So my girlfriends and I were chatting about our upcoming family vacations and we all agreed that we are much more stressed out in the car since having children. I don't mean the "my kids are screaming and I've listened to Wheels on the Bus 432 time" stressed out, I mean the irrational feeling that someone's going to rear end us at any minute, wiping out my whole family while I walk away unhurt kind of stressed out.
Before Ellie was born, I worked just inside the Capitol Beltway in lovely Largo, MD. The Capitol Beltway is the Thunderdome of commutes - it's kill or be killed out there. Before that, I drove in Boston, where the roads seems to have been laid out according to some evil Southern plot to kill as many Northerners as possible. I'm was not a timid driver. But then I got pregnant and something happened... I turned into my mother.
My mother has spent most of her life employing a passenger brake on my father's cars. They started dating in high school, and though I have no proof I'd be willing to bet that my father's "adventurous" driving probably affected her ability to stay completly upright in the passenger seat. Susan Moran, in addition to her many other talents, has the ability to completely disappear in a car. At least, if you're following my parents, you'll notice that my mom's head starts out at a normal height and as the speed increases, her head gets lower and lower in the car and eventually, somewhere around 50mph, poof! She plumb disappears.
Anyway, I've digressed, as per usual. So I was talking to some friends about this terrible anxiety I have in the car and I said that I was considering asking my doctor for a prescription for Xanax. I've never taken any anti-anxiety medication, but pretty much everyone I know has taken Xanax for some reason or another, so why not me? Trish, being the tried and true friend she is, right away offers to give me a couple of her Xanax so I wouldn't have to go to the doctor. I mean, is there a better friend than one who will share her prescriptions with you? I don't think so. During this conversation, I also remembered that I owed Trish money for something unrelated. So as we're parting ways, I tell her that I'll have her money at school pick up and she responds with "Okay, I'll bring the pills then too". Quickly, I realized that it would sound like to anyone overhearing that part of the conversation that Trish was my dealer and we would go to jail. Luckily, no one seemed to notice, and Trish sure enough did bring me a couple Xanax to "smooth the edges".
I did take one of "mommy's little helper" on the way to our family reunion in Shenandoah, and spent a while in a sort of haze... until I realized we'd gone the wrong way around the Beltway cause I was stoned and told Jeff to go east instead of south. I sobered up and started to pay attention then.
A couple days later, I was being followed by a cop and it dawned on me that the pills were still in my purse and if the nice police officer decided to pull me over and somehow got it in his head to search me, I'd be arrested for possession. So I drove very carefully, or gently since I am from Maryland, and came home and threw the pills away.
Between sounding like a druggie, screwing up the directions, and worrying about cavity searches, I decided that anti-anxiety medication makes me anxious.
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