stefanie says

Ever noticed how the longer you put something off, the scarier that thing becomes? That during the build-up to it, you get more and more nervous at how impossible it is, even if it isn’t really that terrifying in the first place.

This happened to me when it came to driving. I let other people scare me into thinking I was terrible at it, so I stopped trying to learn. Weeks became months, and the thought of ever getting behind the wheel again became so daunting. I wasn’t even bad at it (how can you be bad at something you’ve barely done?), but I thought that I was, so I told other people I was. I made jokes about it - that I was the combination of the two stereotypes that both Asians and women can’t drive. 

I didn’t allow myself room to fail - I didn’t even allow myself room to try, or to discover what I could be at it. And the more I put it off, I’d just imagine increasingly disastrous scenarios of what would happen when I actually started driving again. 

All I needed was to give it one more shot. I don’t know what exactly convinced me to do it, but something in me probably must have had enough, but I did.

And of course, there wasn’t anything scary at all about it. In fact, what seemed scary was actually fun. Plus it turned out I wasn’t even bad at it, cause having a lot to learn isn’t the same as sucking. In fact, waddya know, I actually LIKED doing it.

The build-up of not doing it for so long was what was scaring me so much, when there was nothing to fear.

Of course, all this story-telling is simply an excuse for me to try to console myself about a blood test that I’ll be taking this Thursday.

I know, what kind of wimp is afraid of a BLOOD TEST? The same wimp who let driving scare her, of course.

It isn’t even needles that I’m afraid of — I’m pretty sure all the kitchen knife accidents I’ve sustained in the last year has prepared me somewhat for sharp objects. Rather, it’s the fact that I haven’t had an injection in more than ten years that has me freaking out. I’m almost kicking myself now for always shrugging off the need for the yearly flu jab come winter - not that I ever fell sick from the flu, just that with every passing year, the thought of getting one just got scarier and scarier. (As a sidenote, it’s because of this very phenomenon that I’ve put off getting my ears pierced. I am twenty-two and I’ve never known the joy of earrings)

Right now I’m hoping, praying, crossing all my fingers and toes, that Thursday won’t be as scary and painful as I’m making it out to be. At the back of my mind, I think I already know that it won’t be at all. But right now… Right now, the build-up of it makes it so much bigger and terrifying than it is.