When your whole world (literally) comes crashing down.

It’s been a month of hell. I’m writing this post because at two weeks in at 3am when I searched ‘a car crashed into my house’, I was hoping to find support or understanding or I don’t know, a lanyard I could wear around my neck telling people I needed space. But I didn’t. So now that I’m ready, let me be your lanyard.

Click here to play the soundtrack for this post whilst reading (if you’re dramatic and theatrical like me)

We’re going to start from the very beginning. But I am also going to make this a series so that we can hold hands together through what might be one of the most niche experiences you can go through as a homeowner and a human. We are a rare breed, and those of us who survived have a duty to help each other. (Or at least that’s what I’m going to tell myself because I need purpose and a sense of control right now).

*This is going to be a longggg story, but if insurance HAD paid for therapy, this is probably what a therapist would tell me to do so let’s just roll with it, mmk? Feel free to do your own version in the comments*

It was 7:57pm on your normal Monday evening. I was leaning against the windowsill in my living room, which was currently being used as ‘ice pack holder’ for my hypermobile and hyperpainful wrists. This was a fairly normal occurrence in our household, so when my husband walked in and stood next to me to tell me about his day, neither of us blinked an eye at my strange composition. The blinds were shut . My blackcurrant squash sat peacefully half full by my side.

We live(d) (lol) at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, which actually meant that there wasn’t even any road outside of our house, just lawn and two parking spaces. So you can imagine our surprise/shock/horror when we hear a loud screech of tyres. It sounded close. In that split second, we stare at each other, frozen. It is followed by the unmistakable sound of car hitting car. The familiar smush of metal that sounds like a building-sized can of coke being squashed in someone’s hand. We continue to stare at each other, like fucking deer, as if one of us will at some point explain the strange happenings of ‘the outside’.

But there wasn’t time. In a moment that would be repeated in my head 55,672 times afterwards, an enormous BANG echoes through our skulls as the ground shakes and the house falls apart around us. We didn’t notice the plasterboard in our hair and on our clothes. We didn’t notice the pipes pushing through the wall, seeping gas into the house. We didn’t notice that the floor had folded and seized, and in parts, disappeared entirely.

Miraculously, the window holds, and my shaking hands rip apart the blinds as my husband tries and fails to get out of our front door. We didn’t notice that the wall had caved it shut. From my viewpoint, I see a child, screaming, in the lap of a man, stunned, in a car wedged sideways against our house.

A car crashed into my house.

We clamber out the back of the house and get round to the front, wedged in by a squashed car and the man that caused it all. In the minutes that follow I see a side to myself I think I’ve always wanted to see. Meek and timid and ‘sorry’ and ‘yes sir’ evaporated, as I threw expletives like knives in quite possibly one of the best non-scripted performances of my life. In survival mode ‘making an incredibly evocative speech’ is usually parked in the back along with ‘eating’ and ‘sleeping’. But I’m a Virgo Mercury. I said everything I needed to say to him even when I didn’t really consciously know that any of it had happened yet.

He could have killed us. He could have killed his child. He could have killed our child. The house was going to have to be rebuilt. We were going to be homeless. He’d ruined our lives by being a complete and utter fucking idiot and I was never going to forgive him and sorry would never be enough.

Neighbours had gathered as I performed. My husband stood stunned. Calm. Weirdly calm. I yelled to him to take as many pictures as he could (he took one). We didn’t notice that my car had also been totalled.

At one point, with ten of us now gathered around the car squashed against my house, myself stuck on the other side and my husband having climbed his way over it, wank man says “well you didn’t have a camera!“.

Thankfully, sanity prevailed and a neighbour took over the expletives performance as I bowed and ended scene with ‘I’M CALLING THE POLICE‘.

It feel insane to me now, but in that moment I thought that I was being ‘too much’ for calling the police. I’d been whipped into submission from a young age, and ‘calling for help’ in any form still felt like a cardinal sin.

It took twenty minutes for the police to arrive, and in that time, I realised we probably weren’t going to be able to stay in the house (the ‘probably’ absolutely kills me now when I go to visit and more of the wall has fallen apart. BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE A BURDEN lmao). I started packing. My brain said ‘just pack for one night, everything else can be sorted tomorrow‘. But my body packed 15 pairs of knickers and one t-shirt. Three 5kg bags of dog food and the entire contents of the baby’s chest of drawers. And a fucking lamp.

When the police arrived, shit got even more serious. The pompous teenager that had been allocated to our ‘boring case’ soon realised that things were worse than they looked, and he was about to run his first full incident.

“You were right, it is a gas pipe” he said, and called on his radio for back up. “Grab everything and run. Get the baby out!“.

I struggle with authority at the best of times, and probably replied with “Alright alright I’m just packing“.

“YOU NEED TO GET OUT NOW! GET THE BABY! RUN!”

At this point, the baby (who had miraculously slept through the entire trauma??) starts screaming, and I’m fucking furious that the police-tween had to shout like that. I scooped him up and we were escorted/pushed out through the back. It took several policemen to help us all climb over the car still wedged tightly into what an hour ago had been our home.

“Right, I’ve just got to get the dog, she was just behind us” I said, as my parents had arrived so were able to take the baby.

“No, you can’t go back in there” police tween said.

I saw red. She was just with us, but they’d shut the back gate on her. She IS my baby. She IS my world. Naturally, I became completely and utterly hysterical, and they physically had to hold me back as I wrestled them to get to her.

I hadn’t noticed that there were now 6 police cars on scene, and the inspector came over to find out what was going on. He agreed to get our dog and she joined the baby in my parents car.

Fire engines and paramedics and gas teams arrived, police were banging on doors as two streets were evacuated for fear the house was going to blow itself up. I was hyperventilating on a tarmac corner wailing through sobs.

Our house had been sold, but not exchanged. Not anymore. I was going to lose my job as a foster carer. My home had gone. All my belongings. I was about to endure months of insurance bullshit. My car, my beautiful, one-in-a-million car, totalled. We could have died. We almost died. A foot either way and any one of us could have died. Was I dead? Was this real? A car crashed into my house. But did it?

I proceed to spend the next four hours fending off ‘at least’s’ from the local village idiots. “At least no one died“. “At least no one is hurt“. “At least you had insurance.” “It could have been worse“.

As the ever-wise Brené Brown says, “Rarely, if ever, does an empathic response begin with ‘At Least’“. In fact, you have my permission, no, my instruction, to share this video with every village idiot in your life who is currently giving you this treatment.

I didn’t need ‘At least’s‘. I needed ‘I’m so fucking sorry this has happened to you. This is enormous. How you are feeling is completely valid. This is awful. And we are standing with you.’

As Brené says: “The truth is, rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.”

(And I can bet you that there will be people reading this post where there has been death, and loss, and physical injury, who are also getting ‘at leasts‘. People are dumb and I am so so sorry.)

Anyway, after fifteen painful attempts at getting this far with writing my story, my fantasy therapist that I can’t afford would be proud of me. There is a huge amount more I want to add. I’m going to talk you through what happened after a car crashed into my house, what you should do next, what not to fucking do next (ahem*cough cough*me) and how to move through the trauma of a car crashing into your damn house because there is literally no guidebook to this shit. I’ll link them somewhere below when they’re ready. (When I’m ready… ha).

And honestly? However you are feeling right now IS valid. You HAVE been through a trauma. The world is going to expect you to get over it in a few days and they’re all going to carry on as normal, and you’ll look at them and think ‘How the fuck can they be happy right now? How can they be laughing and joking? My whole world just collapsed?‘. Trust me buddy, I get it. I really do. None of this is normal or okay and right now it probably feels like life will never be right again.

I hear you. And whilst I have no quick fix or explanation as to why this happened to you, I am going to keep writing until it helps someone, somewhere.

You do not have to go through this alone.

Future link: A Car Crashed Into My House, THE SERIES