When explaining my illness and how it makes me feel, especially in regards to other people, I often use what I like to call the \u201cMy Car is a Piece of Crap\u201d metaphor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I mean by that is: Imagine you\u2019re traveling down the highway. Your wheels are flat, so the car wobbles. The engine is old and rusted and grinds as if it\u2019s about to fall apart on you. The windows won\u2019t roll down, and it\u2019s hot out, so you just sit inside, sweating profusely. The muffler fell off, so it\u2019s so loud you can\u2019t even listen to music, if the radio even worked cause it\u2019s a piece of crap, so of course it doesn\u2019t. And, to top it all off, the windshield is cracked, so you have to stare through a small spot where you can see. In other words, you\u2019re basically driving an old rusted can down the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a 33-year-old man who had to buy my own first car, an old Jeep that my brother and I had to each had to share because we could only buy it with our combined money, I can say that I\u2019ve experienced driving the sort of above-described car and to say that driving it around, especially on the highway, can often be an exercise in controlled anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Probably most people wouldn\u2019t feel that anxious with the above-described scenario, so imagine that you have <\/em>to get somewhere. It\u2019s imperative that you drive an hour or an hour and a half away in this rust bucket and you have to make it back. You have nobody you can call to bail you out and you have no money to pay for a tow. You\u2019re on the very edge of everything falling apart and if your car falls apart on you then you\u2019re gonna be walking home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n