I haven't said this before, but oh my dear god, my cousin's the scariest (a.k.a. most reckless) driver I've ever met. It didn't seem so bad two years ago when I only knew how to change gears (and nothing about actual road conditions) and she gave me a few rides here and there, but now that I've been on the road myself for more than a year, her driving's one of the most terrifying things... no scrap that, make it the only terrifying thing I have to endure on this trip. I can feel my heart pumping real quickly and hear myself taking the deepest breaths whenever she attempts to overtake, whenever she follows so closely behind the rear of another car, or whenever she applies the brakes really late when we meet a red light; we're this close to the behind of the car in front of us (what is with prepositions and me?). I dread it most when she declares that she's in a hurry, because basically, everything happens twice as often.
What I did initially when one or more of the above mentioned happened was to open my eyes as widely as I can, inhale as deeply as I could and grab onto my seatbelt as tightly for dear life as I could. That basically did nothing to help lessen the fear; I was so sure that we were going to crash every single time.
Then I felt like I didn't want to lose 10 years of my life by scaring myself out of my wits every time I get a ride from her, so I thought of the greatest way to deal with it. It's really something along the line of "what you can't see won't hurt you"; I started closing my eyes whenever I felt afraid (that's really like most of the time) while we're on the roads, and it worked more often than not. So it's not really about facing my fear... more like avoidance really. But whatever, I'm going to do that until she stops driving so crazily; and no, I'm not using that as an excuse to catch a few extra winks of sleep.
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