One Monday morning in January, after the boys finally returned to school, I headed to the gym under blue skies and sunny mid-50s, with almost no traffic. Suddenly, a BMW SUV sideswiped me at the roundabout and kept going. I was in disbelief. Living in a state of sleep deprivation and constant overstimulation, and having been regularly gaslit in my family and marriage, my first thought was that I had imagined it. Did that really just happen?
I followed the BMW into a medical center parking lot and blocked her in. When the woman exited her car and tried to ignore me, I called out, “Excuse me.” She responded, clearly inconvenienced, “Can I help you?” I said, “Yes, you hit my car at the roundabout.” She replied, “I did not hit you and I have an appointment to get to,” and continued walking. OMG, it felt all too familiar. OMG. So familiar.
Unrecovered me wants to go ape shit. Scream. Tell her about herself. She is cool dismissive, nice car. So important, poised, and clearly believes in her rightness.
I walk to the front of her car, pointing I say, “see that…that matches the marks on my car where you hit me.” She flippantly hands me a tattered paper and says, write down your number and I will call you.” Oh, Ok. Lacking confidence that this woman who hit me and ran and then LIED about what she did is going handle this. I call Favorite to ask IF I should call police.
I’m now crying because that’s how my neurology processes stress and intense feelings, even the positive ones. In true narcissistic fashion, the BMW driver looks at me disdainfully and asks, “Why are you crying?” as if my emotional response is evidence of my instability. She’s not asking out of concern, nor is she deserving of an explanation. Still, I tell her that chasing her down after hitting my car is upsetting. She then heads to her appointment and I call the police.
Now my Monday energy (and hope) is spent. I weep in my car for the half hour it takes for an officer to arrive, not because I am sad. She returns after her appt. The same woman who insisted she did not hit me, now tells the police I hit her. In detail. C-PTSD insists that she might be right, what do I know, I am crazy, remember things wrong, cannot be counted on to truly know what happens. The officer surveys our cars before driving the area in which SHE HIT ME and returns to write her a ticket for failure to yield…and not for hit and run.
The crazy part is that she showed no concern—not for a second. She wasn’t afraid of a ticket; she remained composed, self-righteous, and unapologetic. A hit-and-run is a criminal offense, yet because I was crying—clearly a problematic person—perhaps that would be the only focus.
I was flattened for days, processing the energy and emotions from the experience. In the time between her leaving for her appointment and receiving the ticket, I panicked: I feared I would get the ticket, be financially responsible, get into trouble, and that I was somehow crazy and also imagined it. Living with CPTSD means I react to current situations with the same intensity as past traumas, when I felt unsafe and powerless. Although I am now safe and have tools to cope, my nervous system doesn’t always recognize that.
