The Intuition Diaries, Episode 1: “Please, Let's Not Drive Today”
Welcome to the first installment of my new blog series, The Intuition Diaries. In this series, I aim to share stories that highlight moments in which listening to one's intuition proved to be a life-altering or potentially life-saving experience. I will kick things off with an early account of my own.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
Artist: agsandrew
It was February 1994. I was a freshman in college. I decided to travel to Minnesota to visit an old boyfriend who had recently transferred to a university west of Minneapolis (whom I will refer to here as "B"). We had had an on-again/off-again thing for a couple of years at this point, and we were swinging back into an "on" phase. Despite being poor, I had scrounged up enough cash to purchase a round-trip Greyhound bus ticket to the Twin Cities, where he would pick me up and take me back to school with him.
I don't remember much about the trip itself, to be honest. I recall hanging with B's friends over a late-night meal at a Happy Chef sort of establishment. Afterward, in the late hours of the night, we made a road trip to South Dakota to hop over the border and give me bragging rights that I'd been to yet another state. I remember we listened to The Jerky Boys every day. I also remember feeling like the time passed entirely too quickly, and that I wasn't very keen on returning home.
Finally, our last day together arrived. B needed to drive back home to Minneapolis to visit his family, and we had arranged for him to drop me back off at the Greyhound station to kickstart my solo return journey. I awoke with the usual sorrow I get on the last day of any trip, yet something else felt off. There was a weird, uneasy pit in my stomach, and it wasn't indigestion. Something was wrong, but I didn't know what.
After about an hour, while I was packing my suitcase, I began contemplating the upcoming day ahead, and the feeling of concern accelerated into dread. Quickly. I was flummoxed. It was illogical and made no sense. Trying to interpret this sensation, I tried telling myself I was feeling blue about parting from B and having to return to my own unhappy, lonely college existence. But something inside me wouldn't leave it alone; I knew there was more to this than I could pinpoint.
Not knowing what to do with this feeling, I tried to keep things light by attempting to sweet-talk B into extending our get-together for another day. I batted my eyes, I whispered and cooed in his ear- the usual tactics a young lady employs when she's hoping to win someone over. Despite tempting him, he held firm. He and his family had a scheduled timeline of events waiting for him. Logically I knew better than to try to subvert his family's plans. However, the feeling of dread was starting to affect my digestive system, my anxiety was climbing, and I felt like I was on the precipice of developing tremors. Something was wrong. Very, very, VERY wrong.
The feeling became almost overpowering. I still had no clue what this was. All I knew is I was emphatically against leaving B's campus. Every bone in my body wanted to stay exactly where we were until the next day.
After a couple more hours, I reduced myself to begging. By this point, I was frantic. I couldn't offer any solid reasons for my reactions. All I could do was plead shakingly: "Please. Can we not go? Not today? Can't we wait an extra day? Please. Let's not drive today. PLEASE."
At this point, B was understandably growing impatient with me and began taking a firm tone, informing me that we must get going and that I needed to accept it. That's when I started crying. I felt disgusted with myself, yet I couldn't stop weeping. All that pent-up fear and panic had nowhere to go except right out my eyeballs. Fed up with my emotional display, B grabbed our suitcases, forcing me to follow him and walk to his car. As I watched him load my bags into the trunk, I felt struck by the feeling I was now somehow "trapped," but how or by what, I had no idea.
It was a cold, crisp, sunny day. It was one of those upper-midwestern bright winter afternoons where you need both sunglasses and thermal wear. As far as the eye could see, the land was flat. The road was straighter than a roof-line. It hadn't snowed in a week, so the two-lane highway was pretty much dry. Cornfields and deep ditches flanked us in every direction. The countryside was vast, and the road was mostly empty. The drive was long and tedious, but B was wide awake and excited to go home. He blasted hyper-speed up-tempo music to make the monotonous journey more entertaining, while also hoping to snap me out of whatever funk had settled over me.
It didn't work.
I sat in the front passenger seat, nervous as an abandoned cat in a dark alleyway. I was wordless, terrified, hugging my knees, and still quietly weeping. The pit in my stomach had evolved into a massive rumbling knot, and I felt like vomiting. B probably assumed I was throwing a low-key passive-aggressive tantrum, but I wasn't. Still, I couldn't exactly explain what I was doing instead. So I remained quiet and wiped away my tears, continuing to question my behavior and starting to question my sanity.
About an hour later, we encountered our first fellow travelers. It was a slow-moving minivan with a small family, and we were stuck right behind them. Between B's high caffeine levels and excitement to come home, he swiftly pulled into the left lane to pass the minivan. It was a routine lane-passing; we easily cruised past them at about 65-70mph, and after clearing enough space, B began to merge back into the right lane.
And then, it happened.
We hit black ice.
Our car should have ended up like this. Somehow, it didn’t.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
Artist: Modella
B lost control of the vehicle. We immediately began to scream. Our car violently spun around, and we found ourselves driving backward in our original direction. Right in front of us was the family we had just passed. I was able to stare directly into the eyes of those young parents; the terror on their faces has stayed with me to this day. Then our car's momentum faltered, and we started spinning wildly once more. Alongside the highway were 15-20 foot steep trenches, and B did everything he could to keep us from careening into them while avoiding crashing into the minivan. Somehow, as if by magic, when our car finally did veer off the road, we ended up smoothly sliding backward down a small, safely-graded, one-lane pathway that gently descended into a field, and we came to a peaceful stop. Deep ditches surrounded us, and yet, we landed perfectly on that small farm's laneway. We never hit the minivan; they continued to travel down the highway after seeing we were safe. We were unharmed, and his car didn't even get a scratch.
We had been screaming our heads off, but now we found ourselves sitting in stupefied silence in the middle of this farm field. We were trembling, overflowing with adrenaline and shock. After a few moments, B looked at me, his eyes wide in bewilderment, and then he loudly shouted: "HOLY SH**!!!!!! YOU'RE F***ING PSYCHIC!!!!!" which caused us to break into hysteria-driven, full-throated, manic laughter.
Just like that, the feeling of dread dissipated in an instant. All that paralyzing fear? Gone. The knot in my stomach was replaced with a feeling of complete relief. It felt like 200 pounds were lifted right off me. Through my howling laughter, I managed to exclaim, "Okay! We're good now- let's keep going!" And so we did. We safely arrived in Minneapolis, hyper-alert, and super-energized for the remainder of the trip.
If I had gotten my way and we lingered that extra day on campus, would we have avoided this potential near-tragedy? Quite possibly. No one can say with certainty. All I know is I felt something was incredibly wrong several hours before, we were most fortunate to walk away unscathed, and I went home with a critical lesson in my back pocket:
"The next time you get such an urgent and unmistakable feeling of trepidation and foreboding, DO NOT IGNORE IT! Sure, you may appear foolish. You may feel insane. You may not be able to explain it. Who cares! All that ultimately matters is YOU JUST MIGHT REMAIN SAFE AND ALIVE BECAUSE OF IT."
Got a compelling story about your own intuition and how it saved the day? Want to share it on The Intuition Diaries? Send me a message and pitch me your story.
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