Sporkful’s secret shame

Before I start, I should mention that for at least fifteen years of my life, my coping strategy with everything was pretty much repression. Now sometimes when I feel emotions about something, I am not always sure if they are proportionate. Is this really that terrible? Why am I crying? Anyway, with a couple of incidents that recently had me on the verge of tears, I believe the cause of the overreaction was my shame about not driving.

Did you know I don’t drive? I try not to make a big deal out of it, but it has been a big deal to me. There are invitations that I will decline strictly on the grounds of transportation being a problem.

I started out normally enough, in that I got my learners permit when I was fifteen (almost twenty-one years ago), and I took a driver’s education class, though I may have been sixteen then. Clearly I wasn’t rushing towards driving, because the main incident we are getting to happened right before my seventeenth birthday.

In class I drove on one-way streets in cities, and on highways and freeways, and even over that bridge with the weird surface in Portland. I was not terrible, but I was very nervous. It is just so easy to cause damage to another person or property, and there are a lot of things going on at once. Obviously after the class I would need practice before being ready to get my license.

My main problem was that I did not want to practice driving with my father. I was already nervous, and he yells and swears and berates and is not in any way a calming force. I realize driving instruction is stressful for any teacher, and it might be worse when your pupil is your child, but I could not stand the thought of getting in that car with him. Maybe it was a carryover of some of the tension that was already between us. It’s not like he didn’t want us to be afraid of him.

Anyway, I wanted to learn with Mom, at least at first, and initially he seemed to agree. Our first practice session did not really get anywhere because the Colt wouldn’t start. The symptoms were similar to vapor lock, but the conditions were wrong for that. So I had not really had any family practice yet, and then one Saturday when we were the only two people at home, Dad called me to get in the car.

He just wanted me to drive around the block, and he actually stood outside the car (probably not legal), and I wanted to cooperate. I did not want to be a problem child. But I hit a car.

The Driver’s Ed class car was an automatic (Toyota Corolla), and the Colt was a stick, so maybe that made things harder, but as I got to the top of the cul-de-sac I was having trouble turning enough and I could not clear this car that was parked on the street. I was moving at such slow speed that there was no damage to either vehicle, but I was still horrified, and I was getting out of that car. Dad was angry, and tried to force me to get in and keep driving. He came close to hitting me, but there were people gathered around (because I had just hit a car), and he restrained himself. The owner of the parked car could see that there was no damage, and he was being very nice, but that did not help my father at all.

Basically, I went past him, out of the car and back to the house. I suppose he brought the car back. He didn’t talk to me that day. I think I stayed holed up in my room anyway. Sunday morning I was up early, and he came to me in the kitchen and told me that he couldn’t believe how stupid I was, and he was ashamed of me. I believed then (and still do) that the real issue was that he had lost control over me, but I just could not give it back. He didn’t speak to me again for two and a half years.

Well, after that it was very hard to get back to driving. It was awkward enough just living in the same house in my disowned state, and me driving was certainly a sore subject, so it didn’t come up. Then I was a college student, and a missionary, and a college student again, and when I came back home he was already gone and I took on a lot more family responsibilities. Some of those would have been easier with a car, but money was always an obstacle to owning a car, and that made it less imperative to get the license. I did take additional driver training, and I am not even bad at it, if for no other reason than that I am super careful. I still just kind of hate it though.

There have been good things about not driving. If I did have a car payment, insurance, and gas to worry about, I would not be able to afford the mortgage, and I would not have paid off college as quickly. (I sure wish I had stayed debt-free, incidentally.) My being able to help others, and be a fairly benevolent landlord, has a trade-off in that my other family members are pretty good about giving me rides, even though sometimes it is still a hassle and I don’t even want to bother (this was a big part of me not joining a foreign film club). Also, I have had great conversations with people who have given me rides, and done a lot of unofficial counseling, and I am grateful for those opportunities. Despite all of this, it just seems like driving is something adults do, and something I should be able to do, and yes, I have found that embarrassing.

There was also some misconception on my part. My sisters have told me that for their first years of driving they had nerves too—getting comfortable doesn’t happen for awhile, so maybe I am not abnormal, and I just need to push through the fear.

Also, even though I am genuinely scared of the driving, it is possible that some of that knot in my stomach is not really the car, but my father. It was really traumatic being cut off like that. I had nightmares a few times. Possibly the reason I loved managing the sports teams so much were that the coaches were like father figures. I didn’t even ask them for advice or do that much with them—I just needed to have them there. And no one ever knew. It was our family secret. I sort of told myself it was a relief not having to deal with him, because he was jerk on a regular basis, and conversations were no longer happening, but I don’t recommend it for your teenage daughters.

After two quarters away at college (after Mom had refused to let him turn my bedroom into an office), he said he wanted to start over. It was not an apology, but I was ready to hug him and tell him that I loved him, and I meant it. I sensed at the time that if we ever fought again, we would not be able to find our way back, so we never had important conversations after that. Everything was shallow, where I said things that were supportive of what he said, and then him contradicting me anyway.

That was the end of his first child disownment (there had only been siblings and parents before), but it would be followed by disownment of all my other siblings, reconciliation with my sisters (but not my brother), disownment and reconciliation with my sisters again, and then a final disownment of the four of us once divorce proceedings were started. He did open a window to reconciliation when he sent us an email announcing his remarriage, but I didn’t take it, partially because I couldn’t thing of anything to say that sounded right. (I hope you treat this one better than you treated the last one?)

The last time he disowned us, I was worried about doing anything then that might cause issues with the divorce proceedings, but I thought that when all of that was over, I would write to him and give him a chance, but that I would be done pussyfooting around, and it would be an honest relationship or none at all. Then, when it finally was done, I no longer wanted to write to him. Maybe it was because when there was email from him I felt that same pit in my stomach that I get when I think about driving.

(I think the reason he did send the wedding announcement was that I had scanned in and emailed an invitation for his fiftieth reunion, which I thought he should have, and he took that as an opening, replying to that and sending a separate message with a question about some paperwork. Therefore, our email addresses were included on the message he sent to everyone with a picture of them holding the marriage license and a date. His communication skills are as good as ever.)

When I was in Italy, different family members would ask about Dad, and would be sad that we were not in touch, and I would explain that I did not have time for him. He takes more emotional energy than most people, with very little payoff, and so it’s not the best investment. I don’t just mean payoff for me in having a rewarding relationship, but I don’t think he gets very much out of it either. I do have other family members who depend on me, and a job and church responsibilities and friends and this life. One thing I have realized during this period of self analysis is that I cannot do everything that it would be good to have done, and it actually can be okay if the only thing you do with some family members is to leave yourself open to later inspiration. It was sort of scary, like “Really? I can ignore this?” When I realized, yes, I can, it was very liberating.

I don’t know what will happen with Dad, but I am okay with that. For driving, I want this to be the year that I get my license. Again, I do have limited resources, and right now the most important thing seems to be writing, with a few strong sub-currents of emergency preparedness, physical fitness, and the local mid-singles group, but that’s okay. I think I will start practicing towards the end of April, maybe the 26th.

I can’t truly say I am looking forward to it, but I am okay with it being there. I remember once that I was looking for something on Aloclek, and I saw a sign for a stunt driving school. I don’t know if it is still there, but that’s something that should help conquer fear right there. Establishing that level of control over the car would be amazing, so maybe I will take that course, or do a loop on a racetrack, once I have my license. I’m not going to let fear rule me. It’s not practical.

And so that’s my deep dark secret, and I can put it out on the internet, and the world will not end, and I will not lose friends, and things are pretty much exactly as they were on the outside, but on the inside I am better. I read once that Alcoholics Anonymous has a saying, you are only as sick as your secrets; there’s a lot of sense in that.

My next area of deep shame will turn out to be no secret.