I didn’t get my driver’s license until I turned eighteen years old, because I was just that scared of driving on even the quietest country roads. Even after earning a perfect score on my driving test the first try and getting my license, I refused to drive basically anywhere I didn’t already know like the back of my hand. It took me two years to overcome my fear of taking unprotected left turns, and I’ve only been driving on the interstate by myself for two weeks (at the time of writing this).
In just these two weeks of forcing myself to drive on the interstate every single day, I’ve made tremendous progress in overcoming my fear of driving. Not only can I drive from one mountain town to the next, I was even able to take my mom and little brother to the airport so they didn’t have to fork over $20 bucks a day to park in the airport’s parking garage.
Does the interstate still scare the ever-loving shit out of me? Absolutely. I’ve had tears in my eyes a few times since I started driving on the interstate. I even cried after my first time driving 470 alone (from the Kipling exit to the Wadsworth exit). Even so, I’ve pressed on through the fear and reminded myself that, as scared as I might be, I’m still able to fly down the freeway at 60+ miles-per-hour and be just fine. Hell, I can even hold my own in the presence of huge semi-trucks that refuse to let me over till the very last second, with my mom riding shotgun, all without losing my shit or causing her to lose hers!
Perhaps, I can commute to whatever university I choose to attend, after all.
Well… the only issue with me facing my fear of the highway is that I’ve been coming home absolutely exhausted after each round. Just today (Sunday), I drove back-and-forth on 470 between Morrison and Santa Fe Drive three times, only to come home and pass out on the couch for a solid forty-five minutes. Thing is, I didn’t intend to take a nap. I simply got home, sprawled out on the couch to greet my dogs, and woke up forty-five minutes later to my dogs barking at the neighbor across the street.
I understand why I come home so exhausted after taking on the highway. When I’m afraid, my body goes into fight-or-flight mode. This means that my heart rate skyrockets, my pupils widen, my hearing intensifies, my muscles tighten, and my breaths get deeper and faster. Of course, the fight-or-flight response uses up tons of energy very quickly; it’s the equivalent of sprinting. When I take on the highway for 45 minutes or more, I’m basically forcing my body to sprint for those 45 minutes without any sort of a break.
It’s no wonder I come home from my drives on the interstate absolutely annihilated!
Good news is, the more I get on the interstate, the more my body will get used to it and figure out that I’m not in extreme mortal danger every time the speedometer exceeds 60 miles per hour. Even if I ever was in extreme mortal danger while driving so fast, no amount of adrenaline’s gonna rescue me. In fact, the tighter one’s muscles are in the event of a car wreck, the more likely one is to get seriously injured or killed. That’s why drunk drivers are 50% more likely to survive a crash than sober drivers (but for the love of all that is good and holy, do not drive drunk, high, or tired).
As time goes on and I get more and more used to driving on the highway, my body will stop responding to the highway as though I’m sprinting away from a swarm of pissed off wasps. I just have to keep driving on the highway day after day, rain or snow, sleet or shine, wind or calm, until my body figures out that there’s no reason to waste so much precious energy when literally nothing’s happening.
