KNOW THYSELF, HEAL THYSELF

Not Everyone Can Climb Mount Everest And That’s Okay

It’s my story of building shame resilience.

Around 15–16 years ago, I got my first driving license. However, just after I got the license, I met with a car accident. The accident wasn’t fatal, but it could have been.

Luckily the chassis of the car got stuck on a big block of concrete, otherwise, the car would have smashed into a wall and I can’t even imagine what the consequences would have been had that concrete block not been there.

But this incident robbed me of the courage to drive forever. I could not bring myself behind the steering wheel again. I felt I wasn’t fit to drive a car.

My Fear against Driving

I know people go through more critical accidents. My sister’s accident was way more fatal.

Her 8 seater SUV was hit by another car. It toppled over and got totaled. Her one-year-old daughter was hanging upside down (but thankfully secured to seatbelt) when the emergency service broke the door and rescued her.

A few years prior to this, a colleague of mine was killed in a car accident. Another colleague was driving the car when he lost control and hit the lane divider. They were both drunk and overspeeding.

My neighbor’s son got killed in a bus accident near our local bus stop and his body was crushed to pieces. When he was brought from the morgue for his cremation, they couldn’t even uncover his face.

The worst accident that I witnessed was when I was asked to identify the body of a teenage boy who was run over by a truck very close to my house. He was wearing a school uniform and people mistook him as a student of my school. I was around 14.

I reached the accident scene and I almost gagged. His body was absolutely intact, just some blood coming out from his head. But his eyes were not only wide open, it seemed as if the eyeballs would come out of the eye socket. That was unnerving.

I couldn’t sleep many nights after that. His eyes haunted me.

Compared to all these, at least I was unscratched. I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t overspeeding either. But the fear deep inside me gave the signal to me that I was incapable of driving. I might cause death or serious injury to someone else or to me. And I couldn’t take that risk. So I stopped driving.

My Challenges

When I lived in India, my inability to drive never seemed to be a problem. However, life in the western world meant that not being able to drive is a serious challenge.

When I lived in the US, it was an absolute nightmare because public transport was almost nonexistent.

In Europe, while public transport isn’t as bad as in the USA, life is still challenging if you don’t drive. We have lived in smaller cities and public transport isn’t that great.

My daughter’s school is 2.6 km from my house and dropping her and picking her up means walking every single time. Now walking is good for health — true. But if you have to walk come, rain or shine, snow or storm, along with a small child, it isn’t that charming anymore.

During the winter months, even 8.00 in the morning feels like the middle of the night and there is no bus at the time of the day. Walking to school in freezing temperatures and in the dark feels like a pain.

As my daughter grew up, the after-school activities became more frequent, and commuting to basketball, piano, art, dance, etc lessons became incredibly challenging. I even chose those activities where I could commute over others where the commute was impossible.

My daughter wanted to try tennis but reaching the tennis court by public transport or walking was out of the question. So I enrolled her in basketball because that was doable.

I also had to plan all my therapies and even an appointment with the doctors according to the bus schedules or if my husband could be home to drop me and pick me up.

There had been so many situations when walking felt like a herculean task and I just got mad at ‘my not being able to drive’ situation. The car stays parked conveniently in front of the house while I walk from point A to point B, even when the weather is challenging or I am sick.

All these years, so many people have criticized me for not being able to drive. People never stopped making fun of me. Most of these people didn’t even know the fear in me or the real reasons behind my inability.

It is weird how this one inability has also brought down my self-worth.

The inconvenience had been too much and I wanted to show the world that I am capable too, so I set out to take lessons again and conquer my fear once and for all.

My Driving Lessons

Unfortunately, my timing to restart coincided with the lockdowns. I started my lessons and then I had to stop for several months due to covid protocols.

I was also not lucky with my driving instructor. Before I joined and paid all the money, he seemed like a different person, he even told me that he would give me time on Sundays if that’s what’s needed and he would do all he can to help me.

He changed radically once I paid and booked the lessons and my exam. We had frequent arguments on almost everything — be it the scheduling of the lessons, the time, the length, the interval, or the method of teaching.

Initially, I didn’t argue and I agreed to whatever he said, however inconvenient that might have been for me.

For example, if we agreed to have a lesson on 18th December at 12.00 noon, he would either not schedule on that day or on that time and update the scheduling calendar app with another date or time and then he would say it was my mistake, we never agreed.

I always thought perhaps I didn’t hear well or I forgot or maybe it’s just my mistake, or I just didn’t want to annoy him.

I Started Standing Up for Myself

But then, at the end of this year, I decided enough is enough and I am finally going to stand up for myself. I wrote this article on what I am letting go of this year.

I decided I am letting go of all the fear of what other people will think and feel. I am letting go of all the suppression and repression which actually harms me.

So this time, I checked my WhatsApp messages and read that indeed I have proof of whatever I said. I challenged him by forwarding his text message and proved to him that he was lying and I was no longer going to take his shit.

Once I challenged him, his behavior changed completely. Instead of helping me, he made it as difficult as possible.

During the lessons, he wouldn’t tell me what to do or not do, instead, at the end of the lessons, he would give me a lecture on how awful I had been driving and how I was going to fail the exam.

It took away the little bit of courage that I had gained and instead increased my anxiety to many folds. During the entire Christmas and New Years’ vacation, I was suffering from high anxiety, because I just have never learned how to deal with difficult people.

My exam was scheduled for the third week in January, but at the beginning of December, I realized I am absolutely not prepared for the exam and I asked if we could re-schedule it to a later date. He told me it was too late and couldn’t be re-scheduled anymore.

So I scheduled as many lessons as I could for the first three weeks in January. Now I am also working full time and it’s a new job. Taking a lesson every day during the workday is quite challenging, especially since I am part of a team, and I have to be present in all those meetings.

This added to my stress because I didn’t want to jeopardize my new job by being absent for some time of the day every day. So I decided I would tell my team about my absence and how I planned to make up for the lost hours by working in the evenings or on weekends.

I Fell Sick

Unfortunately, I fell sick. We spent Christmas in Germany with our close friends whom we think of as family, and then we went to Paris for a mini vacation. I wrote in this other article, how disastrous that trip was. I came back home feeling terrible.

I had all the symptoms of Covid, however, repeated tests showed negative results. After two weeks of continuous fever and all sorts of complaints, I gave my doctor a call and he sent me to the hospital to run a few tests.

In the meantime, I canceled my lesson. My instructor thought I was lying, so he said he would still charge me for this. I didn’t cancel the next lesson thinking that he wouldn’t believe me, but when he saw me, he realized how sick I was and canceled the lesson.

He said that he would still have to charge me unless I showed a Covid positive test result or a doctor’s letter. I didn’t argue with him on this, although I was wondering when he canceled on me so many times right before the lesson, what options did I have.

Fortunately, my doctor’s office sent me a detailed report of my lab result and my symptoms.

But he canceled all the further lessons that we had planned except for the exam. Now I had no way of passing this exam if I didn’t take any of those lessons.

When I met my therapist online for my therapy, she checked the website of the driving exam for me and told me that the exam could have been canceled by my driving school (and only by the driving school — this is a weird policy in the Netherlands) two weeks before the exam.

So my instructor could definitely have rescheduled the exam in the first week of December when I initially requested and even in the first week in January when he heard I was sick. But now there was no time.

And even though my instructor canceled all the lessons, the driving school kept on sending me reminders of bills, to pay for all those lessons that I didn’t take and now have no time to take, before the exam.

They bombarded me with emails and then with WhatsApp messages. I repeatedly told them that they have canceled my lessons and I am going to lose my money on the exam as well, that I actually paid more than the number of lessons and it should be me who is supposed to get back the money.

They just ignored my message and kept on sending me messages to pay up the bill.

On the contrary, my instructor sent me a message and asked me to call the exam office and tell them that I have a Covid positive, which I didn’t have.

Instead of improving, my health actually deteriorated. Even after so many days, I still had the fever, I didn’t sleep at all, my head was pounding, I had a throbbing headache, I had no energy to even get up and I felt like shit. I lost many days of work.

My Friend’s Death

To make the matter worse, I lost a good friend to cancer. There are very few people in this world whom I can look up to and admire. She was one of them.

I knew she was fighting her battle against cancer but I didn’t know it would be so soon.

The news came like a bombshell. It made me feel weaker and made me believe that good people are taken away from us very early in their lives.

Analysis of The Situation

Before the situation went out of control, I decided to analyze my problem. I had frailing health — true. I needed complete rest. My chronic pains and disorders made it more complicated. But the real culprit, I realized, was my anxiety

I sat down with a pen and paper and started writing down whatever was bothering me. The analysis of my problems shocked me. The three reasons that bothered me the most are:

Money

Learning to drive in Europe (at least in the Netherlands and Germany) is extremely expensive.

Unlike the US, where you can drive with a license holder after you have a learner’s license (you get a learner’s license after you clear your theory exam), you are not allowed to do so in the Netherlands.

I have already spent over 6000 Euros (yes you read the number of zeroes correctly) and yet I am nowhere near the finishing line. This bothered me a lot.

The exam cost another 300 Euros (approximately) which I was going to lose. I was also reminded to pay the bills of all those unused lessons, and that seemed like a threat to me.

I didn’t know if my driving school would send me a legal notice for not paying that bill, although I had no contract to pay for those lessons which I didn’t use.

I even wondered, if instead of wasting all that money on the lessons, I could have simply taken an Uber. Sometimes, we miss simple solutions.

In the end, I decided if I have been able to spend so much money already, how does some more money matter? It’s after all not a matter of life and death.

Yes, it’s hard-earned money, but it’s my life that matters more. I can let go of that money and free up my mind from anxiety.

Trust

I trusted my instructor despite all these and didn’t check the website myself. That made me feel betrayed.

I also felt stupid that I trusted him. I blamed myself for being so naive. He kept on lying and I kept on believing him.

I even regretted standing up for myself, because I thought that is what started the problem.

Shame

Out of all these problems though, what bothered me the most was, shockingly — the shame of failing an exam.

Our societies constantly push us to succeed and failure is often looked down upon. I don’t know about the western world, but this is way more prevalent in Indian society where we as children are constantly pushed, where failure is rarely an option.

Our parents and teachers would give examples of ‘good’ students and failures are looked down upon. The stress that society puts on success creates anxiety and depression and that’s why there is such a high suicide rate amongst teenagers in India.

So I grew up with the thought that I cannot fail. No matter what, failing is not an option.

That’s why I was appalled by the thought of my impending failure. I was imagining the cruel comments of people about my failure — how much fun they will have at my cost.

And how they would prove their point — that I am stupid.

Building Shame Resiliency

The next few days, I thought a lot about my feeling of shame and realized I needed to do something before this took over me.

Coincidentally, I read a book named ‘I Thought It Was Just Me’ by Brene Brown that is about how adversely shame affects our lives.

I began my journey of shame resilience.

If people make fun of me, does that say anything about me or them? I had my answer.

Then why should I be bothered about what they have to say?

Why would I let something as insignificant as failing an exam be so crucial in my life as if this is life or death?

We promote this picture of successful people in the world, but not so much about the common unsuccessful people.

We talk proudly about all those people who conquered Mount Everest. How many of us know any stories of the failed attempts?

We also have this attitude that we would rather be martyrs than come back as a failure. But we forget to ask a big question — WHY? Shouldn’t we focus more on our effort?

It’s important to remember that we began our journey and that we tried, success or failure is not important.

Those who have to make fun of me would anyways do so irrespective of the fact that I pass or fail. Those people who laugh at me and mock me, don’t feed me or pay my bills. They are not there to support me and help me in my challenges.

So, whatever they think, CAN NOT and SHOULD NOT affect me.

It’s okay if I fail the exam. It’s okay to quit. It’s also okay if I can’t drive. It’s okay to accept failures.

There are things we can do and then there are things that we can’t. It’s okay to accept that all mountains cannot be climbed. It’s okay to accept that not everyone can climb a mountain. That’s absolutely fine.

I am reminding myself that there is no shame in trying. I didn’t give up without trying. It’s the effort that counts.

I would like to extend my thanks to the wonderful Medium community that I have found by sheer luck.

I am grateful to you all: Ashley, Liberty Forrest, Author, Sally Prag, Sumit Kumar, KL Simmons, Sharing Randomly, Yana Bostongirl, Gaurav Jain, Toluwalope Ajetunmobi, Norlisa, Sujona Chatterjee, Sorina Raluca Băbău, Sahelirana, Winston, Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, Mukundarajan V N, Sahil Patel, Lisa Beth Wright

And I want to ask you: Do you have stories of shame and guilt in your lives? Would you like to share that (please feel free not to respond if you don’t want to)? Did it shape your life in any way?

And here’s a very relevant article on asking questions by Sujona Chatterjee.

Thank you for reading my story.

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