With the holiday season now sufficiently behind us, we now have the chance to look forward to the beginning of a new college semester – a new year. Throughout the holiday season, I did not incorporate any religious or spiritual practices into my celebrations this year, which made me feel, well, kind of guilty. As a child, I was raised Christian Catholic, and while I did go to Sunday church school and went to church on the obligatory Christmas / Ash Wednesday / Easter, I never felt like Catholicism was the religion for me.

Even now, I’m still on the life journey of figuring out what religion works for me, in which I can feel proud in saying that I celebrate it. At the moment, I do think that there is the potential for there being some sort of higher power out there, but I do not wish to live my life according to it. And, the thing is, it’s always in the most crucial moments of my life in which I feel like I need this higher power’s help.

Earlier last week, I had to drive home from work – the traffic was bad and it was a torrential downpour, making the journey the most hellish two and a half hours of my life. At one point, while driving along, I started sobbing. Although I have had a license for several years, I’ve never had the daily practices of driving until I got my first car last month. Not only am I usually an anxious driver, but driving in the dark is incredibly stressful for me, due to all the lights. So, imagine you’re driving in the dark, with rain coming down fast and hard, and you’re trying to see the lines on the road, but you can’t, because the lights from everything – the streetlights, other cars’ headlights, your own lights – are blurring out the lines. your windshield is fogging up, and no matter what temperature you set your heat / AC to, it won't be clear. What made it was, was I started sobbing… and then I started crying. And then I started praying.

With the enormous stress of having to drive in such horrible conditions for so long, I started having a panic attack. I could feel my lungs tightening, my face getting hot, my throat closing and my breath speeding up. I then began feeling frustrated, because not only was it not fucking wet on the outside of my car, but I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. I thought about pulling over, but then the idea of having to pull back out on these roads made me even MORE nervous. I thought about calling my dad, but I wanted to prove to him that I was a confident driver, and that I could handle it. I wanted also to call my boyfriend, just to have someone to calm me down, tell me I’m going to be okay, and to guide me through driving, but I just… couldn’t. I thought of what good it would do – and honestly? If I just knew I was going to be okay, then I’d have nothing to be worried about it, and no phone call could help that.

So, instead, I started crying more, and said to myself, while crawling at 30mph down Storrow Drive, “please, god help me, someone please. I can’t do this, please, I just want to be okay. I don’t want to die”. Looking back, I know it was my own anxiety speaking, but it felt comforting in knowing that there was a higher power, a force that would see to it that my car wouldn’t be a pretzel around a tree.

Eventually, I did make it home, and yes, I did joke about sobbing in my car in the rain to everyone, but when I think about it, I feel like it needed to happen. I feel like every once in a while, I need some sort of reformation that I’m going to be okay, and that there is someone or something looking after me – so, I guess, this is my own sort of religion.