on frustration

answering the prompt, "What are you currently frustrated by?"

“Can you pick me up?” 

I’ve probably said that phrase at least a hundred times. There’s a running joke with my friends that if we want to hang out, someone’s going to have to give Aimee a ride, because I’ll always inevitably ask for one. I’m the baby of the group–in both actual age and skill.

Case in point–I’m 17, it’s mid-July, and I can barely drive along the street my house is on. Current sophomores and juniors in high school that I still see as confused, awkward middle schoolers are driving themselves everywhere, while I’m asking my mom when she’s free every time I try to make plans. It’s not that I don’t want to learn how to drive–I’d love to be a good driver and have the freedom that comes with that, but, well, I don’t really want to actually learn how to drive.

So now I’m frustrated, stuck in this liminal space where I wish I could drive and know that I should be practicing to get my license, but at the same time, I’m also incredibly scared and nervous at the thought of actually learning how to drive. So I’ve been picking apart these feelings recently, trying to understand why something that’s supposed to grant me so much freedom makes me nauseous from thinking about it. And I’ve broken down this frustration into three questions: How, When, and Why. 

How do I learn how to drive?

How do you learn how to do anything? You practice, of course. But there’s one small problem here–I am absolutely. terrified. of driving. 

It’s not even that I’m scared of car crashes specifically–I love going on drives, to the point where I’d much rather drive somewhere than fly even if it takes hours longer simply because I love the feeling of speeding down a road and watching everything whiz by through the window. 

But there’s something about actually holding the wheel and being in control of a 3000+ pound vehicle that transforms all my adrenaline into anxiety. I got my permit last December, and yet it took me more than five months until I was ready to even sit in the driver’s seat of the car. 

Making the same turns over and over again in an empty parking lot with my mom crankily correcting my turns wasn’t exactly life-threatening, but it was almost boring to the point where it was discouraging–I wanted to be able to speed down the highway blasting music with my friends already, not struggle over aligning myself between two faded lines of white paint for thirty minutes straight. 

So when I finally started driving lessons and actually driving on the street, I was excited–I was graduating from repetitive circling in the same three neat rows in the parking lot and becoming a “real driver”–or so I thought. It turns out that having to deal with pedestrians and oncoming traffic and any sort of disturbance is really, really hard when you can barely remember your turn signal. 

Every time I’d practice, I’d want to call it quits 30 minutes in, unable to withstand the anxiety and sheer terror of knowing that I had to avoid every potential mistake that could snowball into a horrific accident. I’d get so focused on avoiding a catastrophic crash that I would forget to do simple things, like checking over my shoulder before a turn or signaling for a lane change. The first thing my instructor told me was to never take my hands off the wheel while I was driving, and, well, he shouldn’t have worried about that because I don’t think I could have unclenched my fingers from the wheel if I had tried. 

All in all, I hated driving. I knew that I had to practice if I wanted to get better, but each drive I went on only made me more and more scared of heading on the road. I hated feeling like I didn’t know what I was doing, especially when I knew all my friends were happily driving themselves everywhere they wanted to go. 

I desperately wanted to be an expert at something that I was–understandably–clueless about, but I was too scared to actually go through the process of actually learning. 

When do I learn how to drive?

Looking back, the answer should have been “the moment I’m old enough to get my permit.” But we were in lockdown, and I couldn’t have gone anywhere even if I did get my license, and I had–I thought–all the time in the world to learn.

But come senior year, and the return of in-person classes, and suddenly the school parking lot was filled with students bickering over parking spots, kids that I grew up with were walking around with their key lanyards hanging out of their pockets, and I realized that I’d fallen behind. 

And so I promised myself, I’ll get my permit over winter break. I’ll practice with the extra time I have in second semester. I’ll get my license by June. I’ll catch up. 

Well, things don’t always work out that way. I get my permit by the skin of my teeth¹ on the last day of 2021, and then I didn’t get in a car until May of this year. The anxiety surrounding driving followed me the entire spring, and I always had an excuse for why I couldn’t practice–I had to study for a test, I wanted to hang out with my friends, I was just tired–they piled up slowly, and before I knew it, I had graduated high school license-less. 

I knew, of course, with each time I pushed practicing back, that I was making my life later in the summer harder, but I brushed it off and told myself it was a later issue. My reasoning was hardly ever sound–I really didn’t need to study that much, I spent plenty of time with my friends already, and driving doesn’t take that much energy–or at least, it isn’t supposed to. 

I used any excuse I possibly could to avoid driving, and before I knew it, it was June, and it was slowly dawning on me that I needed to start practicing regularly if I was even going to get my license before I left for college. 

And thanks to that, it’s now mid July, and my driving test is scheduled for August 12, and I’ve practiced maybe 10 hours max. I can barely reverse the car. I’m terrified of changing lanes. I’ve never driven on the highway. If someone asked me to parallel park, I think I’d cry.

I’m a chronic procrastinator when it comes to things I don’t actively enjoy doing, and it’s come back to haunt me now.

Why should I learn how to drive?

For freedom. For ease. For not having to ask someone else for a ride every time I want to go somewhere.

There are a lot of very obvious, sensible reasons why, as a child, I was excited to learn how to drive. But I think the biggest reason was that it represented growing up–it was a right of passage, almost, a cornerstone of teenage life that I was so excited about. 

But as I got closer–and older–that excitement started to fade–I realized that I didn’t necessarily want to grow up, or have to shoulder the responsibility that would come with becoming more independent. I want freedom, but there’s also a part of me that likes being able to rely on my parents.

I’ve realized that the ease of always having someone to follow and look up to was a luxury I took for granted as a child, and that growing up means that I need to take control of making choices previously decided for me. As Mitski said, “Mom, am I still young? Can I dream for a few months more?”²

So I procrastinated driving because, yes, it’s scary, but also partially because I don’t necessarily want to be a person that knows how to drive. In a way, I think my hesitation comes from the fact that driving, to me, is still a uniquely “adult” skill. And if I learn it, then that means I must be an adult, and thus not a kid anymore. 

Of course, neither of those statements are actually true. I–by definition–can’t be an adult until I turn 18. But as I’m going through the motions of picking out sheets for my new college dorm and saying goodbye to my friends as they move across the country, I’m starting to realize that I’m not exactly a kid anymore either. 

I’m getting the freedom I always wanted, and that’s incredible, but also really, really scary. And that fear frustrates me, because I feel like I shouldn’t be afraid of something I’m also so excited about. But I’ve come to realize that those two emotions often come hand in hand, especially as I’m crossing the bridge from child to adult.

I’m growing up, and it’s time for me to take over as the driver of my life.³

1. I made 7 mistakes on the written test. The most you're allowed to make is 8.

2. Mitski, “Class of 2013.” Mitski is also my favorite musical artist of all time, so I had to slip her into a blog somehow :)

3. i would like to update this blog by saying that i took my driver’s test and made 34 mistakes when the max was 15 i did not even know it was possible to make 34 mistakes i hope and pray every city i set foot in is walkable because i will not be driving ever again in the near future