Accidents Happen.

I haven't mentioned, but Ava and I were in a car accident a week and a half ago. We were heading down a busy road, and a woman made an illegal left-hand turn into oncoming traffic and I was, well, oncoming. I did everything in my power to stop, but there was a moment of complete clarity where I knew, without a doubt, there was absolutely no way I could prevent my car from crashing full-on into hers. It was truly terrible.

Neither of us are hurt, thank God, but don't even get me started on the fallout from the accident. The woman, who says she has a "witness" that can attest to her lies about having been stopped in my lane (um, what would that even matter - she was still sitting in oncoming traffic illegally!!!!!!) despite having only been on the scene for a matter of minutes before having to leave while I waited three hours for the police who never showed (!!!!!!!), so basically the whole matter of getting my car fixed is still on hold while they debate whether or not I was partially responsible. SUCH NONSENSE. Ugh.

Worse than that, however, has been the resulting effect on my driving. Trust me, I've always been careful with Ava in the car, but now I'm hyper vigilant about everything going on around me on the road. So much so, in fact, that I've started to have minor panic attacks in the car sometimes. If a car gets anywhere near too close to me, I'm basically seeing my own death in my head. Anytime a car is in the turn lane and could potentially attempt to turn in front of my car, I'm sweating and breathless praying that they don't. I haven't seen anyone about it, mainly because I know this type of thing can be common after accidents and ours is being particularly dragged out due to the lying b$%&@ woman who was involved in my accident, but still - it's starting to really bum me out!

Any suggestions/experience with this type of thing?