The "eternity" of slow-motion falling in a car plunging 40 feet off the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

What it felt like for the 22-year-old woman, Morgan Lake (whose name is nicely aquatic.) Her car was struck twice, and the second hit "propelled it upward 3½ feet to the top of the concrete Jersey wall."

The car straddled the wall for a time... then...  it tipped over, and she was falling for what “felt like eternity.” It seemed almost to be happening in slow motion, Lake said. The drop was estimated to have been 40 feet or more. Then the car hit the water, its windshield and the driver’s side window shattered.

The car filled with water, Lake said, and she “felt I was going to die.” She said she actually “started to drown.” But then, she said in a telephone interview late Sunday, “I got myself together,” and refused to drown. She told herself that she could save her own life, and she did.

It took an "eternity" to fall, and then this drowning process was also time-consuming. I'm picturing her sitting there, thinking okay, here I am drowning, I have to accept this. Then: This is getting dull, waiting for the end. What else is there to do here?

“I went from panic to calm,” she said. She proceeded in steps, first unbuckling her seat belt, then grabbing the window and getting out of the car.

She said it seemed to take a long time to reach the surface. 

Again: The long time line.

She gasped for air as many as five times. She looked around and...

There is time to observe and collect your thoughts.

... began to swim.

There is always more time. You might as well see it that way, like Morgan Lake, who survived. At some point, it won't be true, and you will disappear along with all the rules for living you've kept in your head.