Irrational Fears

For as long as I can remember I have held on to fears that are so deeply rooted that I have come to believe that they must be carried forward from another lifetime.

It gives me the willies when I touch the insides of my own wrists. My over active imagination places morbid visuals of a faceless former version of myself lying in a bathtub filled with blood red water. It is a scene of great sadness.

As a teenager, I had a strong aversion to learning to drive. At the bold age of sixteen, teenagers are anxious to gain independence and freedom. That sweet sixteen birthday taunted me with the pressure of attaining a driver’s license. My dad had promised me that I could take any car off his lot. He owned a Honda dealership at the time. I froze with fear as I was haunted by another distressing image.

In it I am crying while driving down a deserted highway. On top of the tears blurring my vision is the rain beating down on the windshield of my powder blue car. There is a bridge and then only fuzziness.

I held onto this visual as a safety blanket. Whether I made the whole thing up or not, it was the reason I could avoid pursuing my own driver’s license. No doubt my friends thought I was eccentric when I told them about remembering past life experiences. I was convinced that these deaths were traumatic enough to leave an imprint on my current state of being.

Three years later I gave in to the demand of needing to drive in Saskatchewan where there was no reliable form of public transportation. I tucked away that picture of a lonely, dark night in a powder blue car even though I still have a looming fear of accidents. My defensive driving skills are likely the result of carrying this irrational fear.

My Perfect Post award goes to a writer that I could easily honor every month. She spins her tales with ease while painting the scenes of her life so vividly that it often takes my breath away. In her post A Place To Hide, Sandra describes the solace she found in a robin's egg blue car in her uncle's wrecking yard. For a moment my unfounded fears vanished as I felt a strange connection to the tears that her 11-year-old self shed in that robin's egg blue car. Maybe my heart had been aching for my future friend.

Be sure to visit MommaK and Lindsay to find a list of all the March award winners.