Setting: July 2025 — A hospital parking garage and the small victory of finding my way back
I had to take Holden to a doctor appointment at the hospital, which meant facing one of my biggest, dumbest, loudest fears: the parking garage. Anytime I go somewhere new, I Google the parking days in advance because I know how my brain spirals. Is there a parking lot? Are there one-way streets? Does it involve a garage? I worry myself into knots. I overthink every arrow and ramp. Garages, especially, undo me. The tight turns, the wrong lanes, the fear that I’ll climb all the way to the top and have no idea how to get back down.
It's always been one of those irrational things I can't seem to shake. My dad has even come with me before just to park the car. Anytime I've ever had to go anywhere with a parking garage, even as a full adult, I've ended up calling him to drive me like it's a crisis hotline. But this time, it was just me. Because Holden needed the doctor.
We arrived at the garage, and anxiously, I entered. I went the wrong way. Twice. The parking attendant yelled, sharp and impatient, and for a moment I could feel my courage crack. I almost drove straight back out onto the street. But I couldn’t. Not this time. So I kept going, heart pounding, circling level after level with my eyes peeled for anything open while monitoring every arrow and sign like my license depended on it. Eventually, I found a spot and released the breath I'd apparently been holding since Level 1.
I took pictures so I wouldn’t forget where I left the car. Committed it to memory. And then came the maze inside the hospital: the color-coded wings, the too-many elevators, the hallways that blurred together. I followed the signs until they stopped making sense and finally walked up to the desk to ask for help. A small thing, but not a small thing for me.
On the way out, I tucked behind another driver, assuming they knew the route out and down the garage. They didn’t. We both had to back up and turn around, one more awkward moment in a day full of them. Then came the ticket machine — that silly, irrational fear that the card reader wouldn’t work, or the arm wouldn’t lift, or some tiny mechanical failure would trap us there longer than Holden could tolerate. None of it was logical, but fear rarely is.
Through all of it, I smiled at him and said, “It’s okay. We’ve got this.” I said it until it felt steadier. Until I believed it.
We made it out of the garage. Through the hospital. Through the parts of the day that felt bigger than they should’ve been.
And in the end, I found my way back. Not just to the car, not just to the right floor or the right row, but to a version of myself that could do it anyway.
To Level 3.
Row E.
And a little bit braver than the woman who drove in.
This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.
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