Thursday, February 19

Living in fear

For most people, driving (especially in the US) might be a trivial day-to-day thing to do- not for me.

With that said, today, I am celebrating because I drove about 20 miles and this is the first time in about 6 years that I did it all by myself (on Houston roads with crazy speeds)!!! So you will pardon me if this sounds extremely silly and you wouldn't mind celebrating it with me- thank you!

Now let me tell you why this is not so trivial for me-
After the accident that occurred while I was driving a scooter in which my 18 year old sister died, getting back on the road has been difficult. Walking on Indian roads got that much more harder. It still is an extremely nervous situation for me to ride in cars- I have heart palpitations, and I am usually clenching my teeth or holding onto things. I suffer from nightmares, survivor guilt and the whole shebang that comes with a traumatic experience.

But I am dealing with it- somehow... and I will say this, time is not a good healer (it hasn't been for me anyways) and it is even worse because I feel like memories begin to get diluted (that is a story for another day) and I constantly racing against time to save some of those memories.

But, wouldn't you agree that this is a step in the right direction and hence, deserves a toast- so go for it! Raise your glasses for me and people like me who live with their traumatic experiences every single day.

1 comment:

Srividya said...

" Here's to Abhi zoom zooming " - toasting with my bournvita.