I Bailed Out Of The Car Like a Big, Blubbering Sissy

Re-post from archived log

I Bailed Out Of The Car Like a Big, Blubbering Sissy

This past weekend The Big Guy and I took off for a drive to talk undisturbed. I’ll just say it now, whenever we go anywhere together I drive. My belief is that the purpose of driving is to look ahead at the road and identify any potential safety issues and respond accordingly. I’m almost certain that his belief is that driving is an opportunity to sight see. Life is easier for everyone if I take the wheel and it works well for us.

Anyway, we got to what I thought was our destination to turn around and head home. HIS idea was that we continue another fifteen miles up into the mountains to some little town tucked away that until this point I haven’t felt was interesting enough to visit. I have gone back that way through the mountains back in the day when I had my Wrangler and fat tires in the summer and fall. I still hold fond memories of how much fun those days were. This time my internal bells were going crazy thinking what a bad plan this was. It’s spring, dirt roads are mushy, there’s still snow in the mountains. This couldn’t be good. Fifteen miles really means thirty miles because we have to turn around and drive back.

I also know that I am a bit of a drama queen when it comes to some things that involve dirt roads high in the mountains and several hundred feet drop offs right out my window. I like to call it good judgment, others might call it high strung.

When the pavement ended, I triple checked that he really wanted to do this. He PROMISED me the roads would be fine, they hunt back there all the time. The only issue was if I was going to be a sissy about the trip. I sucked it up and tucked any hesitancy deep down inside. I put my game face on and convinced myself that could do it. I HAD to do it.

For the most part the roads weren’t terrible up until the five mile marker. It was a pretty steady 20 mph which was actually pretty good although there were some serious mud ruts, snow piles and large rocks in the road. I expressed my displeasure several times but was staying open to the fact that I should work on improving my tolerance for these types of things. Now if I were in my Wrangler and it were summer or fall this would be one of the most amazing days ever. But I wasn’t in my Jeep. I was in my car. My car that is meant for commuting to work, NOT traveling through the back roads of the mountains during early spring.

We reached a turn off and both agreed it was time to head back. There was a snow storm rolling in and we weren’t totally sure what was ahead of us. I felt like this was a slight victory, maybe I am not so drama after all. He advised me to take a turn off that would get us to where we needed to be and it would take us through another little town. The roads are GREAT, he tells me.

We turned off and it was clear how awful this plan was. After nearly a mile of crud, right in front of me was a giant soup bowl of mud and a giant cliff right off to the side of it. A pickup truck was coming at us. I pulled off into the hillside, they crossed the mud without the slightest incident and stopped to talk. They recommended we not go that way, the roads were rough and the mud reached up about half way on their tires. Their TRUCK tires. My car would have been wrecked for sure. After they left we both agreed to turn around and go back the way we came. I said a silent prayer thanking all those that have come before me to help me stay safe.

The problem was…we had to turn around. In a deep mud puddle. With a cliff off to the side in the middle of nowhere. Nobody knew where we were. I reached my tipping point and I am not proud of this at all. I put the car in neutral, put the parking break on and BAILED. I have never bailed out of a car out of fear but this time I did.

I told him he could turn the car around in the mud pool, he could drive through the past few nasty curves in the road and he could go off the road without me in the car. I had it. I don’t know why but it was absolutely my breaking point. I told him I would run back and meet up with him about a half mile down. He was very concerned but turned the car around without incident and caught up to me on the road. He begged me to get back in the car and I refused. I just couldn’t do it. He finally gave up on trying to convince me and he drove ahead while staying close enough to see me in the rear view mirror. Along the way, a few things popped into my head.

When I was running on the road, my view of the road was much different than it was in the car. In the car I didn’t have total visibility to the ground below, my visibility ended where my dashboard started. My mind was filling in the blanks of what I couldn’t see. It was filling in those blanks with the worst possible conditions and the worst case scenario. The road was not nearly as bad as my mind had made it out to be. The road was wider, firmer and there was plenty of room before anyone would go falling down a cliff in their car.

I also started thinking about boundaries and fear. Initially, my boundary of safe and what I was willing to do was back where the concrete ended. I was able to recognize that boundary was based on nothing but fear of the unknown and the what if’s. At that point in time based on the information I had, that fear was unreasonable and unfounded. I pushed past my fear and I hung in there until the voice of reason (and hysteria) took over.

There is also great importance of recognizing our boundaries and what is holding us to a certain level of comfort and not pushing past in order to grow. Living life fully comes when we push past those things that hold us back, that limit our potential and convince us we shouldn’t do something. Boundaries are also necessary in order to help us stay safe and help us make reasonable decisions. People like comfort, prefer to avoid the road less traveled, whatever it is. There also has to be a tipping point where we listen to those inner voices and use logic to make decisions. Boundaries aren’t inherently a bad or good thing. It’s what we do with those boundaries and how we apply them to living. Sometimes we need to change our lense of how we approach certain things. One view isn't always the best, only or most accurate view. It's just one view. We owe it to ourselves to challenge that view and put on a different lense to help us achieve a goal.