On cancer and cars.

(And also worry and goals, but those aren't as nice of an alliteration.) 

Hi friends. Remember how back in January I said that I didn’t make resolutions, I make goals, because goals are something that can always be added to, or changed? Here I am, proving my own point, because I’m going to add a goal right here, right now. And that goal is this: By February of 2018, I want to be a licensed driver. That’s right, you heard (or rather, read) correctly – I, at the ripe old age of twenty-two, have still yet to get a driver’s license. Sorry, I’m not all that sorry.

            Here’s the thing – I wasn’t going to make this post. Mainly because this is a thing I am a little embarrassed about. (More than a little – I am a lot embarrassed about it.) I know it’s ridiculous – I’ve been old enough to drive for six years now, and the closest I’ve gotten to a license is a permit (now expired) and a couple of driving lessons with my friend K, who seems to constantly be helping me better myself. It’s gotten to the point now where I know when I tell people I don’t drive, they immediately assume it’s because I got my license taken away, which… no. It’s honestly a little insulting, the question of, “Is that a choice, or…?” but to be fair, I do bring it upon myself a bit.

            So yeah. I wasn’t going to make this post, because I’m embarrassed, and it honestly involves more personal introspection than I was certain I was comfortable with sharing on the Internet, where everything lives forever. But we’re reading this book about fear and anxiety with the fourth graders, and talking about our anxieties and how to deal with them, and that’s honestly what made me feel like I had to post this. Because if I’m being completely honest, the reason I haven’t gotten my license yet is simple: I am terrified of being behind the wheel of a car.

            If you had asked me about why I didn’t have my license as little as a year ago, these are the reasons I would have given you:

1.     I went to a charter school – Driver’s Ed wasn’t offered during the school day like it is at the regional high school, so I would have had to attend at night, which felt like a big deal for sixteen year old me.

2.     I skipped a grade, so I was younger than all of my classmates. The people I knew who would be going to Driver’s Ed at the same time all went to the other high school, so they wouldn’t be there at night with me, and all of the kids who I was in classes with every day had already gone through it the year before. Again, felt like a big deal for sixteen year old me.

3.     I didn’t have much of a social life in high school (read: I didn’t have one at all.) There was nowhere I wanted to go that I couldn’t get my mom to drive me.

4.     Driver’s Ed was expensive. There were other things I wanted to spend my money on, namely a new computer and books. (Spoiler alert: there’s always other stuff I want to spend money on rather than what I should be spending money on. Or not spending money.)

5.     Multiple doctors had told me that with the insane cocktail of painkillers I was on to deal with some really fun health complications, there was no way I was going to be allowed behind the wheel of the car. By the time I was off all of them, not having a driver’s license was my way of life.

Those reasons seemed more than valid to me, so I never really thought past them. Then one day this summer, a new friend asked me why I didn’t have my license, and, knowing my past, asked me if it was because of all of the crazy health-related things in my life. And CLICK. Some gear I wasn’t aware was malfunctioning started working at full speed again and I knew that while all the reasons listed above were a good cover story, the true reason was that I was scared out of my mind of being behind the wheel of a car. I think for me, what it comes down to is that there were a lot of things that happened in my life that were life-altering, life-threatening. And I wasn’t in control of any of them, but they still happened. Why would I want to put myself in charge of something that could kill me? Why would I want to make the decision to get behind the wheel of a car, knowing that car accidents are things that happen? It feels stupid, to choose to do something that I know could end with me seriously injured or dead, when those are things that I already had to resign myself with many times before, and it WASN’T due to a decision I had made.

Logically, I know this is ridiculous. Logically, I know that literally everything you do could result in something bad happening. That’s just how the world works. The odds of something bad happening when you’re doing every day things are slim to none, and I can do other things with no problem. Hell, I have no problem being the passenger in a car. It’s just the thought of being in control of it that freaks me out, I think. I’m not sure.

Another friend of mine tells me that as soon as I actually am behind the wheel of a car, I won’t feel like this. She’s probably right – I have driven before, and I wasn’t having a panic attack the whole time, or unable to do it. The problem is that this discovery I’ve made of being scared is still sort of new. So when my brain tries to “redirect” me, telling me that I’m too busy, or have something else I have to do, or literally any other excuse it can come up with before the acceptable amount of time for a response to the question of “do you want to go driving this weekend?” has passed, I don’t have the skills to be able to recognize that avoidance and avoid it. (Avoiding avoidance, my mother would be so disappointed in my lack of vocabulary here.) So I’m working on being able to work on this fear. I have a lot of people in my corner (hi, people. Thanks for coming.) who are willing to help me, and a few people in my corner who are willing to kick my ass into gear until I have a driver’s license (you know who you are. Love you too.).

Woof. Okay. This was a long blog post, and a hard one to write. Seriously – it’s taken me over a week to write because I’ve been avoiding this topic like it’s a bill collector. Because once it’s out there, it’s real, and it’s something I have to work on. And it’s going to be hard. But here’s the deal – when it comes down to it, having a license is part of being a functioning adult in today’s society. And I need to be that. (A functioning adult, that is.) Plus, practice what you preach – I can’t tell a bunch of ten year olds to be bigger and better than their worry and not take the steps to be bigger and better than mine. To be fair, I have a lot of other worries to tackle that are quite a bit larger than just not having a driver’s license. But this is a good start.

Alright friends. Until next time. Love you, mean it, bye.