Hi Laura! I'm Karen. I write really long posts.
I'm also 36, got my first bike in February -- the white S40. I love that bike.
It sounds like you rode for a while and, overall, did pretty well. You were improving and getting more comfortable, and then you just made a newbie target-fixation mistake. Don't worry -- it happens. I'm sorry to hear it did so much damage -- I'm glad you're okay now.
I'm trying to think why your bike would have jumped forward. Maybe a combination of things: perhaps you went to squeeze the front brake and, when pulling back on the brake lever, rolled on the throttle and lost your grip on the brake lever? If that's the case, just practice stops a little more and re-gain a feel for them. In fact, practice stuff from the MSF class anyway, to get it ingrained in muscle memory. That way, you'll be able to do it correctly without even thinking about it.
Target fixation's a little trickier -- not looking at the thing you don't want to hit is really counterintuitive. What I find helps is, when I'm riding down the road and something catches my eye (say, a colorful mailbox or a road sign, anything I might be curious about but don't
need to look at), I'll find a point ahead in my lane past whatever I'm curious about, focus on riding the bike through that point, and see if I can ignore the thing I want to look at. I do it a lot when I'm out riding (I'd say almost every few minutes, sometimes) -- I don't know if it's helped me re-train my instincts, or if it just serves as a conscious reminder to look where I want to go, but I think it works. (A couple of days after I started doing that, I turned right and pulled into a gas station. Turns out someone was pulling out at the same time, and I was close to a head-on collision. I didn't even think -- I just turned my head, looked through a space to the right of the car, and the bike went there like it was laser-guided.)
The cool thing is, you thought about how the accident happened and you want to learn from it, rather than just panicking and selling the bike. So I don't know how much encouragement you need from anyone else -- I think you're going to ride again no matter what.
8)
(Of course, everyone here will be happy to encourage you anyway.
)