When Social Anxiety Made Me Take a Ride With a Felon
A mental health tale from the dark-side
When I was 25 years old, I went on the road trip from hell — all thanks to my new best friend and her jailbird boyfriend.
At the time of the trip, I had known my BFF Karen* for almost a year. We had bonded deeply and were pretty joined at the hip by the time this merry jaunt into the 9th circle took place.
We clicked despite our wildly different backgrounds. I was five years older than she was and a southerner, while she was from New York and barely 20.
It was a bond born out of trauma.
Meeting My New BFF
I met Karen on a sunny day in Central Florida around the first anniversary of my mother’s sudden death. She was a new friend of my younger brother’s.
It was a synchronistic meeting of two orphaned daughters.
At the time, Karen’s mother was in the final stages of terminal cancer. She would die a year later. Ironically, our mothers died, in the same month, two years apart, at the same age.
We latched on to each other like we were two drowning ship wreckers hanging on to a life raft.
