Don't look at the wall

When I was a high school senior, I was nicknamed Mario Confetti when I wrecked my mother’s beautiful Pontiac Grand LeMans a month after I got my license. I promise that accident was not my fault, but jokes persist. I was not the only person in my school to have this nickname. I shared it with others who deserved it more than I.

I am among the best drivers I know. I was taught behind-the-wheel by the only driving instructor in my small town, Mr. Carr—his real name. Could he be anything else? He is the one who taught me when coming up to a line of cars stopped at a red light, to stop far enough back that you could see where the tires of the car in front of you meet the ground. Does anyone else remember this? People today pull up so close behind me I can’t even see their hood. If someone rear-ends them, guess who will also get hit? Do us all a favor and leave at least a car length of space.

Mr. Carr taught me to “cover the brake” when driving through an intersection, to never change lanes when approaching or in an intersection, and to look left, right, then left again before proceeding past a stop sign.

I never got a speeding ticket until I was in my 50s, and even that one was bogus—a story for another day.

I was the epitome of safety on the road: defensive driver, speed-limit follower, attention payer. I still turn down the radio when the traffic is heavy. I remember driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike once and being horrified when I looked down and saw I was driving 3 miles an hour over the speed limit. I just knew I was going to see flashing blue lights at any moment. Rule-followers-R-us here.

Then a switch was flipped and I became an idiot magnet—still very conscious of safety, but apparently with a big sign on my car saying “hit me.” People just started crashing into my cars through no fault of my own.

On I-95 one day, a guy was in the lane on my right and wanted to do an illegal U-turn on the left, so he slowed a little—but not enough—and swerved left, hitting the back quarter-panel of my car before he dodged through the median and took off in the opposite direction. Where’s a cop when you need one?

Then another day I was sitting at a red light on an overpass in Asheville when the orange Honda Element behind me suddenly lurched forward and hit me hard enough to give me a substantial concussion, then took off down an on-ramp to I-26. I spent the next three years looking at every orange Element I saw for front-bumper damage. I actually sat on my front porch in the following days calling all the body shops in the greater Asheville area, telling my story and asking them to call me if anyone came in with an orange Honda Element. I may have even followed one all the way out to Swannanoa once just to look at the bumper.

Then came the infamous head-on wreck in the mountains of northwest Virginia that opened the floodgates for all the trauma in my life to come gushing out, and here we are.

One of the most troubling aftereffects of all these accidents has been the feeling of never being safe in a car. It helps if I am the driver, but only marginally. I literally always feel unsafe when I am in a vehicle. When I am under any kind of stress, it’s much worse. Like today after our farm helper JK and I had to catch our loose bull and two steers and get them contained inside a fence, and I was driving home after it was all over and every car around me caused a near-panic. When your brain is full of cortisol, it just keeps reacting to everything.

The whole idea of this post came up because I was scrolling Instagram and came across a comment in which Jill Wondel (@jwondel) said, “When my husband took a motorcycle safety class, they told him that the bike goes where your eyes go, so if there’s an obstacle in the road, you need to look where you want to go and keep driving normally. If you look at the obstacle you’ll crash into it.” And then Emily P. Freeman (@emilypfreeman) commented on that, “Mario Andretti! Don’t look at the wall.”

So of course the very first thing I had to do was go look up that Mario quote. After all, I do bear his name (ish). And sure enough, I found out that when he was asked what was his number-one tip for racing, he said, “Don’t look at the wall … Your car goes where your eyes go.” I’m pretty sure I remember learning that about horse jumping too. As you’re going over one jump, be looking at where the next jump is.

I wish someone had told me this five years ago when I became rolling paranoia. One of my early panic attacks after the wreck was when Ben was driving and he started to pass a semi. As our car got just alongside the back of the truck, the box swayed just a little and if it hadn’t been for the seatbelt keeping me plastered in my seat, I would have been in Ben’s lap on the other side of the car. Panic was had.

Since then, every time I pass a semi—which I don’t do unless I feel like I really need to—I find myself staring at the truck’s tires because I am so sure he’s going to drift over the line into my lane and crush me and my 3500-pound car up against the guardrail. As I said, rolling paranoia.

So here’s the practical lesson: If you are nervous on the road like I am, keep your eyes on where you want to go. Don’t get distracted by the things that are happening all around you, and there are a LOT. Remember what Mario said: “Your car goes where your eyes go.”

I feel like this is a whole life lesson for people who are dealing with the effects of trauma. It is so easy to get bogged down in what’s happening right here, right now. The hypervigilance, the anxiety, the stress, the panic attacks, the reactiveness we feel, the self-gaslighting, the fact that people don’t understand why we are the way we are. Sometimes the weight of it all is just too much and it feels like more than we can carry. It’s hard to see past the current circumstances.

But as my friend Tara Dickson (@tara_dickson) says, “Lift up your eyes.”

When you feel like you are driving 200 miles an hour toward the wall, don’t look at the wall. Turn your head and look where you want to go, and the car will follow. Remember, the car goes where your eyes go.

Don’t look at the wall.