whole obsessive dialing routine again. I hated him for what he did and didn’t do, and I felt this was so unfair. I was in so much pain and felt so lost that this was the only thing I could do every day. Eventually, his mother picked up the phone. “You are disabled now, you can do nothing. What makes you think you can marry into our family? You’re just one of the living dead.” When she said this, I was angry to the extreme that no words could describe how I felt. It was like a hard slap on my face. How could she do this? Who did she think she was, saying such terrible and mean things to me? At that moment, I could finally give up on my boyfriend and his family. I decided that I needed to be strong. I would live a much better life than any of them, and I was going to prove that I worth so, so much more than they were. I was going to live my life to the fullest and all they could do then was to watch me shine to my brightest.
It took me four years to recover from my physical injury. Then I went to a community college in the US and graduated two years later. In 2015, I applied to UCLA and I got in. Life can still be hard for me now as I need to deal with my physical condition every day. However, I’m on my way to fight for a better life. I keep on working hard at school and with the support from my friends, I’m feeling positive and hopeful for the future. My past life was buried under the ash of my car as it burst into flame. It turned everything into dust and left scars that will never fade. Yet the ash was also where I was reborn, the place that I can see a ray of light shedding on me. Now I feel more powerful than I ever have been.