n CHAPEL TALK
“GOOD THINGS ARE ALWAYS ON THE WAY” In a Chapel talk, Addie McElveen ’21 reflected on an accident that changed her life — and who she is.
T
he thing about trauma is you either can recall everything that happened or nothing. I can remember everything. I remember the strong current in the water while I sat on my surfboard, and the confidence I felt paddling toward my boat, like I had done countless times in my life. I remember seeing my friend Chloe standing at the back of the boat, ready to switch positions with me in the water. But what I remember most vividly is the look of complete disbelief on my dad’s face when he pulled me out of the water. While I lay on my back screaming, “Help me, someone help me,” my dad yelled for help from other boaters. Chloe held my leg together with a towel, and I looked up to see her bawling. As my brother called 911, I stared up at the sky. It was peaceful, yet everything else was not. As I looked at the sky, I prayed that I would make it through this and thanked God for the incredible life I had lived so far. The adrenaline made me unable to feel pain until I was in the ambulance. I did not cry until I saw my mom in the emergency room.
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When I was growing up in South Carolina, we were always around the water, and being out on the boat was just a thing that nearly every kid did. I learned to wakeboard when I was 6 years old, and one of my fondest summer memories was riding with my friends on a tube towed by the boat, getting thrown around. Though we were warned to stay away from the propeller, it seemed unthinkable that we could be injured by one. Prior to the moment the boat propeller hit my left leg, I never really believed anything like this would happen to me. The physical healing of my leg was a very lengthy process, and I’ve endured 12 surgeries, including one just a year ago. But the hardest part was healing from injuries you couldn’t see, like the severe PTSD that came along with my traumatic accident. Many nights were spent sleepless, or I would awake in a manic state due to nightmares about the accident or some other dramatic events, such as falling off of a cliff or saving my family from a shooter. When I woke up, I would believe I was in the hospital because of the events in the nightmare. At first, I could not wrap my head around my injury and how it was changing my life. Most of my
