Thick fog had settled on the dark, winding mountain road. I was driving cautiously as I could, white-knuckles gripping the steering wheel and my boot barely pressing down on the gas pedal. 

The further I drove, the higher and narrower the road became, increasing the stress and anxiety in the air. But, I couldn’t stop. There wasn’t anywhere to pull over. Worse, the road was beginning to tilt downward to my left and icy snow began to lash at the windshield. If gravity got the best of my truck, I would be at the mercy of the cliffs, for there were no guardrails or trees to catch my fall. 

Suddenly, a great gust of wind came from my right, strong enough to cause my truck to fishtail side-to-side on the wet, icy road. My mind went blank as my out-of-control truck headed for the cliffs to my left and nose-dived down the cliffside.

Just a second later, the truck crashed hood-first into deep water below and sank like a rock through the infinitely deep and dark waters. Water gushed through the air vents and doors of my Xterra as it turtled, filling the cabin with extreme speed. I reached to grab the hunting knife I keep in my center console. But, I couldn’t find it. So, I fought through the water to find the seatbelt release, but it too was impossible to find. Soon, there was intense pressure on my chest and head as complete darkness enveloped me. And when instinct forced me to open my mouth in a desperate attempt to breathe. 

I woke up, gasping for air and reaching towards the popcorn ceiling. I was safe and sound in bed, slivers of morning light shining through the curtains. The pressure I felt in my night terror was gone. But, I was soaked in freezing sweat, and I was shivering intensely. I checked the time. I had a few hours before class began. Plenty of time to regain control of myself and shower off the night sweats. 

As steamy hot water trickled down my shoulders, I wondered if my college Public Speaking course (which I would start that same morning) was the main source of my night terror. After all, I’d had that night terror every night that entire week, each time just as vivid and terrifying as the last. And, all I could really think about during my waking hours was my damn public speaking class, which was required for me to get my degree, no exceptions (trust me, I tried to find any way to avoid it with no luck). 

Now that the day I would start that dreaded sixteen week course had dawned, maybe those nightmares would cease. Or, maybe they’d stop once my new toy arrived at my doorstep: a 2-in-1 seatbelt cutter and spring-loaded tempered window breaker keychain. 

After my shower, I still didn’t feel great. I was extremely tense and hyper-alert. I stared into my reflection’s eyes as I brushed my hair, and all I saw was fear. Pure, unrelenting terror. 

Still, I stubbornly pressed on through the fear. I finished getting ready and packing up. I chugged my medication down with a protein shake and left immediately after, clutching a prescription bottle filled to the brim with Propranolol that I vowed to only take if I absolutely needed it. 

The drive to campus was way too short for my liking. As I drove down familiar roads in unremarkable traffic, all I could feel was fear, and my mind was reeling too fast for me to catch a single thought and dissect it. In a way, I felt like I was a young, sickly teen riding to school in 6th grade knowing, damn well, that I was going to have a hellish day of being bullied and abused by peers and teachers alike for being different. The dread, fear, and the urge to just turn around and put as much distance between myself and the source of my fear, were all too familiar. 

But, things were (and are) different. Now, I was driving myself to my college campus to start a required, sixteen-week-long public speaking course. Unlike middle school and parts of high school, the course wouldn't last multiple school years across multiple schools. It was sixteen weeks, or in my mind, sixteen Tuesdays and sixteen Thursdays: Thirty-two days or forty hours total (plus whatever time I spent at home or at Enchanted Grounds doing schoolwork). I could probably withstand that without ending up dead. 

While I knew no bullies or unsympathetic teachers were waiting for me in my public speaking class, I still feared public attention and scrutiny. I didn't want to attend a college course where I'd be analyzed and graded by peers and professors alike, as I did my best to face my greatest fear without puking, passing out, or bursting into tears. But, either I got that course over with, or I pushed it off another semester or two (which would just make it seem even scarier), or I didn't get my Associate's degree at all. So, I took my parents' advice, and decided it was best to get the course over with sooner than later.  

I just had to push through the fear and do it. Sixteen weeks would go by fast. Hopefully, anyway.

I caught my breath as I pulled into campus. It was one of the busiest days of the year, and students were rushing everywhere, seemingly unaware of anyone else around them. Thankfully, I managed to not run anyone over despite people being more aloof than the Valley deer, found a parking space amid the chaos and hung up my yearly parking pass on my rearview mirror. 

For a moment, I sat in my Xterra and stared straight ahead, clutching my steering wheel in a death-grip. My nostrils flared as I fought to regain control of my breathing, determined not to admit defeat and take my Propranolol. As I sat there, terrified and ashamed of being so scared, I again began to wonder what it was about public speaking that terrified me so badly. Nobody I knew seemed to understand the depth of my fear, even if they were sympathetic towards me. Hell, I didn’t get it either. 

Sure, I’d been bullied and ostracized for much of my life, and I had actually puked into a trashcan in the middle of class a few times too (due to intense anxiety that I so desperately tried to hide and deny). Family and biology teachers had put me in the spotlight before, thinking (wrongly) that I was okay with being outed as that kid with CF. And I did have to pull over and puke on the side of the road after giving a presentation in my college Astronomy course. But, that couldn’t possibly be why I was so fucking scared. There was nothing that could justify the levels of fear I’d been feeling all week ahead of this required public speaking course. Right? Right?

After my mini freakout in my Xterra, I clambered out with my backpack, took in one final deep breath before slamming the driver's side door shut, and plodded across the parking lot towards the concrete nuclear bunker that is my college. I was visibly nervous and jumpy. Every person, car, and leaf around me felt like an existential threat. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. I could feel my nostrils flaring with every quick breath like those of a galloping Thoroughbred. I held my keys in my pocketed hands, nervously rubbing the rough, dry scales of my gator paw keychain like a worry stone. Despite me wearing a hoodie and it being about 75 degrees outside and 72 inside, I felt ice cold. Almost hypothermic. Fear can't even come close to the emotions I was feeling as I avoided the elevators (which I also have a phobia of) and ventured up four flights of concrete stairs. 

The whole time I spent heading to my classroom, on top of that intense terror I struggled to hide, I felt grossly ashamed and embarrassed of myself. No adult that I knew of was as terrified of things as I was. Everyone else seemed perfectly relaxed. Many were even smiling and laughing with each other, excited to begin a new year. But me? I was cold, teary-eyed, and shaking. I was the only student on that entire campus who'd rather hoof it up four flights of stairs than take the elevator due to intense social anxiety and claustrophobia. And, when I finally got to my classroom with five minutes to spare, I could hear a few students who were seated in the very front row of the miniature lecture hall, laughing and talking loudly with the professor. 

"Oh. My. Fuckin'. God." I silently thought to myself as I stopped mid-stride in the hallway, watching my fellow students and the professor from behind the doorframe, "I'm in hell."

Quietly, I poked my head in around the door, searching for the emptiest table that was furthest away from the lectern, when the professor noticed. 

"Hi!" she loudly announced startling me, "Come right in! You're not late, we just started early."

Naturally, every student in that room turned around to stare at me. Class hadn't even begun yet, and I was already getting flashbacks to all the times I'd come to school late back in K-12 due to being sick that morning. Only, instead of a classroom of twenty or so kids, I was being stared down by a miniature lecture hall of almost forty adults. Including all of the excited extroverts at the front of the classroom, seemingly hoping I was adoptable somehow. Trust me, I know that look extroverts have when they spot an introvert in need of adoption. 

For another few seconds, I remained frozen, staring wide-eyed at all those pairs of eyes staring back at me. I felt my heartrate skyrocket even more as I seriously considered booking it down the hall, out onto the fourth-floor balcony, and jumping into a nearby ponderosa tree to slow my fall as I made my great escape. But, I decided against that. Not because it was a bad idea to jump down four stories, but because I figured that would be way more embarrassing than being stared down by almost forty people as I stumbled my way to a faraway table. 

Again, words can't describe just how utterly afraid and unwelcome I felt as I found my seat and began to unpack. Logically, I knew nobody was watching me anymore and nobody was judging me when I timidly stepped into the room. In fact, the professor welcomed me in with a warm smile. However, emotionally speaking, I felt like I'd just stepped into a den of forty lions with a belt of lamb chops clasped around my waist. At any moment, those things were gonna pounce on me, and it would be terrible. 

Of course, no such thing happened that morning. In fact, I was able to sit silently and listen intensely when class officially began and the professor began to go over the syllabus with us. I'd already gone through it several times on my own, including during the previous evening at my writer's group where I spent most of that time catastrophizing about my class (and possibly annoying my friends, which if I did, I'm sorry you had to watch me suffer). Even then, I felt severely unprepared for that class, because I was just so damn terrified. And I was (and still am) afraid that my terror wouldn't go away, and it would cause me to fail miserably. 

Plus, there were a lot of students who were clearly excited to do their speeches. I could see it in their bright smiles, shrill voices and squeals, excited hand gestures, bubbly, theater kid personalities, and how they eagerly raised their hands whenever the prof asked a question. Meanwhile, only a handful of students (myself included) were stiff and silent, petrified with fear. 

Maybe (probably) my perception was just warped at that moment. Maybe everyone in that class was scared shitless, and the way many of them coped with being scared shitless was to talk everyone's ears off whenever they got the chance, in an attempt to ease the tension and anxiety they were feeling.

But, to my silent, cross-armed, anxious self at that moment, those people were the epitome of attention-seeking extroverts. They downright terrified me. It was like I was in a room with about twenty clones of my very enthusiastic and extroverted mom, and I was gonna totally fail and embarrass myself in front of all of them, because I was just too damn scared to compete.

However, the professor spent most of class laying out the ground-rules to make the classroom a safe, welcoming, judgement-free environment for us to get used to (or at least, relatively good at) public speaking. Logically, I already knew nobody was gonna film me or laugh at me before I stepped foot in class. But, I needed to hear it from the professor and see my peers nodding their heads, if I was gonna feel just safe enough to participate in class. Plus, it always felt comforting when the professor made it clear, time and time again, that neither she or us will criticize a person's character. We're grading and analyzing the speech, not the person. One can disagree with a person's opinion, or find them boring or pretentious, but criticizing those types of things weren't allowed. 

Reminds me of the type of environment that allowed me to open up my writing to certain people, which was (and is) awesome. 

Once the rules of class were set, the professor went on to demonstrate our first assignment of the semester. 

"It's usually called a Brown Paper Bag speech," The professor explained, "Basically, you are to bring three items in a bag that represent who you are. It's like show-and-tell, but for adults. Now, I think paper bags are boring, so I suggest you bring a tote bag or a more specific shopping bag instead. Unless, of course, you want to bring your items in a paper bag, you can... But, this is meant to be a fun, ice-breaker speech, and therefore a more exciting bag would be better than a boring ol' paper bag."

The obvious extroverts in the class were practically ready to bounce off the walls with excitement. I mean, who doesn't like to talk about themselves and show their shit off? Well... At least a handful of us (including myself) weren't all too excited about it. Personally, I wasn't worried about the grading process. I knew 90% of my grade for that speech was based on whether or not I showed up with three items. The other 10% was for participating in the asking and answering of questions. It was really just a way for everyone to get to know each other, and begin to figure out their speech styles and abilities. 

However, I was downright scared shitless, and I was struggling to think about what I had at home that would represent me, without letting myself be too vulnerable, of course. 

The second class was dismissed, I did what I always do when faced with a crisis. I sped to the Valley to put some distance between me and other people, so I could safely (and loudly) vent my frustrations aloud to God. 

But, before I got to a place in the Valley that was peaceful enough for me to feel comfortable praying aloud, I sped up a hill on Wadsworth Boulevard to cross the intersection of Ken Caryl Avenue when, in my peripheral vision, I spotted a silver Hyundai Sonata speeding up as it turned onto the highway. Initially, I figured the driver would only veer into the right lane, but instead, the sedan swerved all the way over into my lane.

I had no time to think, I simply reacted, slamming hard on my brakes to avoid crushing the trunk of that recklessly slow car like a brown paper bag. The scent of tire smoke filled my nostrils as my brakes locked and I fish-tailed side-to-side. Amazingly (and, admittedly, with my eyes closed), I avoided plowing into the trunk of that car (which, by the way, had its right turn signal blinking away, to add insult to injury), and nobody behind me slammed into my ass. Once my 4,000 pound Xterra miraculously slowed down to a mere 35 miles per hour, I quickly got into the right lane to pass the car, where I got a decent glimpse of the driver. Of course, it was a lady who looked to be at least old enough to have witnessed the birth of Christ. She certainly shouldn't have been allowed to drive anymore. 

In the safety of the right lane with the geriatric driver far behind me, I could no longer stifle my fear. Tears silently streamed down my cheeks as my left leg shivered intensely to the point it hurt worse than a Charley-Horse. My breaths were shallow and short. My heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. My throat felt strained and sore as I still tried to force down the lump in my throat. I struggled to grasp the steering wheel in my shaking, sweating palms. And my vision was tunneled. 

I did end up pulling over close to my house so I could regain control over my breathing and leg muscles before driving again. As I fought to regain control over my body, I wiped my tears away with the sleeve of my hoodie. It was almost 85 degrees outside, and I didn't have the AC going. Yet, I was still very cold. Almost hypothermic. 

After a few moments of sitting in a parking lot, chugging water, shivering, and wiping away tears, I successfully regained control over my body just enough to get to the valley safely. 

I found a secluded place in the valley, sheltered and hidden among Gamble Oaks and great red rocks. Magenta Musk Thistles, scarlet Indian Paintbrushes, and bright yellow Stonecrop were among the numerous wildflowers in full bloom, filling the air with their sweet and weedy scents. A warm sun shone down from partly cloudy skies, and a slight breeze just barely bowed the heads of the late summer grasses. 

I didn't venture far from the Xterra (which I'd parked in the shadow of God's Ass), but the red rocks and lack of other cars parked nearby made it feel like I was entirely alone and isolated in the wilderness. There, I could safely (and loudly) communicate with God. 

But, I simply lacked the energy to actually speak to God aloud, or even in my thoughts. I was still shaking pretty badly, and my knees were getting weak. I found a shaded ledge underneath the red rocks of God's Ass to collapse onto. I sat close to the edge of the rock ledge (which wasn't far above from the grass below), with my knees close to my chest. I rested my palms on my knees till my hands stopped shaking and my breathing was more controlled. Sooner than I expected, I felt calm. Not exactly relaxed, but I felt almost normal. More importantly, I felt strength returning to my weary legs, and warmth radiating throughout my body. 

With my body temperature returning, I got to my feet and took my hoodie off. I dramatically stretched out my calves and biceps, taking in deep, calm breaths as I did so. Finally, upon cracking my knuckles and toes, I felt like a new woman. Nature, once again, had rejuvenated my exhausted soul. Now, I had the strength to stand up to the Creator of the universe in prayer. 

My prayer never came out in words. Rather, it was more of a feeling of mine that had most of my attention. I could still feel the anxiety coursing through my veins. My muscles were tense and sore, especially those in my back, core, and legs. I couldn't hold my trembling hands still even if I tried, and I paced around the rocks like a prowling tiger, panting from the heat. 

In my mind, I once again wondered what was wrong with me. Why was I so afraid and panicky? Sure, I had every reason to be frazzled after almost getting killed by a clueless dementia patient, but that wasn't really why I was so frightened. Death didn't scare me, but my college class damn sure did. Honestly, I felt (and still feel) very embarrassed by that, as my nervousness surrounding it isn't a normal level of nervousness. 

Sure, everyone who has to speak publicly may get nervous and worried about it. They may get knots in their stomach or lay awake the night before their speech. But, my anxiety was so much worse. I'd been dreading it all summer, trying to find any loophole that would allow me to avoid the class and still get my Associate's Degree. I'd been having repetitive nightmares, not just of sliding off a foggy cliff and crashing into the ocean, but also of being put on trial for something I never did, and of being publicly shamed in class for doing a shitty job on an assignment (well... that's more of a memory than just a dream). I'd been running on almost pure adrenaline during the week leading up to the class, and it wasn't subsiding even though I'd gotten a first taste of that semester. 

Obviously, my fear of public speaking was so much worse than anyone realized, and I simply didn't know how to cope with it. 

On those rough red rocks, I began to reflect on all that had gotten me to where I now was (as I often do), specifically trying to find out why I was so afraid of public speaking. Or just publicity in general. 

Well... it wasn't just fear that got to me. Generally speaking, I just never liked much attention. Growing up, my go-to motto was "too much love" with my extroverted family members. That, and "leave me alone" was another favorite saying of mine. I never said those things out of malice. I just wanted my introverted boundaries to be known and respected. 

The fear didn't kick in until the family issues and bullying reared their ugly heads. Being as sickly and small as I was, I was basically defenseless. So, I just kind of... froze. Or, I tried to get away. On rare occasions, I would try to stand up for myself, but few people took my shrill voice or small stature very seriously. 

Of course, these days, things are much different.  Drastically different. 

Still, those past emotions from when I was a sick and helpless little girl remain. I may be a strong, healthy, independent adult today, but I've yet to really deal with much of my childhood trauma, resulting in me being petrified of others.