Dear Everyone,

Have you been so comfortable with how your life is that the thought of doing anything else made you anxious? Well, that is me in a nutshell. The thought of changing anything in my routine freaked me out. I’m not saying I’m like squidward in the episode where he gets so annoyed with spongebob that he moves to a community where they do the same thing everyday. I mean just doing something that requires some extra planning to make sure I can and am willing to do it. In this case I am referring to the fact that at 22 years old I was so afraid to drive that it gave me lots of anxiety that just sitting behind the wheel of a parked car sent me in a major panic, but I was able to let go of that fear when life decided I didn’t have a choice.

In 2020, I was in college working on finishing my Bachelors degrees. Hated being stuck inside doing zoom classes, but not missing getting up early to catch 3 buses to take me to school. On the brightside, with classes online I didn’t have to worry about spending so much money on food and project materials. It made it easier to save money for something else which at the time I had no idea what I was saving it for.

At the end of spring quarter, I had to call an ambulance for my mom one day. It was really scary. One minute she was here the next she was not acting like herself. The best way to describe it is like those with alzheimers disease where they just don’t recognize you and are lost in some sort of alternate reality. It really freaked me out. Thinking I’m going to lose my mom, but luckily I didn’t. She’s been back to her regular self for a while now on medications to help her out, but June through September of that year she was in and out of the hospital in that state so scary trying do summer classes and be worried about her. I hated having to take the bus down there and it taking hours to go down there and back home.

It was the turning point I needed to have to force myself to use my extra funds to pay for drivers education. I know as an adult it wasn’t needed, but I knew if I didn’t pay for classes I wasn’t going to learn and do this unless a stranger was the one teaching me.

The times my mom wasn’t in the hospital and more herself, she was able to take me out to practice when I wasn’t taking classes or working. It was scary. The first time with the instructor I freaked out over barely touching the brake petal and the car automatically stopped. The instructor was really nice and kept me calm enough to continue driving. From then on I just kept getting better and more comfortable with it. Even my mom was impressed with me.

I got my liscence that summer and to this day am driving around to work or taking my mom places because her medications won’t allow her to drive anymore. While I am not happy about my mom needing to have some mysterious illness mimicking alzheimers to push me in the direction of letting go of my fear of driving. I am grateful this happened otherwise I probably would still be taking the bus and still fearing being behind the wheel of a car today. Sometimes we just need that push to get out of our comfort zones and getting rid of fears to do things we are scared of to push ourselves into letting go to help us become stronger and not only living by what is comfortable to us. Otherwise we will never grow.