Christmas Day of 2014 goes down in history as one of the scariest days of my life. I remember it was raining out; I had just pulled out of the gas station. I filled my car, got a drink of water and headed out on the road. The next thing I know, my ears are ringing and I’m next to a rock wall. I looked around to see that nobody else was involved, thank God. But I don’t remember much from that day, just bits and pieces. All I know is I crashed and totaled, my first car after I hydroplaned in the pouring rain.

Everyone says that it’s just a car. A car can be replaced, you can’t. I got that speech easily 30 times within an hour. Yes, I was physically OK. A few minor bumps and bruises. There were a couple ribs that hurt, but I didn’t break any bones. So I was fine, right?

Wrong.

The very next day, I spent 13 hours in a car. I didn’t dare sit in the front seat, even though I had terrible motion sickness. I remember over the next few days having really bad nightmares at first, waking up sweating. I heard screeching of tires and I seized my body up. There were times where I just cried out of nowhere. I was not myself, I was terrified, I was upset and I was very tired, because of the lack of sleep I was experiencing.

I went through the motions of my day. Barely able to move from how sore I was, but I still tried to make the most of my next week or two during my vacation. Inside, I was a very different person. I was scared of everything around me. I didn’t want to be around people. All I wanted was my car back and all I wanted was to not see the world in a fog. I wanted to stop feeling like I had to hold back the massive amounts of tears that fell down my face every night before bed. People often will never see this side of a crash. They ask if you’re going to fix your car, if you got checked out, if your parents are mad. But this is the side that nobody talks about; this is the side that I refused to talk about.

Until now.

And in case you’re wondering, yes my parents were mad — actually my dad was furious. But I was alive, so that’s all they cared about.

I still have times where the nightmares come back. There are times where driving now I have to pull off to the side of the road if I drive by a car crash. To be completely honest, I shouldn’t be alive. I was going 65 miles an hour and crashed into a rock wall. The pictures of my old car are still on my phone and sometimes when I look through my album, I see them. They make me cringe to look at sometimes.

There is nothing that compares to crashing a car. There is nothing that compares to the guilt and the sadness you feel after. Sometimes the fear that accompanies the devastation can be debilitating — I had no desire to be in a car afterwards. I did it anyways, but I definitely did not want to. But to all the people that have gone through this, you’re not alone. It’s okay to be sad, it’s OK to cry, it’s okay to be scared, and it’s OK to not be OK for a while. Most importantly, it’s OK to need help to get through it.

To all the people from that day that helped me, I still want to say thank you. Without you, I wouldn’t be where I am now. Without you, I wouldn’t have realized that sometimes needing a little extra help isn't a bad thing at all.

I don't think I'll ever be the same person as I was before the crash, but all I know is I'm so lucky to be here to tell about it now. I may have lost my first car, but thanks to the crash, I've gained so much strength through the wreckage. And everyday I am so thankful for that.