Carsick

Eventually, they ask why you don't have a car.

How to make them understand what happens to you behind the wheel. How to explain you're scared to death, that driving once shook loose something within you, knocked the cornerstone right out of your foundation, that license school wasn't about freedom but about belonging, about an insecure lunk with thick glasses and a cracked voice finally earning a place for himself in the ranks of real men—because you're not a man if you don't play football, spit on the ground, and drive.

How to tell them that when you hit that other car at nineteen, it hit you back, gored you, dredged up everything you secretly knew about yourself—that you were inept, a loser, a coward—revealed it as plainly as guts spilling out. A decade later, your stomach still churns when your fingertips brush the wheel, and when you look at others driving with such ease, such pleasure, their movements controlled yet natural, you feel like Mary Shelley's monster watching people through a crack.

How to convey all that in sixty seconds, the time they say it takes before somebody loses interest in a conversation?

Carsickness, you answer. It's good because it's simple. Digestible. A way out, but also a way in. You're not different, just sick. Easy to understand. Normal.