On February 18, 2006 I was involved in a near-fatal car accident. I was thrown from the car, and sustained more than head, spinal, rib, lung, and arm injuries. I hit the temporal lobe of my head on a large boulder in a field and have a large scar on the side of my face from something unknown, possibly the glass when being tossed out. I was in and out of comas for a period of about three weeks. Most of my time awake I do not remember anything, but it comes to me in little bits and pieces with gaps in between. Right before the car had went off the ravine, the last thing I did as I was dropping my cell phone with tears in my eyes was pray that God let everyone know I love them and I'll be taken with him. My friend on the other line recalls hearing this and then a sudden rumbling and blankness.

The first thing I remember is waking up after the accident and it being very dark outside. I recalled seeing it light outside because it was only about 5:30 p.m., and I had just looked at the clock on my cell phone before I called my friend. I tried to get up but for the first time in my life I felt a supreme weakness and couldn't go anywhere. I can still feel that loneliness. I lay there, and as I drifted away I cried for my mother. Never in my life had I felt as helpless as I had then. I guess that's when my brain started swelling and I started losing blood because I blacked out. I don't remember much, not even the conversations I supposedly had with the emergency medical technicians on the ride to the first hospital. I don't even remember much about the hospital. I am told that I was only there about four hours or so before I was transferred because they had trouble trying to get me stabilized. They told my mother and family that I was in an accident and had around an 18% chance of survival.

I slipped into what I want to call a deep sleep, but it wasn't at the same time. I could hear my family and see them, but they couldn't see me. Then everything changed completely, it was as if I had awoken or something and I was going to all these places with my family and friends. It all felt so real. To this day, I swear that it was real. It was so real. In fact when I woke up, I didn't know I had even been asleep, and at first didn't recall what had even happened to me. It didn't come to me until much later on. I couldn't tell my dream from reality. It was all intertwined. It was like this for a long time after I woke up. It was like something inside me changed. My mother always says the girl that woke is not the girl who lay there sleeping. I am not sure what that means, but everyone says I am not the person I was before.

I felt like sometimes I was in my body and other times I wasn't in my body. I was an onlooker evaluating the situation. For a long time after coming home and still even occasionally now, I have this bright light in my head. Sometimes the light is so bright I can't go to sleep. It appears over my right shoulder, behind me somewhere; it can be the darkest room, but the light is still shining so brightly. It's all I can see. I even asked my friend if she can see the light, but she said no. Dreams are another phenomena. I have a lot of what I guess you could say is déjà vu, but I don't see it that way because I simply dream things and then they happen. I had this since I was a small child, but it's as if it progressed after the accident and I have become more aware of what I'm seeing. I don't know how the circumstances surrounding the accident affected all this either, but I do know that my life has been changed forever. Even now, I have a lot of questions and it's hard not having anyone who can understand what I have experienced every day over the past three years.