It’s almost midnight. My feet ache, I’m sweaty and I stink
of beer.
This scenario isn’t as fun as it sounds. I’ve been to my
first real shift at work. Since I quit the job I had in sixth form (I worked in
a pound shop. It was a hell hole,) Paid positions, or indeed, reasons to be on
my feet for six hours at a time have been few and far between.
So this is a bit of a shock to the system. This whole week
has been a shock to the system. I’ve gone from a degree to barmaid and
waitressing and from public transport to a car. Do something that scares me? I’ve
been a nervous wreck! I know I’m a very anxious person to the point where it’s
unhealthy, and I know that I have recently been trying to immerse myself in
stressful situations that I have to force myself to keep calm in, but this week
has been daunting to say the least.
My life has changed for the better. I have gone from
spending my year out on benefits to having a job, and from everything taking an
hour longer than it should on the rickety rackety bus to being able to jump in
my car. But these are both huge changes and I have spent all week waking up
with butterflies and every day fighting through them. I am getting through work
okay, even though I got a bit nervous before my shift, but driving is a whole
other issue.
To say I’m not a natural at driving would be an
understatement. It took me almost eighteen months and four tests to get a licence
and on the first day I had my car, I stalled it 12 times. I’ve now had it for
five days and while I am getting much better, the stalls are still daily.
Yesterday, I needed to drive out of town to get to placement and had to go via Middlesbrough
town centre to pick up the girl I work with at placement. I got on and off the
A19 without incident; however, the A66 was a different story. I went in the
wrong lane and ended up at some massive roundabout with many lanes and traffic
lights and loads of lorries, and again, realised I was in the wrong lane and
wanted to move over. I got beeped at and my driving was unsafe at best.
The rest of it was okay, apart from when we got to placement
and it had been cancelled. But I got back to Middlesbrough okay and then set
off for my boyfriend’s and got back onto the A19 and to his really easily. I
even drove him to the supermarket later.
So what difference can 24 hours make? Lots. In a fit of
cockiness, I agreed this morning to drive him to work, back in the dreaded
Middlesbrough that has no easy way of getting into it. We went a different way
to what I had, again because of a lane cock up. So I ended up at another
terrifyingly huge roundabout with loads of lanes and ended up crossing them at
last minute and received lots of angry beeps. Do these people not know I’m
lost?!
It got much worse. On the way back to the A19, that
yesterday I found very easily, I found myself sailing past my turn off. I kept
calm for now and decided to carry on towards Stockton, hoping I could find my
way home from there. I got more and more lost to the point where my driving was
a mess and people were beeping and I ended up trapped in a car park in my
panic. I actually parked up so that I could have a little cry. I couldn’t
believe how lost I had ended up, I was scared and sweating and generally worked
up.
Then I remembered the sat nav and felt incredibly stupid.
Getting home with the sat nav was the easiest thing in the world.
So lesson learned. Until I get more confident, use a sat
nav. I mean, at work or uni, I wouldn’t just carry on doing something I knew
was wrong and let it get out of hand and even more of a problem, I’d ask for
help. So for the foreseeable future, even to go places that in theory I know
how to get to, I will be using the sat nav.
I have since driven to work to check if the folder I was
meant to take home was there, back home to get changed, back to work for my
shift and back home again with no dramas. Like a lot of things, driving is
learn by doing, and when the idea of doing scares me, I just have to man up and
do it anyway and eventually, I’ll be able to do it without thinking about it
and will wonder what all the fuss was about and hopefully won’t have need to
cry in car parks.
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