Content Warnings: Anxiety
I feel stuck. I got my driver’s license on Friday. I was so excited! Finally, on the fourth try, I managed to receive that little tiny card that would change my life forever.
Independence, I breathed. Moving on. Growing up. I felt stuck without my driver’s license. I’d wake up everyday and carpool with my best friend to school, and although I was so grateful for the daily rides, I felt tortured. A simple skill that everybody, even the flunk, even the reckless, could do, but for some reason, not me. It was all I could think about. I could not steer a steering wheel correctly, or not hit the curb, for five minutes. I was a huge giant failure, and I’d recognize that. The anxiety I felt beforehand was debilitating as well. My knees constantly felt like they were moments from buckling, and my stomach would burn, and my face would become hot and red and it felt like I was getting slapped in the face repeatedly. Then, I would fail the stupid test, and just cry and cry and cry, and cry, until my body was out of water, it felt like. That’s why I felt stuck.
But I still felt stuck. I took my little sister around for a ride, but then a world of responsibility fell on my shoulders. I didn’t have my parents to guide me anymore. I had to be aware. I felt stuck in the monotonous adult life I was bound to take on, as if I was a player in a game where I was destined to lose.
I could never feel content with myself. I finally obtained the thing that would make me feel better, but I didn’t feel better. Maybe that’s to say one can’t attribute their happiness to one factor. It’s easy, though, to blame the inconvenient thing. To blame it on my lack of license. Now, I realize that the “stuckness” is not me being stuck without the right to drive, but it’s me being stuck in between the happiness I can choose for myself, or the constant stress and longing I live with.
