Driving in my hometown today, I noticed a badger coming off of the sidewalk. I had literally no time to get myself out of the way of this thing. 

Long story short: I swerved to avoid hitting a badger and still wound up hitting a badger.

Long story long: It was in front of my ex’s house. I haven’t mentioned him on my tumblr much specifically, but he’s the first person to have tied me up. There’s still a lot of hurt there. We really don’t talk, but we’re at a place where there’s no animosity. 

Long story longer: I sort of had a little bit of a panic attack over hitting this badger. I literally felt this thing under the wheel. I didn’t look back, but I am fairly sure I killed the badger. And, at that moment, I was fairly sure it was stuck in the wheel like those crazy hit-and-run victim cases you hear about.

And so I took my phone out and called him in a panic. He seemed kind of surprised to hear from me when I answered the phone and proceeded to start spewing nonsense about badgers and wheels and the tiny life that had perished under my car.

You have to understand, tumblr, I did animal rights advocacy for years. I swerved my car to try to avoid killing a badger. And now I was having a panic attack about it.

And so he came right outside and tried not to laugh too hard when I told him what was going on. He checked under my car for any badger remains, he made sure I was okay, he asked me how I was otherwise. It’s funny how he calmed me down, there were those vague remnants of how he used to act when he was dominating me. I’m not saying he was trying to dom me or get me back, just that the dynamic worked because, yeah, it worked. Tried and true.

“I have to admit,” he said, “when you called, I figured I was in trouble for something.” That had basically summed us up pretty well. I was the whistleblower, he was the troublemaker. 

I’m not sure why I’m posting about this. I guess I should say something cheesy about not forgetting the first person to dominate you, blah blah. But I guess also to say that there is so much of other people that you carry with you that you’ll always have some compassion for them.