I've been riding bikes since I was a child and have been traveling/commuting by bike for all of my adult life, so I never expected to ever get spooked away from riding.
Sadly, that's exactly what happened. I thought I might share my experience here as I work on getting over it and riding again.

A few summers back I was riding along the MUP with my wife and I was distracted for a moment, although I don't exactly recall by what since it all happened quite fast.
When I looked ahead again a pedestrian had stepped directly into my path and I had only a moment to deal with the situation.
I was able to swerve away and avoid a full-on collision, but I did end up clipping his arm and bailing fairly hard onto the asphalt.
He was OK because of the maneuver I made, I was the only one with any real injuries from the incident and they weren't terribly bad.
It would have been much worse for him and possibly myself as well had I not done a (relatively) controlled wipeout away from him.

This isn't the first time I've ever had an accident on a bike but it was the first time I'd ever hit someone, and even though he was alright, he might not have been which shook me up a lot.
It had also been many years since I'd taken a hard bounce on asphalt, so now being in my mid-thirties one thing became fairly clear - healing takes longer than it did in my twenties.
The whole thing seems like a fairly minor incident, I've certainly had worse happen in about 30 years of riding - this particular accident wasn't even bad enough to warrant a hospital trip, just a lot of road rash and deep bruising. For some reason though it really psyched me out.

This all happened near the end of the good-weather-for-riding season, so I didn't really ride much more than a handful of times the rest of that year.
Every time I did ride, that crash was always in the back of my mind and I was a much more timid cyclist.
I took it much slower, and going down hills had me riding the brakes instead of fully enjoying the free speed boost.
I found that I was more likely to walk to the grocery store or take a bus to places I normally would have ridden to.

Ironically, while walking to the store one day I was jogging through an intersection before the light changed and broke a small bone in my foot when I reached the curb on the opposite side.
I didn't realize it was actually broken (who breaks a bone crossing the street, right?) and continued normal activity for the most part thinking it was just a strain or sprain.
Naturally it got worse, and I eventually ended up in a cast for a few months while it healed and it took a year for the pain to really stop being a daily thing.

So I didn't really ride much that season either, except for the start of it and then not at all for the better part of the following summer while my foot recovered, it was painful to pedal.
Last Summer, one might expect an avid cyclist like myself to get back at it since I was fully healed, but I found myself very intimidated by riding for the first time in my life.
One of my bikes needed some simple adjustments and the other had been sitting for two summers waiting for me to finish rebuilding part of it.
I found I didn't want to work on my bikes, I didn't want to ride them and I was avoiding the whole situation as best I could.
I was making excuses to not ride, completely opposite of my normal behaviour.
Friends and family know me as "the bike guy" and they bring their rides over for me to fix and tune up all the time, which made the whole situation awkward for me because here I was trying to not even think of cycling all of a sudden.

My wife has missed me cycling as much as I used to with her and found herself riding less without me to go along with her.
So, here I am at the start of another riding season, I have a very sedentary job and haven't been getting the exercise that I normal would have from cycling.
My back hurts often and I've gained 10 lbs from the inactivity. I do walk a lot every day, but apparently that's not cutting it and my doctor has told me I should ride a bike to help with the back issues.

So I've fixed up my 10 speed Sekine again and bought a snazzy looking Nutcase helmet.
Previously I'd not been using a helmet but I thought it would help get my confidence back if I didn't have to worry as much about what might happen to my head should I have another accident.
For decades I have always relied on my reflexes to protect my head, but now the thought of crashing and cracking my skull is incredibly vivid and scary.
I can't help but think that it was more luck than skill which had kept me safe in the past, and I'm not as full of bravado that my luck won't run out one day.

It's been slow going, but I'm hoping if I can get myself back up and riding again at least a few times a week while my body re-adjusts to being active again I can regain my confidence.
It seems weird to think that something I've done nearly daily for most of my life could become a source of anxiety and even some shame - it's hard to have been "the bike guy" for so long and then suddenly rarely touch one.

I'm not sure if anyone here noticed my absence over the past few years, but this is why I suddenly had not been around the forum after being fairly active previously.
If you got this far, thanks for taking the time to read my story.
Hopefully I can keep my resolve to ride more this year and get back to being "the bike guy" that I used to be.