Dread, Dread, Dread - Creative Nonfiction

I took a deep breath and tightened my grip on the steering wheel. The quiet inside of the car was so absolute that it was almost tangible, thickening the air inside my lungs. I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel, debating between turning on some music to calm myself down, and driving in that stifling silence because if you’re going to drive alone, NO DISTRACTIONS. I took another deep breath, feeling it rattle within me, and slowly began to make sure everything was in place for my journey. Seat, check. Mirrors, check. Address of the brunch place my friends had picked out, check. As I put my car in reverse, a familiar sinking feeling was settling itself in the pit of my stomach.

When I was about 8 years old, my uncle built a pool. The pool was every kid’s dream; a shallow end that slowly got deeper until it reached 13 feet deep, and a diving board perfect for cool jumps. Or at least, it should be every kid’s dream. As I watched my cousins and sister jump, one at a time, whooping and shrieking with laughter, I felt as if I were on another planet, one where the sun’s warmth and everything that came with it had long since been dissipated by that cold, heavy, emptiness of space. I shivered. Ready? My uncle asked me. I nodded, my pride not letting me back down, but my fear preventing me from answering him. I slowly made my way to that board, dread thickening and thickening. I stood on the board, its rough, wet plastic beneath me, and looked down at the water, imagining it was alive, and waiting to swallow me. Imagined jumping and hitting my head, slipping before I could jump, somehow missing the pool, a million other unlikely scenarios. I felt nothing but that deep-seated dread.

I pulled out of the parking spot, slowly, check your mirrors, don’t forget the turn signal, headed to the first stoplight, feeling the sinking feeling in my stomach slowly dissolve, and checked the time. Shoot. Lunch was supposed to take place at 12, and the place was a 20 minute drive from my house, not counting delays due to poor driving or parking. The time was currently 11:55. No way would I make it in a reasonable amount of time. My thumbs tapped aimlessly on the steering wheel, wondering if there was any chance of making it any time before 12:20. At the red light, quickly, feeling a bit like Indiana Jones if he were a teenage girl who’d never driven alone before and also wasn’t a treasure hunter, I typed out a message apologizing to my friends for my lateness and telling them to order without me. I checked the map, saw that it was essentially a straight shot with some turns, and stiffened my resolve. I could do this. But still, that feeling that something would go terribly, that dread, was stuck in the back of my head like a bad song.

One of the most important pieces of my life is the piano. I’ve played since I was a small child, and I’ve always respected it, liked it, loved it. Playing the piano allowed me to express emotions I had difficulty expressing otherwise, and the feeling of mastering a piece gave me a sense of joy and productivity that was hard to find elsewhere. My Nani, or grandmother, pushed my mother to play when she was a child, and played a large part in fostering this love of mine. I was at my grandparents’ house, playing a piece for her. The piece was difficult, full of hard techniques and multiple voices and the musicality necessary to turn a joyful tone to regret to exuberance. Most importantly, it was Filipino, just like Nani. In my head, screwing up this piece would be akin to insulting her, my ancestors, every music-lover both in my family and in the world, as well as fellow mixed kids. Despite that, I was excited. I loved her old piano with its familiar, comforting tone, I loved the piece, I loved my culture, and I loved her. I started out, feeling electric despite my worries, my joyful tone merging with the piano’s warm one, nailing the intro. I missed a note, but who doesn’t? I transitioned into the more regretful mood, but everything was going wrong. I was playing too quickly, the different voices were merging together, I kept hesitating. Any attempts to fix this horrible play-through seemed to be failing miserably. I didn’t dare look up at my grandmother. The excitement that had made me feel so electric just a few seconds ago had so quickly given in to the dread, cold and cloying.

I’d been driving for some time now. I’d somehow managed through a six-way intersection, successfully left-turned, checked for bikes, refrained from killing pedestrians, done everything I could to not be a bad driver. Things were looking up for me. Just a straight shot, one right turn, and I’d make it. Of course, everything began to go wrong. Music slowly streamed into my car. Crowds of people swarmed in front of me. With trepidation, I looked as far ahead of my car as possible and saw the worst. A street festival was blocking the street I needed to go down. At the intersection before the street festival, I turned left, into a completely empty lane, checking my map to see where I could possibly reroute myself. I felt cold. I barely knew how to navigate myself with the assistance of my car’s GPS. How was I supposed to reroute myself? As I checked my map, my heart stopped. The street I was turning onto was a one-way street, according to my car’s map. I was not going the one-way. I felt as if my senses had stopped working, but I was still shivering. That cliff’s edge feeling that accompanied that dread—the feeling right before you jump off the diving board and into the roiling water, the feeling right before you look up at your grandmother’s disappointed face, was gone now, and I couldn’t tell if I had kept my head and was calmly reacting to a situation I was woefully unprepared for or if I had jumped and was drowning, drowning, drowning.

I pulled over. There was nothing else to do, nothing else I could do. I thought of my friends in the diner, a five-minute drive from me, joking about what I could possibly be up to. Breathed for a beat. Two. Assessed my situation as my ability to feel slowly came back to me, but quickly, before the dread could come back. Sure, the car had this street labeled as a one-way, but there were no signs, nothing that marked it as one. The cars parked in front of my pulled-over one were facing the same direction I was. I was pretty sure that meant the lane went that way too, but for the life of me I couldn't actually remember. But no cars were going down my lane, so, after searching for any one-way or do-not-enter signs and coming up empty, I made the tactical decision to continue down that residential street, turning at my first possible opportunity. Before I had fully processed it, I was out.

I looked up at Nani, resisting the urge to say how I was just nervous or simply replay the parts I screwed up the most. But she didn’t look disappointed, or offended, or angry. Instead, her face impassive, she just said that it was lovely. We both knew she was lying. She sat down on the bench next to me, and placed her hands, weathered with time and strain, but still beautiful, still familiar, on the keys. I remember how I could play when I was your age. I was good, sure, and I liked it enough, but I wasn’t good like you. She started telling me stories about the Philippines, my mother, everything, but my mind was still stuck on that. Wasn’t good like me? I had just played horribly! I felt as if anyone would be better than me. Wasn’t she disappointed? But then, slowly, as that dread was warmed up, dissolved by Nani’s voice and stories and love (though it didn’t disappear completely), I realized that that wasn’t the point. Sure, I had played like absolute trash, but Nani wasn’t, from what I could tell, disappointed, and didn’t think that I sucked as a pianist. I’d disappointed myself, sure, but it wasn’t like I was going to stop playing, or stop loving the piano. I’d just get better, maybe master the piece, maybe never play it again. Either way, it seemed ironic, funny, even, that I felt so much less dread post royally screwing up than I did pre screw-up.

Parallel parking on the side of a road, even a residential one, was what the me from 15 minutes ago thought would be the thing to max out her anxiety-o-meter. Thankfully, after that maybe driving down a one-way street debacle, my anxiety had remained at a steady oh god what did I just do level. My limbs still felt like ice. Anyway, parking went fine. I found a nice, large spot, and after the minute or so it took me to not-quite parallel park, I was lined up with the curb so well that I couldn’t have done a better job if I had brought a ruler. As I stood on the sidewalk, admiring my beautiful parking job, I felt the sun melting the dread that never fully left me. Oh god. I had done it. I had really done it, and now I got to eat lunch with some of my favorite people and talk about how oh my god you won’t BELIEVE what I just did. Maybe it was the prospect of that lunch, or the sun, or just me, but I broke into a run, and it felt like flying.

I walked into the lunch place, panting from my grueling thirty-second run, wincing a bit at my friends’ exclamations of where were you, smiling at their smiles. As I told them my story and listened to their similarly disastrous ones (when I first drove, I curbed the car! Well, it took me twenty minutes to parallel park!), I felt myself unwind, slowly, eating some of the best french toast in Chicago at an equally glacial pace. After lunch we laid down on a patch of grass right in the sun, no shade in sight, and I felt the warmth of it all on my skin, through my veins, in my heart. When it was finally time to leave, I didn’t feel a pit in my stomach, or ice in my veins, or dread, dread, dread. I just texted my mom, took one, two deep breaths, nervous, but ready, and went on my way. This was going to be fine.

I looked up from the water, hyped myself up for a second or two, and just jumped. I was all fear for a moment, a scream clawing itself up my throat, until I hit the water. The coolness of it hit me like a sudden summer rainstorm and I opened my eyes. Everything was all bubbles and light and I could see my family just a few feet away, hear the muffled sounds of their chatter and laughter. I tilted my head up, watching the sun stream through the water, transforming the world above me from defined trees and clouds and sky to just colors and shapes, and felt that I had become all color, shape, light. The freedom was exhilarating. I couldn’t suppress a grin, so wide a bubble escaped from my mouth. As I rose to the surface, I knew the first thing I’d do was run to the board and do it all again, with or without that dread.