For those of you who don’t know, I am an anxious driver. Always have been. I have only recently begin getting over my driving anxiety. I try to avoid driving whenever possible. To combat this, I have begin taking on more situations where I have to drive. God forbid. So, for the first time ever, at the end of this past school year, I drove from Walla Walla to Seattle. I don’t even live in Seattle, but my dad let me borrow his car for the semester and I had to get back so we could have it shipped back down to Houston, where I’m from.
Luckily, I had an amazing friend who also needed a ride to her house, which ended up only being twenty minutes away from the family friends house where I would be staying and leaving the car. Perfect! Easy, right?
Except...I am not the world's most confident driver. I really didn’t drive that much in high school even though I had a car, and driving over a mountain pass, even in May, was something I was a little wary of.
Regardless, I had to get home and I was ready to get home so I was going to do it! I hadn’t even been thinking about my anxiety around driving once since I had just taken an extremely difficult final. So, my friend Adrienne and I loaded up the car and we left. We just got on the road and left. And I felt...pretty great. Not anxious whatsoever. Not even when we got into Seattle! I was shocked and my own ability to put my anxiety away and just drive. I didn’t freak out once, not even when I had to leave my friend at her house and drive to where I was going. Even without a buddy I felt pretty cool, calm and collected.
By the end of it, I realized I wasn’t scared. I had just gotten over it. Nothing major happened, I just finally matured to the point of just doing it and not worrying about anything happening, getting pulled over, etc. This is what maturing is, I thought, once we were two-and-a-half hours in and I was just enjoying the actual driving and my friend's company.
Looking back on all the times I was scared of driving any route I was unfamiliar with or driving a car that wasn’t necessarily mine, I realized that I really did possess the skills to do this and do it well. Just like anything else I was afraid of, I realized, I could get over it. We’re maturing everyday, even if we don’t feel it, and we’ll eventually get to where we need to be. In my case, feeling comfortable driving! Whatever you’re afraid of or anxious about, especially small things like driving long distances or going abroad, if it’s something you truly want to do, then you’ll get there soon.
