My own personal hell is being stuck in traffic. I have to be in some kind of automobile or bus on a road. I don’t mean to over explain, I’m just clarifying because I’ve been stuck on trains – above and below ground – and I’ve been totally fine. But when I’m at the wheel of a car or in a bus that is in a line of cars that aren’t moving, I want to crawl out of my own skin. I can’t stand it.

And I’m a person who is irked by a lot. I’ve often said that I live my life five inches in front of my face. I relate to Mel Brooks’s quote about tragedy and comedy (I don’t know it verbatim off the top of my head – go ahead and google it – but basically he means “sweat the small stuff”). I curse audibly when I miss an R train. I get upset when I’m given a lukewarm coffee at Starbucks. If I bend the pages of a paperback that I keep in my backpack, my day is ruined.

But of all of my daily, low stakes gripes, being stuck in traffic is by far the worst. I think it has to do with the fact that I’m supposed to be somewhere but I’m stuck in place.

I have a recurring nightmare, too. It’s that I’m trying to run but I’m underwater and I can feel how hard it is to run underwater. But the nightmare part is that the harder I try, the slower I go.

Being stuck both literally and figuratively in life is one of my greatest fears.