Road Trip?

Tomorrow is a day that we're all home and remarkably not busy. Usually we'd just play in the city proper, but half of it is blocked off because thousands of lunatics like running for fun (Chicago Marathon). We've been batting around ideas, and my roots in Amish Country (Daviess County, Indiana) were brought up. We used to make pilgrimages to where my grandfather was raised so I could clean up my ancestors' graves and get a feel for how they grew up. We'd then head east to a little Amish village to stuff our faces and gawk like the idiots in Weird Al's "Amish Paradise" video.

Except every time I think of traveling long distances, my anxiety rears up.

This is not ideal.

I've been kind of silently battling this shit since the Great Road Trip Snafu of 2015. It comes and goes in various strengths, but it is always there. The sheer willpower it takes me to go even short distances in the car is nothing short of amazing, and I keep hoping that with every trip, this weird thing with  traveling by car will disappear.

It hasn't.

I hate it.

I hate the fact that I have to distract myself so much to even get to the stores in this city. I have a fidget cube and my phone, and they will only work for so long. I can't close my eyes and try to distance myself from the act of traveling in the car because I'm afraid we will get in an accident and I will not be prepared to react. Pills don't help, and I don't have them anyways.

I can't even begin to explain how awful this is for me, and how crappy it is to foist this upon my family. Before I became so crippled by the fear of car travel, I thought nothing of hopping in the car and going whichever way the wind blew us. I happily planned days long trips to California, with little side stops to see random stuff. We'd go see far flung friends. We'd putter around the county.

Now I can't do any of that without a massive force of will and a super elevated blood pressure. I think of excuses for not even driving thirty miles out to get groceries in a cheaper state, even though we're blowing more money by shopping in the city. I think of reasons to stay home, with my shitty fake safeness, making my family suffer from boredom.

I'm so tired of this. I want my fucking life back, and I don't know how to go about it. Do I need therapy? Do I need different medication? Do I need to just go on a really long road trip and face this fucking demon head on?

This is such a stupid thing to have anxiety over, by the way. I know it, you know it, those people over there know it, my cat probably knows it (and is internally laughing). I just...don't know what to do, and it pisses me off. Ugh.