Spent the afternoon delving through my CD collection, trying to ground myself somehow. It's not something that happens often - this was the first time in this house, and I've been here three years - but it seemed necessary. It wasn't helping by my stereo giving up the ghost an hour in though.

It started with a sudden burning desire to listen to the CD that I used to listen to all the time in the months before the accident. I was tooling round in my little VW Polo, my first car in five years. It was quick and sturdy and lots of fun to drive. It had a sunroof and a good stereo system. Everyday, driving to and from work listening to Snow Patrol, very very loud and signing along. It's the last time I can remember being happy.

Not that I was without worries - I was living with friends and needed to find my own place, but I needed to find a permanent job to replace the temping job first. But I was happy. I was enjoying driving again after a long break, my knee had healed from the motorbike accident, the countryside was beautiful, the roads were good, the car was fun. I was good at the job I was doing and was constantly asked to stay permanently, I liked living with my friends, I got on really well with their kids. I'd completed two degreaser and done really well in both, I'd loved studying, but was confident I'd made the right choice in stopping, I was going out more, building a social life in a new town. Everything was good. Everything was possibility.

The flood of memories from listening to those songs was like a tidal wave. It's the first time I've been able to enjoy hearing them, instead of flinching at what i knew was to come next - all of it ending at 4.45pm on a bright sunny April day, three weeks after starting my dream job.

I listen to that album over and over, then I basically trawled through my CD collection, before finally landing up on what in my mind has always been the soundtrack to my abuse: the music I listened to endlessly when I was first having therapy. At the time, I was constantly remembering stuff, fighting through the flashbacks, and these two CDs were always there. One of them I found too hard when I put it on and I had to turn it off, but the other one -Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes - was OK.

It doesn't have the pull I might have expected, but it was good to hear it again; I probably haven't heard it in ten years. It's clearly Snow Patrol that's going to keep dragging me back. I still doubt I'll be able to listen to the album that was playing st the time of the accident though.

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