As you can tell by the title of this post, I failed my driver's test for the first time today, and I'm distraught to say the least.

All my driving school instructors were so confident that I would pass, and all my family members told me of course I'll pass on my first try. Even I thought I would do okay.  I probably would have gotten a few minor errors, but I felt like I would have still passed.  But of course, the universal balance was not in my favor today.

When I first started driving, I was terrified because I'm literally controlling a death machine. Fun Fact: I'm also in therapy for anxiety and depression, so I'm literally stiff at the wheel. Eventually I got over my fear of driving, hitting other people, getting into a crash, etc. and I found driving to be fun. But it was also kind of a necessity for me to drive because the uni I'm starting in 2 months is kinda far for public transit.  Now that my backstory is out of the way, let's start with the events of the day leading up to my failure.

I had cereal for breakfast this morning.  Bad idea.  For some reason in the past year or so I've started becoming slowly lactose intolerant.  Don't ask me why, but I did.  Usually, I would feel okay, but as soon as I started driving to my driving school as a warmup for the test, I started feeling it.  My griping stomach.  As soon as I got to my school, I made a beeline for the bathroom.  Not the best way to start the day.  Note to future self: On very important days, DON'T HAVE MILK.

My driving instructor drove me and another student to the test together.  He was making it hugely obvious that he was nervous, and while I was controlling my nerves, I couldn't help but feel like he was making me even more nervous.  While waiting in line, I was playing a game that would calm me down, but I still felt my nerves a little.  When it wasour turn, the guy went first.  I timed him, and his test was only 3 minutes long!  I thought for sure he had failed!  But he smiled and told me it was easy.  So I think to myself, "Oh if Nervous Wreck passed, then I probably have a good chance.  And the test won't take very long for me either.  This will be quick."

Of course, I immediately felt my anxiety come as I sat in the car, because this test examiner is about to determine my entire life. If I don't pass this test today, I wouldn't be able to drive to school in 2 months because appointments for tests filled up already for the summer. Not to mention my parents are expecting me to pass.  And to top it off, the examiner had a man in the back of the car whom she called "my supervisor, he's just here to watch me."  No pressure!  No matter, I fix my mirrors and everything and I pull out.  She hasn't recorded anything, so I'm good for now!  Slow and make my turn at the stop sign, fine.  I turn a few more tiimes, making sure I'm braking early and accelerating evenly, and she hasn't made any notes on me yet.  Great!

Until I have to makes a left turn at a 4-way intersection where my side and the one across from me are the only two with stop signs, and I can't see with the parked cars at the curb.  So I inch up slowly until I can see and lean forward making sure I make a point to show that I'm watching carefully.  Cars come and go, but I spend too long because I wanted to wait until I'm absolutely clear (I was being TOO cautious). I let a car from a block away go past me, then my examiner says, "In the future, just quickly make your turn before that car comes or else you'll be stuck in a rut," and she tells me to go. So now I'm MORE anxious because 1) my examiner just talked to me other than to give me directions and 2) I just ed up so badly that she NEEDED to talk to me!

But I keep going, I do my broken U-turn without trouble (looking every which way I possibly can), and then I get to parallel parking.  Now, lately my parallel parking has been suffering because I usually end up too far from the curb so I would have to fix it, which isn't a problem because I know how to fix it and I'll just be docked a few points and that will be that.  But this time, for the first time in all my driving, I'm too close and I HIT THE FREAKING CURB, which is automatic failure.  I'm praying to God that I'm wrong and that my mirror is just playing tricks on me, but my examiner tells me "You're on the curb," but not to pull out.  At this point I'm panicked to a point where I'm convinced that I've already failed and I can't do anything about it, so I try thinking of any way for me to at least get myself off the damn curb and straight so that maybe the examiner will have mercy on me and overlook it.  At this point in my memory, I can't remember what maneuvers I even tried because I had blanked out from my anxiety, and next thing I remember is stopping to give up and the examiner says "Now both your wheels are on the curb.  Okay, pull out."  And I'm done.

For the next hour or so, I face people who ask me what happened, tell me how it's totally unlike me to hit a curb when parking, and try to console me.  I didn't want consoling.  I didn't need to be told that "It's okay, 90% of people don't pass on their first try," or that nerves are the reason a lot of people fail.  I was too busy trying to keep myself from crying in public to look strong while my mind is a mess thinking of all the things that have now gone wrong now that I've done the highly unlikely thing of failing my test.  Let's unravel the mess of my simultaneous chain of thoughts into coherrent words from least to most complex:

1) No license means I can't just take my parents' car and go out alone for even just a few minutes without worrying that a cop will pull me over and find out I'm driving with just a permint unattended.

2) Now Mom and Dad will have to shell out mmore money on lessons because you didn't pass this time, and Dad is already complaining that all you know how to do is spend money, imagine shelling out another $300 because you failed a test you were supposed to pass the first time.

3) No license means that I won't be able to get a car soon because I won't have the license to drive it, which in turn rejects my independence because I'll still have to use my parents' cars to leave the house which is only a limited window since my Mom works half the day and does paperwork at home the next half, and my dad is MIA with his car for the entire day.

4) No license means I won't be able to drive to my new university in 2 months because I would have to take a car (which I won't be able to get as noted before) with a valid driver's license (that I don't have) on a highway for 30 minutes every day back and forth, and since I have none of those at the moment and the next available test date is towards the end of September, AFTER classes have already started, I have no other choice but to have to take public transit for that time, which will take waaaay too long every day for 3 weeks before I retake that test that I'm not even confident that I'll pass anyway and the cycle will continue.

5) This woman hands me my test results on a little reciept thing and makes me sound like I did a terrible job when the only mistakes I made were being too cautious and driving over the curb.  She listed that she docked me for all the infractions that were 10 points and 15 points, including how I have "poor steering control," poor engine control," "delayed/abrupt braking," "abrupt acceleration," "poor observation skills" when turning and making my U-turn, and a whole list of other things that I KNOW I didn't screw up, plus the curb thing, resulting in 70 PENALTY POINTS out of 100.  And even know rationally I know I didn't do any if not all of those things because I know I made a point of looking around like a headless chicken and I made sure to accelerate slowly and brake slowly, I now feel like I at driving and I need to be taught the basics of driving all over again.

6) It's obvious that I didn't pass because I was too nervous to be in a car with someone who is testing me on my ability to drive even though I know I'm not a terrible driver I'm just overly cautious at times and that pisses people off.  No matter how hard I tried to tell myself that the way I feel with this examiner is the exact same unfamiliar feeling I get when I get a new instructor from my driving school and this is just them evaluating me at first run and that it shouldn't intimidate me, because I made this one stupid mistake with a stupid TURN I let myself get nervous on something that I knew I was shaky with which made me do the one thing that I never thought I would do and fail my test.  I'm so convinced that because of my testing anxiety and anxiety surrounding this whole process in general, I'll never be able to get over my anxiety.

7) Everyone and their mother was so convinced that I was going to pass this test the first time since I'm not a reckless driver, I'm a good virtuous child, I've never failed a thing in my life (other than a few school exams but those are minor things), and as a result (as my mom says since I'm just like her) I will always succeed because I can't fail anything.  I was feeling so pressured by this that I don't even know how to break it to my parents that I've failed my test, and when I DID text both of them while I was going back home that I had failed, both of them thought I was joking with them.  So now I have fallen short of expectations that not only other people put on me, but also expectations of MYSELF, and now I feel like I'm a disappointment and failure, and that's how my parents will secretly look at me even if they won't say it.  And even if I'm supposed to be assured by the fact that not everyone passes the first time, the majority of people around me (my parents included) DID pass the first time and now I feel like I don't belong with this family since I didn't pass my first time like they did.

To make a long string of thoughts short, my confidence is completely crushed now, all my plans are completely ruined, I feel like a disappointment to my family, and I feel like no matter how much I know what to do and how much I practice driving, I'll always mess up because testing in general makes me nervous.  I start walking everywhere home in extreme heat whereas I could've taken buses to minimize walking, just because I'm depressed and I feel dead on the inside. By the time I get home I sit in my closet and I start doing this thing where I sob for 30 seconds and then stop and then start sobbing again and stop and so on until I'm cried out and start playing Mario Kart for the first time since I got my Nintendo Switch (because I'm too preoccupied with the new Zelda game).  Then mom calls me from work and asks if I'm joking and I start sobbing on the phone again, but then she starts telling me how tired she is from work, and I just shut up because she already has her own problems and she's too tired to deal with a broken child-who-just-turned-legal right now.  Thinking about all of these things makes me almost have panic attacks.  I mope until dinner, but then my dad plays this stupid joke behind my back where he puts my favorite stuffed animal on top of the ceiling fan.  And then I lose it again.  I tried to hold back but I started ugly sobbing in the middle of my living room.  And now I'm convinced I'm bipolar on top of my other issues.

My parents start talking me down and lightening the mood.  My dad tells me how he parallel parks to help me, and my mom calls the driving school so she asks them to search for cancellations so I can retake the test as soon as possible before school starts.  And for a while I'm fine again.  But then dad takes me out to drive and tries to tell me how to parallel park his way.  And I fail. Miserably.  No matter how many times he talks me through it and has me pull out and back into the same space, I always hit the curb again. And again. And again.  Until I'm close to tears again and I demand to just go home.  And now my mom has had enough with me as she tells me that I need to grow up, that I can't keep crying whenever things don't go my way because this is barely even a failure in comparison to the rest of the things in life that I will inevitably fail at.  I tell her she's being insensitive because she can't expect me to just pick myself up and dust the off when it happened in the same day.  She agrees but still stands with the rest of her beliefs.

So now, first of all if you've made it this far, damn thanks. But now, I think for me to move on from this misery, I need to reframe my state of mind.  And I'll start by refuting all of my previous thoughts to myself:

1) Cops can't tell if you're doing something wrong unless you look nervous, and you've been driving by yourself for the past few months and nothing has happened yet.

2) They will be willing to pay for lessons because they know it's necessary.  And if not, then they will gladly teach you and schedule tests for you just so you don't have to pay for renting the car from the school.  Mom even said she'll try to take off work for your next test.  They care about you too much for you to worry about this.

3) I'm sure mom and dad will still look for a car for you, they won't want to wait until the school year starts when things start getting busy to start car shopping again. It might just be delayed a little more.  Besides, the only place you have to go is the gym, therapy appointments, and music lessons every week.

4) Hopefully, this won't happen because hopefully a cancellation will come up in August or something and you'll pass the test this time!  If not, it's just 3 weeks of hustling and missing one day of classes, not the entire semester.  But, it will be expensive, so the parents will have to pay for transportation every day.

5) You know you're a good driver, because the examiner didn't dock you on these things while you were driving.  Besides, she only had to list all of those things to jusify you automatic failure into the computer system.  You don't at driving, you're a great driver, you were just nervous.

6) All you probably need to work on is driving with more confidence so you don't seem hesitant.  When examiners see that you're nervous, they drive you for longer so you can mess up and they fail you.  It's messed up, but they just want to know you won't freak out on the road.  If it does happen, just remember that the turning was only a few points on the test, as long as you don't make anymore major mistakes, you would still pass.  And now that you hahve experience on the exam, think of this as your practice exam to your first real exam.  People train for SATs by taking mock practice tests.  This is yours.

7) Hey, you probably just had a really ty day. You were unlucky enough to have an examiner AND her supervisor that day.  On the next test, you won't see the same people, and it will just be 2 people instead of 3.  You are your own person; mom and dad and everyone else didn't struggle with anxiety like you did.  Think of what a role model you will be if you pass your test while keeping anxiety at bay!  And just because you don't pass, this test is a one time thing.  It's just like the SAT.  You never have to take it again for the rest of your life.  One day you won't even care about it.  Your score and the number of times you take the test won't matter.  And there are some people who took the test more than once: your aunt, your grandfather, that Korean kid at school and his friend. And a whole bunch of other people.  It's not the end of the world.  Besides, the child who's never failed at anything needs to start failing something!

That's just my rant.  I honestly just did this for theraputic purposes, and I just want to console myself in the way that I know would accept.  I guess I just needed to get all my thouguhts out in writing so I can see the flaw in all my reasoning so I can fix it.  If anyone else is in a rut like I am, I hope you find a way to talk yourself out if you don't have anyone to talk to.  Sometimes you know yourself best.  And you just need to keep moving on.  This experience will just make you stronger.  Give yourself a day or two to get your feels out, but then you have to get back on top and solve your problem.  And remember it's okay to cry no matter how old you are.  A good cry could be all you need.  And think positively.  Sometimes you an trick yourself into doing well by using positive thoughts.

Thank you guys so much for reading, and I'll see you some other time :)

And now if you'll excuse me, now that I have my appetite back at almost midnight, I must go feed my fat cells with unhealthy food.