Sunday night I woke around 3 am due to a nightmare. I do not remember the actual dream content. After waking, I found myself focused on the the night of the accident and the fact that any amount of delay, or change in event timing, and the accident likely would not have occurred. If I had delayed in finishing breakfast. If I had been slow to put on my winter boots. If I had decided to go upstairs one last time. If I had fumbled with the exterior lock and dropped my keys in the snow. If I had let the car warm for another 30 seconds before departing. If the woman at the corner had not started the walk signal.

There is a 60 second delay between the time a car arrives at the corner and the start of a traffic light change sequence. With winter snow accumulation there were times when the signal never triggered. On these occasions, I would get out of the car and walk over to the pedestrian push button to manually trigger the light sequence. On the night of the accident, the unknown pedestrian started the sequence so the lights were already in count-down mode when I arrived. If she had not been present, I would have endured a forced one minute wait and the vehicle that ended up rear-ending me would likely have passed through the intersection well before I entered the roadway.

There are a thousand possible permutations and possible “What if?” alternate versions of history. I was up for several hours and unable to shake these thoughts from my mind. Today, I have been struck by something similar. This time it is a sense of being overwhelmed by all of the things I need to do to recover any semblance of my former self.

My immediate impulse is to leave the house for a walk. This will push everything else out of mind. I am a man on a hamster wheel, focusing all of my time and energy on immediate actions in the present in order to dispel any awareness of the larger problems I am unable to solve.