I wish I didn't feel scared, and I wish I didn't feel so embarrassed about being scared. But that doesn't change how I feel, and how I feel about the way I feel.
Why can't I just close my eyes and do it? (Well—not really close my eyes, that would be stupid.) I feel so powerless and weak, and I hate the offhanded nonchalance with which the other foreigners I've met talk about the mode of transport here. "Oh, yeah, you don't need a driver's license." "It's so easy to get a motorcycle here, it's great." "It's fun, it's so dangerous." Why can't I be as equally carefree? Why can't I embrace the fun in the danger?
I guess this fear owes itself to the fact that my experiences driving any sort of vehicle on the road haven't been too extensive; I've driven my mom to and from the supermarket a couple of times in our car in Manila, which involved driving out of the parking lot, driving down Ayaala road (one of the busier roads in Makati) and moving into another parking lot, but I'd driven down a highway a couple of times and decided that driving really wasn't for me.
I guess that was a luxury that I no longer have.
It's weird that something that I'm so uncomfortable with is just not open for negotiation. Maybe it's a sign of how lucky and privileged I've been to have a) lived in a country where most of the driving was done very easily and inexpensively for me, or b) lived in a country with great public transport, or c) lived in a place where I didn't really need to use public transport. Now I'm faced with the reality that if I don't use a personal mode of transportation, I'm cutting myself off completely from self-sufficiency. I can't afford that—both in the rhetorical and literal sense—I need independence.
Here's a picture of me looking exactly how I feel:
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