Lessons on LivingThat Only Dying Could Give

Written By Scarlett Heikkila

Photos by Lucy Belon

The summer before my senior year of high school, I should have been pronounced dead. I was driving home when another car emerged and hit me. I thought I had my life all figured out. I was going to become cheer captain, get into Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to study business, and spend a picture-perfect senior year with my best friends and boyfriend.

It was halfway through summer, when my boyfriend broke up with me, that I realized something was deeply wrong. Talking with my friends felt draining; every interaction was like a performance, a persona I would put on to mold myself into a person they would deem cool and popular. I was irrationally worried about being disliked or excluded. I couldn’t picture a worse fate, so I didn’t allow myself to explore new interests. Eventually, seeking validation from everyone in my life became my full-time job.

Life wasn’t sustainable. Thoughts of dying crept in, and I started questioning if life was even worth living. Everyone else seemed so happy, so likable, as if life came easy to them. Why didn’t I feel the same way? It was around that time that I had stopped wearing my seatbelt. Although I fantasized about death, I never thought it would get so close.

In mid-June, I survived a car crash I was told should have killed me. I had been driving home with my windows down and music all the way up. The streets were empty, not a person in sight. I felt like the only girl in the world.

As I was crossing a bridge that stretched over the freeway, a car suddenly shot out of the off-ramp and turned left directly into my path. I knew I had the green light, so why was he there? Should I swerve? Brace for impact? Had I told my parents I loved them lately? Was I ready to die?

I regained consciousness in the middle of the road, still sitting in my car as the horn blared, airbags hung deployed, and the smell of burnt rubber pierced my senses. The other car had spun out, and I had narrowly escaped the lane of oncoming traffic.

A man coming off the freeway pulled me out of my car. I was paralyzed with shock. He called the police and sat with me as I fought to come back to reality. Everything happened so fast: sirens, cops, my parents, firefighters pulling glass shards out of my arm, intense questioning, and confusion. The cops didn’t understand how I survived; they kept telling me how extremely lucky I was.

For weeks after the crash, life was a blur of insurance calls, sleepless nights, and horrible anxiety. I tried to move on quickly, attended cheer camp a week later, and went to baseball games as if nothing had happened, but there was an underlying anxiety every time I left my house.

During the sleepless nights that followed the crash, my racing thoughts typically centered around one question: Why. Why had I lived? Did I even deserve it? Hours of consideration led me to a dead end. I still don’t know why I lived, but I decided that second chances are rare, and I wasn’t going to waste mine.

Over the course of the next year or so, I became deeply passionate about life.

College applications rolled in, and instead of pursuing business, a safer degree, I decided to move 3,000 miles across the country and study Sports Communications here at Emerson. I finally stopped waiting for the perfect, predictable future and started making the most of the fragile life I had been given, because if I didn’t, then why was I still here? If I kept holding myself back, then I wasn’t truly living—and if I wasn’t meant to live, I wouldn’t have been given
another day.

So, if you take any life advice, take it from the girl who should have died. Don’t fear love, eat the donut you’re craving, water every passion (especially the ones you’re bad at), talk to that stranger, embrace growing pains, and most importantly—say yes! Say yes to the new, the uncomfortable, and the unfamiliar. Once you do, life becomes a whole lot better. YM