In the middle of the strangeness of a book-tour—there being a limo driver to schlep you three hours to events where you sell twelve books; your flopsweating through five minutes on morning TV, where hosts haven’t read the book or worn pants to cover their legs under their cut-rate anchorman’s desks—in the middle of book-tour strangeness, you don’t expect to learn something heavy about yourself.

I write fiction. My first book was about Asian conjoined twins from the 18^th century, so you see just how close to home I’m comfortable being. Not that I have a thing against non-fiction—but I’ve been more focused on its imaginary friend. Maybe that’s my way of having avoided the more personal, the more keep-off-the-grass parts of my brain. But recently I tried staring directly at a subject I’ve been brave enough only to squint and mumble at for years:

I was in a car accident in high school; someone died.

I don’t know why I’ve been drawn to write about it now I’ve been a professional writer for eight years, and had three books before this one, and never dared go near the subject—but I’ve felt compelled to examine it now: the bombshell and the pain of it. That’s what writers do, I told myself (I hope not too pretentiously): We write about things to understand them. And so I did a piece for the IraGlass show This American Life.

I don’t want to get into the details of the accident now. (You can go here if you’re interested.) But I’ll say only that it was what the insurance companies deem a “no fault” accident, and the police call a “dart out”: when someone hurries into a looming car.

Anyway, I’ve started reading my This American Life piece about the accident at author events. I don’t know why.This secret that I’d been hiding for years, this lockbox that I’d only open to my very closest friends—I’ve started spilling it to rooms full of strangers.

I hope it’s not—and I don’t think it’s true—that I crave the sympathy of others. No, I'm pretty sure it’s not that; I actually feel gross whenever someone comes up to tell me how sorry they are for me, as if I’d used the accident to score pity points. But it must be something about the act of confession, public confession, the way people do it in AA meetings. I found I needed to do this. I know that sounds cheesy.

And this will sound cheesy, too, and self-congratulatory: But I think some people actually kind of needed to have heard it. I only say this because I’ve been flooded with e-mails—just two days after the piece aired—from people who went through similar things, or people who are just dealing with grief of any kind.

The researchers at This American Life found an article that explained how, in the U.S., some 2,000 people a year live through a “dart out” accident—and that those drivers are likely to feel post-traumatic stress syndrome. More likely, in fact, than are people who are actually at fault in a fatal accident. Why? It’s hard to learn so viscerally that the universe is managed with indifference, by chance.

In my last post, I wrote that becoming a writer makes you most yourself when by yourself. I take it back.