Post Traumatic Memories

It's so sad for me to think that today, my niece turns 18 and each year on this day,  I am reminded of a terrible incident that me and my young daughter had to go through at the hands of my ex-husband. I am going back to talk about it and hopefully release it, to purge it and hopefully move on from it. I got the news that my sister had delivered her 1st baby and so naturally, I was very excited to go see her and meet my 1st niece with her cousin, my almost 2 year old daughter. It was rare for us to go out on a weeknight in those days and on top of that it was snowing...a lot. My ex managed to slam down quite a few drinks before we left for the hospital. We didn't have far to go, and when we got there, he helped me into my manual wheelchair. At the time, I wasn't in the chair fulltime and appreciated when he could push me around. However, not when he was in drinking mode. He proceeded to start running while pushing me and my little daughter running behind us and I was sreaming out "don't run, STOP running!!!" sure enough, the parking lots hadn't been plowed and because the curb cutout wasn't visible, we slammed into it and I went flying out and landed on my forehead which instantly started bleeding profusely and I was yelling at him and my daughter was hysterical and crying at the site of the blood. Now that I revisit it, what a scene we must have been! Off to the ER for me...my Mom came down for my daughter, thank God and took care of her the rest of the night. I spent about 3 hours waiting to get my forehead stitched up. I was too embarrased to go up to see my little niece. If I hadn't of had blood all over my clothes and dried into my hair, maybe I would have gone up to meet her! There was always the issue of the leather jacket that he had given me for Christmas a month earlier. His mother tried so hard to get the blood stains out. I told her not to try too hard, becuase now the coat had baaad memories.
It's somewhat hard for me to go back and visit that time. I would just chalk up this kind of incident to that's life! because at this point in my life, I was already in survival mode. I would experience a bad situation and then stuff it back into my mind and prepare for the next challenge. To a certain extent, I still do this.
All this being said, I want to wish a Happy 18th Birthday to my niece who is a very kind and beautiful person.
Thanks all for being there! Colleen.