Now You’re Gone
CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSING MISCARRIAGE
For some bizarre reason, I found myself writing about an Iranian woman called Aylar Lie (don’t ask) and during my research of the woman, I realised she was the same woman who’d appeared in a number of Basshunter music videos. (She was apparently banned from entering Iran because of a porn career, but we’ll just leave that where it is because it’s ridiculous how women are still so heavily restricted.)
Instantly, my mind was drawn back to a time when Now You’re Gone was playing everywhere. It was on the radio, on my iPod, everywhere. It was one of those songs that reminds me of a big chunk of time of my life, primarily with Bestie, but Basshunter songs, as a whole, bring back some wonderful and occasionally sad memories for me.
And now I shall talk about them.
Now You’re Gone reminds me specifically of a time Bestie and I once had a car crash. It wasn’t his fault, the other driver was travelling far too fast along country roads. The other driver had also almost driven my mother and her boyfriend off the road right in front of us, so how the dozy bitch tried to say it was our fault (or rather, Bestie’s fault), I don’t know.
We were on our way to a charity run. Bestie’s grandmother had very recently passed away after a very long battle with cancer, and I figured going for a nice little run and earning some money for charity was a worthwhile way of spending my weekend. It was on our way to the run that it happened — the car crash — and fuck me, it was terrifying.
The crash itself seemed to happen in slow motion, that Basshunter song playing in the background. I could see her heading right for the front of our car, in her car, and I knew the crunch was going to happen. It felt like it took a lifetime to arrive, but when it did, it hit with some serious force. The entire rear end of our car was flung high up in the air, shunted forward by the impact, and the front of the car was so fucked when we returned to earth with an almighty bump, I couldn’t open my door at all. It panicked me. I had a panic attack. A wonderful man from a driving school helped me, talking to me through the window, calming me down, telling me how and when to breathe, talking me through the process as he battled to open the door. He got there, in the end, tugging it open amid earth-shattering sounds of crunched-up metal.
Bestie had legged it out the car, his door opening just fine. I had a water bottle in my hand when the bump happened, and when the cold water splashed right across his face as we impacted the other car, he assumed it was my blood and totally freaked out. His first reaction was to run, which I don’t think either of us ever forgot about. That was a weird moment for us both. He was always my protector, so to see him freaked out to the point where he felt his only option was to leg it … well, that didn’t sit well.
He just ran.
He opened the car door and he ran.
I can’t remember where, or what really happened, but I knew I was left in that car by myself — and that was the worst thing of all.
Right before we got to the T-junction where the crash happened, I’d unclipped my seatbelt. I was wearing some fairy wings along with some stupid bobble headband thing and they were pissing me off. I couldn’t sit back comfortably in the seat, so I took my seatbelt off to remove the costume. It was only about 5 seconds after I’d clicked my seatbelt into place again that we had the crash .. and that took a bit of calming down from. Months, in fact.
Imagine if I hadn’t put my seatbelt back on right at that very moment?
I would have been FLUNG from that car, right through the windscreen. It was a complete write-off. The entire front half of it was crumpled up, almost like an accordion, to the point where my door was crumpled too. She hit Bestie’s side of the car (he was driving, obviously), yet my door was the one that wouldn’t open. Go figure.
I came out of it the worst-off too, although I do appreciate that things could have been a shit-ton worse. The seatbelt had tugged against me so hard, I had a nasty friction burn – an outline of the damn thing across my chest and stomach. My knee hit the dashboard, leaving it throbbing with pain and all sorts of weird and wonderful colours. I decided not to go to the hospital. I felt like I had to do that run — I had to finish it. I’d raised money for charity after all, and Bestie’s grandmother had just died. Her face was emblazoned all over the back of my t-shirt … It would have felt like I’d let her down if I didn’t run the race. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but I had all the respect in the world for the woman. I loved her like she was my own grandmother. She took me in like I was her granddaughter too.
I popped to the scummy portaloo before starting the race and I realised I had started bleeding ‘down there’. I brushed it to one side, requesting a tampon from my mother and carrying on with the race. I did the whole thing; I finished it, and I even collected a few extra sponsors at the end too. Some spectators had realised *I* was the girl in the car crash and offered to donate extra money because of my bravery, and because I’d carried on running after they’d seen the “horrific” state that the car had been left in.
The bruises faded away, of course, and the throbbing in my knee went down. The bleeding didn’t stop, though. A few weeks after the crash, I found myself in Deutschland again, back with the Hubby that I kept making-up and breaking-up from. We’d had a fight before he left for work one evening, ending the way so many of our fights did — with him getting too hands-on and me ending up with bruises. It was ‘out of hours’ and the doctor’s surgery would be shut, but my pain and bleeding were getting worse, much worse. It was not going away. It hadn’t gone away since the car crash.
After passing some pretty horrific-looking blood clots that definitely didn’t look like a normal period situation, I decided to call him home from work. He did, after some arguing about how unreasonable and overdramatic I was being, and took me to the hospital. For hours I waited while Deutsch medical professionals said things around me that I didn’t understand, probing me with instruments that I’d never seen before. I had internals and scans, was poked and prodded, had a lot of blood taken … It seemed like they were doing every medical test I’d ever heard of. They sent me away with some pills the same day, plus a letter for my doctor.
It was only after I’d been to see my doctor, a few days later, that I learned of my miscarriage. The little brown tablet they’d given me had been to encourage natural spasms of my uterus and cervix, designed to “flush out” anything that was left in there. The other tablets were painkillers, sadly only designed to numb the physical pain, not the emotional aching.
To be honest, I was numb for a while. Confused. Unsure of how to react. I wasn’t aware that I was pregnant in the first place, so to find out from my doctor, a couple of days after I’d apparently miscarried (the only available appointment to translate my notes and follow-up), was pretty fucking horrifying. It was a blessing in disguise, something I knew deep down at the time, but it was still fucking horrifying. The Hubby mourned while I failed to come up with any emotions at all. I didn’t cry. I couldn’t cry. Once I’d gotten over how scary the hospital was, with the language barrier and all the stuff I didn’t understand, I kinda just went back to being okay again. I wasn’t upset about losing a baby, because I wasn’t even aware there was a baby to start with. Plus, I was at a time in my life where I was so sure I didn’t want a baby, so I think my first reaction would have been to have a termination. The Hubby and I were hardly in a place where we could bring up a small person together. We could barely survive five minutes in the same room as each other at times.
Now you’re gone
I realised my love for you was strong
And I miss you here now you’re gone
I don’t know if the car crash and the miscarriage have anything to do with each other. It was a few weeks between them, with on/off bleeding. I just know that when I hear Now You’re Gone, it reminds me so much of that time that my eyes start prickling with tears. Just like when I wrote about that girl who starred in the video.
It’s funny how one song can just grab you like that, huh?
