Fear of: Smashing into the Divider on the Freeway

While cruising in the fast lane of 101 in Northern California, it's particularly difficult to ignore the grey concrete dividers protecting you from oncoming traffic. Smooth, innocuous blocks are strategically placed in the center of traffic merely to remind you that you're a lot closer than you think to equally foolish drivers speeding along, heading in the other direction. They are there only for your safety, and should be viewed as perspective and panic attack providing on your trip down an otherwise overwhelmingly large highway. However, please attempt to overlook the realities of you driving in the furthest over left-hand lane at a healthy 85 mph while endless porous, mundane concrete slabs snap by, ever closer to your car door. Not to mention, you are but three seconds away from the sharp hairpin turn where everyone from your high school class (as far as you know) has encountered a follied death because they had to hear that 50 Cent song just one more time?! One uncontrolled twitch of your steering column and, ta-dah! Awesome you, hamburger meat you is pleased to make your acquaintance.

Everyone knows the feeling of terror that washes over them when they've looked down to attend to a small task. Changing the radio station, grabbing the drink, adjusting the fly. Then suddenly the car is veering too far to the left and the only option left is to jerk the wheel to the right in an attempt to safe (yes, safe) oneself! The clench in your throat and the rise of the hairs on your neck are only momentary, just long enough to cause complete silence in your brain so it can react without hesitation. You feel weightless. A complete suspension of reality begins and then quickly ends, where you're carefully watching a multi-dimensional you correct the course of your car just before you strike the wall. It's terrible, and fascinating, and absolutely addictive. In fact, that moment is almost liberating. But only if you approach it just right. Say, from the safety of your couch as you dive off yet another highway -- in Vice City. Or if you're an adrenaline junkie, with a nylon sheet and reinforced rope hooked to your shoulders as you "parachute" out of a plane at 15,000 feet. But, funny enough, even with all the freedom and calm that occurs in that split second, it's the moments after the adrenaline rush, the minutes when you can taste the acrid terror in your mouth and the sweat forming on the small of your back, which are the moments you remember the most.

I don't know about the rest of you, but every time something like that happens, I can't help but remember everything I wish I'd done and completed by that moment. It usually occurs as follows:

I want to be successful and rich beyond my wildest dreams. I want to be the next Anna Wintour, except with a soul and a really awesome family (oxymoron). It'd be kind of fun if someone pointed out I'm the next undiscovered Giselle Bundchen. While I'm at it, it'd be really fun if someone pointed out I'm the next Coco Chanel, too. I want my unwritten, unthought-of script to achieve worldwide acclaim without ever having put pen to paper (or more realistically, fingers to keyboard) and without any kind of production into a film necessary. I want to have children who I love and adore, and who I don't want to strangle slowly. I want two puppies who will grow old together, and then as they are wobbling on their bony legs into doggie old age, they will meet a new puppy who will fill the roll of "ickle one" who they shall care for and befriend. I want a beautiful graduation (for once), two wonderful weddings for both my brother and myself, and many other happy, unforgettable occasions for my family, friends, and even acquaintances who I will only write cards to and think of both fondly and rather un-fondly.

Oh yeah, I want my Pulitzer.

I want to reconcile with old enemies, but not without telling them off first, and I want to stand up for something I really give a damn about and know that I've made a difference by either personally giving an organ, my life's work, or life's blood to them, and if not any of that, than millions of dollars (which by that time will be little to nothing in the great sum of my wealth). I want to have a full life, that no one can tell me is bad or wrong because even if they do, I will know without a doubt that I have done the best I can. And I want to get my mom that flat in Hong Kong that I've been promising her since I was 18, so she can live the high life she's always deserved and may frolic among the young, restless, and relatively pedantic socialites that I find so amusing.

In a moment, all those thoughts flash across my mind while my eyes jump from the road in front of me, to the divider at my side. For some reason, it still happens every time I do that momentary jerk with my steering wheel. Perhaps it's my familiarity with death, and loss, and fear that creates such a mish mash overload of images in my mind. Or perhaps it's someone's way of reminding me to be happy with what I have, and to appreciate the little things that make my life so wonderful everyday.

Phobia of the day: Smacking-into-hard-thing-phobia