She’s back.
My beautiful car, Warp 8, is back in service, fresh from repairs undertaken due to my accident a few weeks back.
I have to admit (to a wider audience than just Jacqui and Noel, who I admitted this to yesterday) the accident shook my confidence in my driving, to the point of me nearly deciding I didn’t want to drive again.
Since Warp 8 has been in the shop, we have been driving Noel’s car. On Fridays, when I go to work alone, I often take my car, but, for obvious reasons, I have been taking Noel’s car the last few weeks.
The Friday before last, I was driving to work and got to a huge roundabout (traffic circle for those Americans reading). A car was approaching from my right, which was fine, but it had its left-turn indicator on. The car next to me sped into the intersection, and something deep in me said not to go. I started to inch forward into the intersection but found the supposedly-turning car was going straight forward with its indicator still flashing left.
Even though we were probably in no danger of colliding, my heart jumped into my throat and I was a wreck the entire way into work.
And a voice in the back of my head said: “Maybe you should stop driving. You are obviously a menace on the road.”
But, instead of pulling a Molly or even getting all melodramatic about it and telling it to everyone in a “feel-sorry-for-me” blog, I kept it to myself for a while.
I find, ever more so increasingly, since I was diagnosed with depression in my late teens, that I retreat into myself instead of talking about things. Maybe it’s some defence mechanism that suppresses the emotions in order to deal with them, I don’t know. But, as with this case, I seem to get quiet.
Anyway… Jacqui and Noel brought up a good point: stopping driving because of one accident that may or may not have been my fault is stupid. It’s scary and not fair on Noel especially because I guess I would expect him to drive me around everywhere. So… I thought about it.
My Opa had a girlfriend named Mrs. Kraneis after my Oma died. Mrs. Kraneis had something happen to her when she was driving — I am not quite sure what — but she stopped driving. I am not even sure if she’d been in the US when it happened, or even if I got the right end of the stick, but I know she didn’t drive. And she expected my Opa or one of her family to ferry her around here and there.
It struck me then, thinking about her. I don’t want to end up like that.
As time has gone on in my life, I find my self less and less independent than I was. I don’t know if that is becoming comfortable or if some deep, dark crevasse of my mind has some hidden subconscious agenda or what, but it started manifesting itself around the same time I started turning inward at times. So… it is very important I keep driving (despite feeling shaky about it) for my own sanity. (As Noel will tell you, Mrs. Kraneis had her moments where she was as nutty as a fruit cake, using her Stueck as an extension of her arm.)
On the lighter side of things, boy do brakes vary from car to car. Noel’s car seems to have very gentle, smooth brakes, where you can slowly press down and the car slowly glides to a halt. Warp 8? You lightly tap the pedal and it’s all off; you come to a sudden halt. Which is funny in some respects because I look like I’m learning to drive a car all over again!
But all in all, I am happy to have Warp 8 back. For all the hard work she’s put into our lives, she didn’t deserve to be hit. Alas… I apologised to her all the way back to work (when I picked her up yesterday) so… here’s hoping she’s forgiven me!
Beam Me Up, Scotty 