Hell Yes, I'm Burning my Bridges!!

I'm holding my breath. 

Squeezing the wheel.

My knuckles are white.

I'm Looking straight ahead, careful not to move my eyes an inch. 

Wishing just this once, my peripheral vision was broken.

My heart is racing.

There are beads of sweat on my forehead.

I close my eyes.  WAIT, I'm driving, I can't do that!

My legs being to feel numb.

Tears are streaming down my face.

I think I just peed a little.

Is it over yet?  No?  How about now?  Almost done?  Can I start breathing yet?  No? Why? Hurry Up! 

Please just get over this mother fucking bridge!

I cannot be the only human on the face of this earth that has the most ridiculously unreasonable fear of traveling over bridges.  Can I?  Seriously, I sometimes try and get out of going places that require me to travel over bridges.  What?  I have to cross a river, a lake, a fucking bayou?  Hell no, I'll stay home.

Of course, if it's the beach I'm traveling to, I'll go.  I have friends.  My friends have Xanax.  Xanax is good.

Guess what?  Wednesday AND TODAY, I didn't get to take that Xanax.  I WAS THE DRIVER AND ALONE. 

I decided I was going to see my brother and his wife since they were going to be in St. Louis for the week which, is 1800 miles closer to me than usual.  I can drive 600 miles to see them sure!  When my husband map quested my route for me he failed to mention that I had to travel over a damn bridge.  Had he NOT failed to mention it, I might have stayed my ass home, Not only have I traveled over one bridge but now, it's been THREE bridges, in THREE days, ALL ALONE!!  Not cool at all. 

It all started 22 years ago.  1989. The Loma Prieta Earthquake.  As a child, bridges never bothered me.  I lived in California and the Golden Gate bridge was traveled over by me at least a hundred times.  The bay bridge.  No big deal.  Really it wasn't a problem.  But when the earthquake hit there was so much devastation.  I wasn't anywhere close to the area that had the worst damage.  In fact, I lived 3 hours away.  I mean, we still felt it all the way up in the foothills but, it wasn't until the images of the devastation started pouring in over the Television and the magazines and the newspapers.  My Biology teacher was right in the middle of it.  Thank God, he was not injured.  However, I'm still a little pissed off that he decided he was going to come to class and give us major details of the heroic work he did to free so many people from their cars. 

Their smashed cars.

From the bridges, overpasses and stacked interstates they traveled across. In their cars.

The cars they all thought they were safe in.

It was graphic, and gory and so heartbreaking and scary that I literally haven't been the same since.  Because now I know, I'm going to die in a horrific crash, while traveling over a bridge.  I'll probably still be alive, at least a little bit, and then my car will go careening over the side of a bridge.  I wont have anything sharp in the my glove box so as to bust out my window because I have a car with electric windows and once the car hits the water the electricity will no longer be so god damn awesome because we're so lazy we can't roll our damn windows down so there I'll sit. Clinging to life with major injuries, and drowning because I can't get out of my car, somebody help me!

It's best if I'm not the driver when traveling over bridges.  And if you know that we have to travel over a bridge and I'm driving but, there's a chance that I don't know we are traveling over a bridge but you forget to tell me, I will pull over once across the bridge and punch you in your taco. 

Friends, it's very safe to assume that as a passenger when traveling across bridges, if I'm looking out the window, I've taken 5 Xanax or I'm completely drunk.  If I'm neither of the two then I probably have my head between my legs doing breathing exercises!

But, if I'm the one actually *driving* over the bridge, I'll probably be taking 5 Xanax AND getting drunk very shortly after!!