Lucky to be alive - literally.

I'll admit that I was going a little too fast when I headed into the curves on Columbia Parkway. I was going the speed limit, technically, but the roads were slick from rain that had just fallen. This was the first time that I had taken Columbia Parkway, so I didn't know my way around just yet. But I felt confident that I knew where I was, what I was doing when I went into the curve.

I felt the wheels slip underneath me. They gripped hard at the pavement, then slid away.

I felt my back end fishtail to the left. Then to the right, as I overcompensated. I headed for the cement median, then swerved back towards the 13-foot high cement wall that separated the car from the side of the hill. I fishtailed once... or was it twice? My car spun around me, facing oncoming traffic, turned all around.

Did I ever feel panicked? Did I ever feel scared? I'm not sure. It happened so fast, but so slowly at the same time. Did I scream? Shouldn't I know that?! I can't remember if I screamed.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I didn't scream. I was scared. I felt certain that I was about to die.

I'm not sure how my car came to a stop, two feet from the wall, at a 45 degree angle from it, strewn across two lanes and almost facing the wrong way on the street. I wasn't even aware that my foot was still on the brake. I'm not even sure if my hands were still on the wheel.

I reversed away from the wall, got back into my lane. Just as a truck came barrelling around the curve. It swerved into the other lane, missing me by inches. Five extra seconds, and he would have T-boned me.

The adrenaline came first, pumping like cocaine through my system. Then the hysteria. The shakes. The tears. The hyperventilation, the nausea, the lightheadness.

I don't remember that 20 seconds or so that I lost control of my car. I don't know how I managed to swerve and fishtail and 360 my way down 100 feet of empty highway, as the traffic on the other side of the median flew by.

Had there been another car on my side of the road... or just before me... or just behind me... and I would have hit them. A few less seconds of time, a slower reaction, non-anti-lock brakes and I would have slammed into the concrete wall - perhaps not just once. I very well could have died today.

Unlike a similar post that I put up recently, this was not a dream.