Tegan Stover

When is the last time you were forced by circumstance into a situation you didn’t want to be in? Did you stand up bravely and confront it, or did you let it drag you kicking and screaming? When you got through it, were you forever changed, or did you fall right back into your old patterns?

A little over a year ago in March 2022, one of my best friends, my ride-or-die, planned to take a trip to Salt Lake City to visit some dear friends before they moved away, and she asked if I wanted to go with her. I hadn’t ever been to SLC, and the only time I had been in Utah was for a trip about half a decade prior to see Zion National Park, and I also hadn’t traveled out of town since before the pandemic started, so I said “Sure!” It was a little weekend trip. We would leave on Friday after I got out of work, and return Sunday afternoon. No PTO required.

Things got off to a decent start. We knew that we wouldn’t get into SLC until very late, although the timing was even more thrown off as I forgot that Utah is in a different time zone than Nevada. Suffice to say, we got in at about 2 or 3 a.m. after a pit stop in St. George for dinner and pretty fun drive of deep conversations and listening to music.

When I woke up in the morning, something was clearly wrong. I had gotten a decent amount of rest, but felt a general sense of malaise. Something felt off. I figured it had to do with sleeping in a hotel room for the first time in years, and that I probably just needed some food and some coffee in my system. We went to a gorgeous, delicious place called The Rose Establishment (absolutely check it out if you’re ever in the area) but things still felt a bit off afterwards. ‘Maybe I just need a nap’, I figured.

Since we brought one car, I dropped off my bestie to visit with her friends and stayed a while to chat with them as well, but opting to excuse myself after a little bit to see if that nap would help, promising to come back and pick her up later and that we could all eat together, my stomach gurgling all the while, the malaise not abating. If you probably couldn’t guess, not only could I not fall asleep, but that weird feeling in my stomach didn’t either. In fact, the feeling in my stomach got worse, turning into nausea, then easing back down a bit. I figured my body was just being sensitive after making a long road trip for the first time in a while. And it was a little sprinkly that day. Maybe that had something to do with it?

Since I had attempted to nap, I hadn’t really had an opportunity to sight-see so I figured that I would try to check out at least one place, opting to go to Trolley Square to check out Weller Book Works since I’m a sucker for used book stores. I got a bottled smoothie while I was at the Square, deciding I’d have that as something light and more friendly towards my stomach, and I would just pick up everyone else’s food, which they were cool with.

However…. When I got to the glass doors leading back out towards the sidewalks I would have to traverse to get to the parking garage, there were huge… chunky… Snowflakes. Not a few. But a LOT. A WHOLE LOT. Huh. Okay, nothing I can’t handle. I could deal with some snow as long as I drove carefully. Snow wasn’t in the forecast, but surely I could deal with it.

By the time I got my books and food to the parking garage, the volume of snow had increased dramatically. I started to panic. I grew up in North Country for the first chunk of my life, but we moved away before I was even remotely old enough to be behind the wheel. All the memories of window scraping and warnings about black ice, but no experience actually driving. Even in Vegas, the most experience I had with driving in inclement weather was dealing with some rain and downpours. Flash blizzard conditions (that were not even remotely forecasted at the time!!), no.

I had two choices. I could freak out and sit in the parking garage and wait who-knows-how-long until the snow abated or until I was forced to move the car due to closing time which was fast approaching, or I could bite my tongue, try to breathe through my fast-approaching panic attack, and drive. I chose the latter, because the former wasn’t really a choice.

The surface streets weren’t the scariest thing in the world, and I was faring okay emotionally, but the part of town where we were staying in, also the same part of town as my bestie’s friends, was about 15-20 minutes away by freeway. The freeway I had no choice but to take. The freeway where the snow and slush were coming down so bad that it was obscuring not only general visibility but the line demarcations for the lanes themselves…

While I sound spirited enough in the video clip above, I drove through the freeways by sheer force of will, accompanied by the occasional scream or sob, and the introduction of a fever and headache, as well as the earlier symptoms I was dealing with coming back not only full-force, but worse. Against my better judgment, I picked up the aforementioned food as well, but by the time I made it back to her friends’ apartment, I was in very poor shape and we had to go back to the hotel room, where I spent most of the initial part of the evening simultaneously dry-heaving and dealing with… gastrointestinal issues, followed by a meager attempt at sleep. Guess who got food poisoning???? ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

You’d think that the snow would have died down at some point, but this was the view outside our hotel room the next morning. We left early and in spite of how awful everything above might have sounded, I actually really enjoyed the bit I saw and did, I mean… Aside from driving through a blizzard. I would love to go back again under better circumstances.

Suffice to say, as harrowing as the whole ordeal was, it got me thinking about what you can do when it comes down to push or shove, something that is all the more of a challenge when you have an anxiety disorder. I would have liked to think that as retroactively inspiring as it was that I would continue with that sense of derring-do (either reluctant OR proactive) and not let my fears get in the way of anything else. But I’d be a liar if I said that I hadn’t fallen back at times since then. But at the times when I choose to be present and have a narrow focus towards something I need to do that is scary or uncomfortable but necessary, this experience gives me tangible evidence that I was capable of it before and that I can do it again, and I’m incredibly grateful. Not for the food poisoning though. Fuck the food poisoning.

Anyways, I hope someone gets something out of this. Here’s what I got out of the ordeal: You don’t always have to put on a brave face to do something brave. You can be scared shitless. You can be crying your eyes out or internally (or externally?!) cussing everyone out, but regardless of how unglamorous it might look on the outside, that doesn’t negate the strength and fortitude it takes to push past your fears.

Lots of love, folks, and sorry for the delay. There was a lot going on today, but the times and dates that these blog entries will come will stabilize soon enough. Thank you for your viewership so far and for your support! See you Saturday!