The irony: I grew up in the Motor City. But while my friends counted down the days until they turned 16, I’d have sooner asked the star football player who didn’t know my name on a date than drive myself to the closest 7-Eleven. I’m an idiot in a pink bedroom, I often told myself. I’m not emotionally equipped to operate heavy machinery.
The trepidation crept into my psyche from the very start: I still recall my driver’s-ed teacher — who my friend Debbie swore was “totally chill!” — pumping his brake and shouting when I timidly turned the wrong way onto a one-way street. As a licensed driver, I crashed the car twice, peeling out of our neighborhood. These accidents only heightened my anxiety and aversion, as I refused to merge onto a freeway for fear of certain high-speed death. When I landed a prized summer internship at a newspaper in downtown Detroit, my mom paid my cousin to chauffeur me.
I rationalized that I was doing the world a favor by not cruising around in my old beat-up Chevy. But I should have course-corrected in the ’90s. “Specific phobias tend to start in childhood or adolescence and remain the same if we don’t get treatment,” says Dr. Gail Saltz, an associate professor of psychiatry at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medicine. My version of treatment: Moving to a city where no sane person owns a car. Thanks to blessed taxis, subways, buses and Nikes, I could avoid my phobia. The end. I drove less and less when I visited my parents in Detroit and eventually phased it out altogether.
Once again, I was wrong. “The more you avoid, the more you reinforce the fear, the more anticipatory fear you develop,” says Dr. Saltz. “Then the phobias may present a greater challenge in life as we age and feel more disruptive and problematic.”
My problems came to a head during my recent 14-year quest to run a half-marathon in every state. I assumed my biggest challenge would be persevering through altitude sickness in Colorado or brain-boiling heat in Hawaii. It turned out to be navigating the country without visiting a single car-rental office. I resorted to crazy-desperate solutions. Yes, that was me approaching strangers for a ride before dawn in a West Virginia hotel lobby and walking along the shoulder of a highway at night in Mississippi. As for the Uber situation in South Dakota? That same receptionist took pity on me and gave me a lift to Deadwood. Yup.
After wrapping up my 50-state half-marathon adventure, I obsessed over my next long-term project. I’m on the verge of turning 50, after all. Something ultra-significant was in order. Then, as I recounted my travels to friends, I sheepishly realized that my triumphant races were overshadowed by the stress of logistics. How much longer could this go on? What if there was an emergency and I needed to drive?
