bone shaker

i opened my eyes and started to scream.

i didn’t even know what i was screaming for at first.

was it the pain

the shock

the realisation of what had just happened

or the fear of what would come next.

this wasn’t my car.

strange that this was my first thought.

not that my legs were crushed

not that i was wrapped around a tree in the middle of the night

alone

no headlights

no voices

just me

and the sound of my own body trying to make sense of the impact.

i could have been dead.

i could have been about to die.

but my first thought was how angry the owner of the car would be.

thirty years later i found an old journal describing this exact incident

months before it happened.

a picture of a car

crashed into a tree

not as a warning

but as something i wanted to feel.

life feels heavy at eighteen.

you finish school

your friends scatter

you start working or studying

you try to be independent

you try to stand up

and the whole world feels too big

too loud

too much.

you don’t know how to name what’s happening inside you.

you don’t have any skills

you don’t what tools are

you can't describe the ache in your chest.

you just want the pressure to stop.

you want a loophole

a way out

an end.

something permanent.

most of us spend our whole lives circling that same pattern

either not knowing how to face what we feel

or searching for something

that might tell us how to finally let it rest.

but we feel it

to the bone

all the way down

until one day the shaking stops

and we realise we are no longer the version of ourselves who crawled into that wreckage.

this is alchemy

the bone shaker

the moment the old self cracks

so a new one can take its first breath.