Monday afternoon I drove my boyfriend and myself home from UCF. He wanted to get a haircut on our way back and we were going to make turkey burgers for dinner. I pulled up to a red light to turn left and while waiting, I saw a man driving in his car alive one second, and then unconscious in the middle of an intersection after a police officer pulled him out of his car to perform CPR minutes later. The driver side door was ripped off when a larger van t-boned his car. The EMT's arrived maybe five minutes later, but it felt so much longer while watching this stranger's belly expand like a helium balloon over and over on the concrete.

The woman that was stopped at the light next to us was the first to jump out of her car to check on him right after his car spun out and stopped. She asked the police officers if he was going to be okay, and one of them shrugged. "Last time I checked they were doing all they could." That means no.

This was a tragedy. At first glance, right before the cars collided, it looked like they would just miss each other. But neither of them slowed down, and the absence of tires screeching was disheartening.

One of the witnesses was younger and called her dad, who came sprinting to the scene. Apparently, they lived down the street. The woman that was at the light next to us said she didn't see what happened, so the police told her she could leave, but she refused, even though she also mentioned that it was her husband's birthday and she "couldn't believe they are taking so long to question us."

Aaron and I just waited and listened to what the officers instructed of us. This was a tragedy, but it wasn't our tragedy. Every half hour or so a state trooper or investigator would apologize again for the inconvenience, but all I could think was how our situation paled in comparison to the victim's family, who might have not even heard what happened yet. Or even the man that was able to walk out of his van, who now must live with the consequences that he killed someone. No, we were not inconvenienced. It could have been us, but we were only bystanders.

When horrible things happen, it's human nature to attach ourselves to the event and indirectly say "this is about me." Every other witness to the accident was concerned about how their day was affected, how they will have to live with seeing someone die for the rest of their lives, how they are now traumatized. That's all true and valid, but the whole time I was thinking about who this man's family was and how they are going to have to live without him. The fragility of time and how he was breathing in one moment and gone the next is not about me.

Someone posted on Facebook about the accident and how they drove by a severe crash. They wrote that they saw "Jesus in the clouds" and prayed for his recovery. I understand the good intention, but it's another example of how we want to interject ourselves into something so horrible. All for a Facebook status and "likes" and attention.

Our lives are minuscule. What happened on August 27^th probably happened a dozen times over in every state. Our officers see this happen every single day. While what happened was a reminder to me to drive safely and has made me nervous to cross busy intersections, it was also a reminder that turning around any event to make it about myself hinders the officers' jobs and disregards the victim. The woman that insisted on staying interrupted every direction given to us. The girl's dad that ran to console her yelled at the police for making her stay as a witness. The woman behind us worried about the traffic she'll hit on the way home. I was lucky enough to go another day without receiving a phone call that a family member was in the hospital. I was lucky enough to go home.