Driving is making me sick

It's not a joke! I notice that the longer my commute is to work (or anywhere else in and around Toronto), the more nervous I get behind the wheel. In the morning I'm a pussycat, usually in a good mood, after a few sips of morning coffee. Then Meg and I sit in the car and head to work. A block from home we merge onto a main(ish) street, which means encountering the traffic. It's still early (around 7 AM), the speed limit is 60 km, and there aren't many cars on the roads. Still, like on cue, I'll see the head-lights from behind fast approaching, and soon I can count the facial acne of the driver behind me in the rear-view mirror. As soon as he swings into the next lane, revving the engine to overtake us, another one takes his place.

That's when my foot grows heavier on the accelerator, driving almost to the bumper of the car in front, so the jerk from behind, who is now beside, has no room to squeeze between. And so we race, without noticing when the race have started, and if the traffic in front of me stops, I have to brake hard and endure Meg's reproaching gaze. But, when we move again, the tide of nervous, speeding, jerky drivers takes me in and carries me along. In our little car, we are like a tiny blue blood-cell injected into the bloodstream of extremely high blood-pressure environment. The other metal cells run unruly around us, until the force of the current takes us in this mad whirlpool of twisting, turning, spinning, squeezing, passing, and jamming.

When I finally leave the car at the parking lot behind my workplace, my legs shake on the walk to my office. My thumping heart slows down to normal rate only half an hour later. I wish I could turn the streets into rivers and cars into rubber dinghies. Then, if someone bumps into us, I could simply cool his overheated head with a spray of water...