Lessons in life I learned; only you can save you.

Echoes in the Dark;

"Help me, please somebody help me," I screamed halfway out the window of my upside-down Honda Accord. "Help me, please, please someone help me," I could hear my own anguish and pain in my cries for help as they drifted out toward the 152 mixing in with the passing big rigs becoming echoes, echoes in the dark. I tried to get free and squeeze out the maligned, crushed driver’s side window but I couldn't with how the car was situated against the incline of sandy dirt that led upward. I pulled my other half inside and recollected what had just happened. I had been traveling to work in Fresno on the dark, lonely 152 as a truck pulled out onto the two-lane highway and then cut in front of me. As he did the truck accelerated and jostled and old wooden chair, not a flimsy Ikea one but an old, oak one that bounced onto the pavement and then collided with the driver’s side front tire and a piece became lodged in the wheel well.?I felt the impact immediately, like getting hit by a blind side block in football.?I pulled to the left a bit as I was traveling at around 70 MPH, I couldn’t gain control the steering was completely gone and I felt the car then pull right and head towards the ridge.?I felt the car catch air and then flip once, then twice, then three times. I thought to myself “Please God let this stop,” which turned to “I am not going to die like this, not here and not now.?I will see my kids again; I will see my fiancée!”.?The next moment I found myself upside down facing south, upside down still strapped in.?I took a mental inventory; I can see, I can feel both arms and I can feel both legs.?I moved my appendages as I had heard from my father and grandfather military men could still feel parts of them, they had lost in an explosion so I moved one arm, then the other; then one leg and then the other.?All there and then the panic set in, “I am in the middle of nowhere, its pitch black, I am upside down and no one will find me,” so I undid my seatbelt and maneuvered myself onto my stomach and thought how I would escape my car that had become a twisted steal prison/maze.?I searched for my phones and my lunch bag and could not find them, probably ejected like a rocket during the flips but I needed to get out of that car, I couldn’t smell any gas fumes but was unsure if any was leaking so I did not want to kick a door open and cause a spark.?Out of the 6 windows (4 door windows and the rear and front window) one was collapsed, 4 were intact mostly and one was semi broken.?It was my drivers side mirror and it was my escape route, a crushed, maligned escape route but it was mine.?I thought I need to clear the rest of this glass from the window and thought of how to proceed.?At that point I noticed I only had one shoe on and had no idea where the other one was, so I thought “I’ll put the shoe over my hand to protect it as I punch the window clear of glass,” so that’s what I did, thank God for short powerful arms.?So, I turned away and punched the glass until it was just shards to which I swatted the rest away with my shoe like they were flies.?Now the fun part, fitting myself a powerlifter who has trouble fitting through some doorways without dipping in sideways who has especially wide, thick shoulders from years of rows and pulldowns and a broad, wide chest from years of bench through a Honda accord window, a window that has been crushed like a tin can. I put my right arm out first and then pulled my lift through in a shimmy, my face flat in the dirt, I could taste it, it engulfed me and made it hard to breath.?I inched forward up the hill and I could taste freedom, then I got stuck.?Due to the incline, I was going up trying to get out it pushed my up toward the window and I could not get my hips through.?Panic and depression sunk in and I then began to beg for someone to save me, to rescue me, for Angles to descend and rip me out, for my mother to pick me up as she did when I was a child and hurt myself.?None of that was going to happen, it was maybe 4:45 AM PST by my guess and pitch black, no one is headed eastbound right now, all the traffic is headed west towards San Jose.?Didn’t anyone see me I thought? No, the probably of the truck cutting me off was around 1 in a million and someone seeing or finding me at this time was about the same, I would have to hope a miracle would happen for someone to help me.?I knew at that point no one was coming to rescue me, that no one was going to save me because, well that’s life.?“Get busy living or get busy dying,” a famous line from Shawshank Redemption spoke by Morgan Freeman never struck so true.?I may have not died in that car but at that moment I had no idea as a stated if the fuel was leaking and I would become a human torch.?I pulled myself back in the car and assessed the situation; I can’t breathe due the dust and dirt and I cannot fit out because of the incline.?I needed to find a way to overcome both of those so I came to the conclusion I would wrap my shirt around my mouth like a mask to block the dirt and to be able to not choke and to use a rock to dig into the incline so I could come out in a straight line and not at an incline so I set to work.?Even with my shirt over my face I could still taste the dirt as I dug and as I dug, I moved out slowly and not quickly.?My mistake before also was I got excited, my adrenaline kicked in and puffed me up I needed to stay calm this time and relax.?I inched farther and farther out and I got to my hips being in the window where I got stuck the last time, I relaxed and pushed back slowly and then burst through the window. I was out!?I am frigging out of that Hell!?I crawled maybe ten feet turned over and looked at the car and laughed.?I laughed because one I was free and two, I still needed to find help.?I slowly got up and felt my left hip buckle, I realized from years of sprained ankles it was sprained and walking would be tough.?I laughed again, I had no shoes and the closest gas station was 5 miles away but a company I passed daily was 2 miles to the west.?I started walking back and after about 10 minutes I found I had come to the San Joaquin River and needed to now climb off the steep hill I had just flown off of.?So up the hill I went, it was maybe 10 feet high and not a huge grade but at that point it was my Mount Everest.?My hip was on fire as I climbed and grabbed at plants to pull myself up the hill.?I thought to myself “What if there are snakes here in these holes?”?“Bro just bite them back if they bite you!?You just flipped 3 times and survived a snake is not going to kill you here and now, not now.”?I kept on climbing and finally crested at the top onto the shoulder of the 152.?Not the smartest move my I have made to date, looking back I could have easily got hit by any array of vehicles on the highway. I was drenched in sweat and took my shirt off as a big rig passed.?I waved my shirt to no avail so I kept going and I waved my shirt like Petey Pablo’s “Raise Up,” at every truck and car that passed.?No one saw me it was still dark and wearing blue jeans with a grey shirt not the best hi-vis while trying to find help.?I finally made it to my destination not knowing if the business was open or not but at that moment, I just wanted a place to sit a rest for a minute as my hip felt like a knife had repeatedly been thrust into it a thousand times.?The business was gated and there was no one there but I knew many migrant workers used the road to head to different farms for work.?It was the one place out there I ever saw cars; they never went onto the 152 for long before turning down another dark, pitch-black road to disappear as I had seen in my travels.?I saw lights and jumped up; my hip buckled but I pushed forth.?The truck pulled up to the stop sign and I screamed to him, he didn’t hear me so I knocked on the window and he rolled it down and I told him in Spanish I had been in a bad accident and could I please use his phone to call my fiancée??(Not 911 because a lot of the nice people out there aren’t here legally sometimes so calling 911 would be a hard no).?In English he told me “No,” and speed off but there was now a line of maybe three cars behind him and I waved to each and each looked at me and turned away like I would vanish like a bad dream or a spirit they caught out of their eye.?I was in front of them flesh and bone, covered in dirt and blood not looking to be rescued but to borrow a phone to call my fiancée.?That’s all I wanted was to call her, I didn’t want anyone to save me I had already saved myself so many times in my life and today was no different. Finally, a big Ford King Ranch pulled up and I waved him down.?He rolled down the window and asked what was going on and I told him all that had happened.?I noticed the sky and that the early morning black sky was being overtaken by the incoming light, it had to be around 6 AM at that time and I noticed Merced County sheriff come by and turn their lights on and pull over to where my car was.?The man, Don took me over to them but not before helping me into the truck and offering me a water.?As I got out the sheriff up on the shoulder turned around and looked at me as Don helped me out.?His partner was on the bottom with his flashlight looking into my car and I saw him notice my footprints.?His partner called to him and he ascended up the slope towards us.?I explained to them what happened and they turned me around to see what was left of the chair.?It was splintered and destroyed, good riddance I thought.?They asked me if I saw the license plate of the car or the driver but it was so dark, I told them I couldn’t have.?They asked me if their station could call anyone and I told them my fiancée, I gave them her number and the station said it went straight to voicemail.?Great this adventure still hasn’t found its end.?The officer who had been down looking at my car told me “When I saw the tire marks, I knew something bad had happened, then I saw the car and I was sure I was going to find someone dead in there, then I saw your footsteps and hoped the person was ok. And here you are in front of me and besides the dirt and blood I would never guess you were in that car.”?The EMT’s showed up as the sheriff went back down to see if he could retrieve any possessions.?The other sheriff told them EMT’s I wanted to go home and the EMT’s asked me “hospital or home,” I said home.?The sheriff told them I had walked three miles by myself and was walking around on my own power and remembered my fiancée’s number. The EMTs had me sit on a gurney and take off my shirt. They still had to run their tests, follow the finger and cover one eye, check my body and check my wounds.?My head had multiple lacerations and they needed to make sure no glass was imbedded in my scalp.?They put their silicone solution over my head and cleaned me and asked if I felt any pain, I told them no and they didn’t have to be gentle I know they have a job to do.?The sheriff grabbed one of my phones, my work phone and I proceeded to call my fiancée.?She woke up and told me someone had been calling her from a 209-area code and I told her it was the Merced County sheriff’s office.?I told her she needed to come get me, that I had been in an incident (an incident she would not be aware of until she arrived) and I wanted to go home she told me I should go to the hospital and I told her no, all I wanted to do was see her and we were in the “COVID WILL KILL ALL” phase and she wouldn’t be let in to see me. She hung up and I felt everyone’s eyes on me, looking, staring like they had seen a ghost or a dead man raise.?I finally looked at the car and understood that these sheriffs have to come out here and be the first to see someone’s love on dead, that they have to make the call and be there when the loved one arrives.?I’m glad that I could give them that.?One of the EMT’s asked “Why didn’t you wait by the car?”?I told him “No one was going to save me so I had to save myself.?I wasn’t going to die down there; I rather die walking then laying in there.”?The tow truck arrived and started to winch up and as he turned it over pried doors open and gathered what belongings of mine, he could get.?He found my personal cell phone, lunch bag, other shoe.?Gone was my wallet and my Contigo water bottle, one of my favorite items I have, it went all over with me from San Jose to SF to Sac and now it was gone.?Stupid thing to care about at the time I know but it was where my mind was at.?My fiancée called and said she was getting close and I saw here pull up around the EMT van, she couldn’t see my face from the road as I had my back towards the highway.?I could see her get out of the car and start her walk, a walk to see if her fiancé was still all there, that my face didn’t blow up like Kanye or look like a Toxic Crusader.?She saw what was left of my Honda first before she saw me.?The tow truck driver gave me his card and where the card would be.?I thanked everyone there and told my fiancée I wanted to go home, she was worried I may die due to some unseen injury but at that point all I wanted to do was go home and take a shower and rest.?We got home and now my hip was petrified like a fossil and I needed help to walk up our driveway through the garage.?I took my clothes by myself but need help into the shower.?I washed away the dirt and blood until the bottom of the shower looked like red clay mud.?I got out and told my fiancée to take pictures so I could remember this.?I did not see that day as a defeat, a horror movie or loss, I saw it as a victory.?A victory where I saved myself because I knew like the rest of my life no one was coming to save me and to survive I would have to save me.?Maybe all the years of abuse, mental and physical, being hit like a grown man by a grown man, losing my mother at the age of ten, my step mom telling me I would never amount to anything, having back surgery, having a lung infection that affected my white blood cells that led me to be both jobless and homeless? that I was just a fat loser that always would be that led me to believe what I see others don’t understand in this life; NO ONE IS GOING TO SAVE YOU, YOU MUST SAVE YOURSELF! There is no magic pill or spell, no angel or superhero that will come and make your life what you want.?In all the life events I listed for you above I felt sorry for myself, I cried like a baby when I found out I blew out my ACL and the likely hood of scouts coming still to recruit me for baseball would be slime.?Each time I wallowed in my own self-pity, my broken dreams and how unfair life was to me.?After everyone it just tallied up and up and finally at about 30, I stop letting my life tragedy’s control me for my loss but define me for who I am for overcoming them.?Each trial was one that most would stay down for and not continue, who pries themselves out of a car and walks three miles barefoot??I did I tell myself.?I look at my career path and it was neither a career or jobs; it was a passion to overcome difficult situations, assignments no one else wanted or could complete.?I was known for it at UPS and it followed me throughout each job.?Like Conan once he avenged his family, he could have quit but he went on and looked for the next challenge, a challenge not against anyone besides himself.?I realized long ago that yes, my life was bad, yes, I had many bad breaks and yes life sucks but the war was with myself and overcoming me always after something happened.?Even in my pursuits like powerlifting it was always challenging myself and what I could overcome.?Can I bench 500? ?Can I bench 450 with a torn tricep? Can I bench 405 again with a destroyed shoulder??Each question led to a battle with me and overcoming my own mind, trapped in the car I had already survived the crash and getting stuck halfway was me losing mentally and not physically.?To all these things I say again, NO ONE IS GOING TO SAVE YOU; YOU MUST SAVE YOURSELF!