It’s 9 A.M. on a Saturday morning, the year was 2005 and I had just turned 17 a few weeks ago. Ah, the good ol’ days when I was young, free-spirited, and I didn’t have a care in the world!
Anyway, back to the story. So the way the classes worked was this, students first attended the lecture and then were each split into groups of four and then were all assigned a driving instructor and a car. I was in a group with my twin sister, this girl named Elizabeth (she was really nice and we clicked pretty easily), and a guy named Paul (I think). Don’t ask me the name of the instructor because I honestly could not tell you even if my life depended on it.
Anywho, after we attended the lecture, I felt this overwhelming fear of entering the car. I’ve driven a few times before but in my mother’s car, and I got pretty used to it. The issue with me is, I always fear trying something new, even if its not new. Sometime even going to a friends house that I’ve been to a million times can cause me to feel anxiety. I’ve never had really bad panic attacks until that day at driver’s ed.
My body was shaking, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I had to sit down to try to calm down, I didn’t know what to do. I just kept playing out the worst case scenarios in my head on what would happen when I get behind the wheel. All of a sudden I start rubbing my thighs up and down to try to get a breath in. Nothing worked. Then I got the sudden urge to itch? Everywhere! Like, legit, everywhere! I started panting, and rocking my body nervously back and forth. What felt like an hour, only ended up being 10 minutes. I calm down, took a deep breath, and noticed my arms. They were all spotty. Apparently, whilst panicking, I broke out. I thought I had gotten sick and was about to break out in panic mode again, but then I thought maybe I could use this to not drive!
Yeah. I wish. It didn’t work, my instructor ended up putting me as the first person to drive that day. Putz.
Have you ever experienced anxiety?
It’s been real,
Momdram
