get over my fear of driving

Well, I’m not afraid anymore, but it’s not something I look forward to starting particularly. Driving has so many privileges and I want to get out and go places and my urge to do that has become so strong lately, but I wonder how limited I’ll be by gas prices. Not having the freedom to drive around and exploring somewhere new often takes away a big incentive for me. Though I’ve just about had it with the buses and how time consuming it is. It will be nice to get school easily and having more freedom, even if it’s not as much as I want.

I’m not looking forward to traffic and dealing with jerky drivers (and to some extent I’m afraid of accidents and things out of my control), but I guess I’m ready to start moving forward with this goal. But I’m going to be sure to be kind, sensitive and patient with myself as I take this major step forward and slowly expand my comfort zone.

(This is my story and it was from an email I sent to a very close friend, so I’m taking a step of courage and reposting it here even though it’s very personal.)

I don’t drive. Yes, I’m a 22-year-old and I still don’t have my license.
I started to learn when I was 16 and I enrolled in a driving school. I completed my permit with flying colors and then started to work on my license. I studied with a private teacher in behind the wheel training but then became too freaked out to complete it. There were many factors for why I never got my license.
I felt really dumb because I was clumsy and had dyslexia and I was sometimes absentminded. Being all of those things usually doesn’t keep me from living my day-to-day life, but it’s different when you’re on the road. Spilling a cup of juice, forgetting my keys in my room or misspelling a word is both annoying and embarrassing but it will not kill me. Those same kinds of mistakes can be deadly on the road. I know that some people with dyslexia do drive, but I could never live with myself if my clumsiness caused an accident or someone’s life; that and I would hate to lose my own life.
This brings to another point. I really do think my fear of driving is some kind of phobia or trauma that goes deeper than my clumsiness. 4 people who were rather close to me lost their lives in car accidents.
I never got to meet my grandmother because she was killed on the spot by a careless driver while she was on vacation in Mexico when my mom was only 17.
Then when I was 11 my cat sneaked out at night and was hit by a car. We live on a dark street and he was a black cat so the driver probably couldn’t see him and probably didn’t even know that he hit him. He survived but he lost his tail and all control of his bladder. A neighbor found him and saved his life and eventually found that we were his owners. He lived for 4 more years and my mom relieved him every day, my mom was the only one who knew how to do this. My mom was on vacation for a week and me and my dad didn’t know how to relieve him. We took him to the vet and left him over night and he died. I always felt responsible for that even though my parents told me it was not my fault. And that feeling of being responsible for a death weighs so heavily on me and I’m afraid I’ll be so bad and incompetent in driving that I’ll cause another death and I can’t live with that.
When I was first learning to drive at the age of 16, I had to learn with mom who was tremendously cross and impatient with me. I also hated the way she drove. Her temper became tremendous on the road and she’d go on and on about how some one cut her off. And of course, she thought the world was out to get her, and perhaps I even picked up a bit of this fear in the realm of driving.
My first attempt at learning to drive was not going very well at all so I quit. At that time I was busy practicing striving to get into a conservatory for college and work at my dream of becoming a pro oboist so I was too wrapped up in all of that to really work at this fear.

I tried again in August between my freshman and sophomore years in college. The fears were still there but I was just starting to gain confidence near the end of August. Then in early September just before my driving lesson, another trauma struck and it really shook me up. I found out one of my friends from high school was killed on the highway in a high speed car crash because her boyfriend thought it was cool to drive recklessly at 80 mph. And then there was a sharp turn…
So many feelings came up with this one. And my driving lesson went horrible and I froze up. After that I never sat in a driver’s seat ever again.
And then last year, I found out that another high school friend lost both of his parents in a car crash. Just another thing added to my fear.
I know this is just bad luck that I was deeply affected by all 4 of these driving related causalities and that realistically, stuff like this is pretty rare. But combined with my dyslexia and all the feelings with that, I still feel terrified. I think I have a phobia of driving.
Not being able to drive not only made me feel really stupid and loserly, but it has severely limited my life and my freedom and options.
I usually don’t ask people for rides unless they happen to be going there anyway, or if it’s an emergency. I use public transportation or sit in my room and do without whatever I want. My parents drop me off and pick me up from college for breaks and I hate being so dependent on them for that. I can understand what a huge burden it is for them and I totally understand why they complain. I wish I wasn’t so scared and stupid and could break free of them but I’m having trouble getting through these feelings.