Sorry is just too simple a word

Some people shouldn’t ride. Or drive. Or do anything of that sort.

Today, the true meaning of that phrase finally hit home. And it’s never pleasant when you finally realise you’re one of the people it’s referring to.

Today, I just screwed up majorly.
I was riding in an extremely dangerous manner.
I did not get into an accident. I don’t know how I did that.
I pissed off a whole lot of drivers and riders. I’d like to apologise, but somehow I feel that sorry is too simple a word. Maybe my English isn’t good enough, but I can’t find a word that can express the feelings in my heart right now.
Trust me, I feel absolutely terrible for what I did today.

Somehow, narrowly escaping death or injury isn’t really the worst of my concerns. The one that gets me hard in the gut is the feeling that I’ve failed to be a competent and socially responsible rider, that I’m not worthy of the license that I’m holding.

A few days after my 18th birthday, I enrolled for a motorcycle riding course.
It was not easy, I faced my fair share of frustrations and somehow I found it difficult to do all those things that seemed to come to everyone else naturally.
I told myself to hang in there and practice.
I was there doing Circuit Revision almost daily, until all the instructors knew me, and one of them would even say “Hi” to me everyday when he spotted me around the circuit.
I had a bad time during normal practicals, but somehow when it got to assessments, something would happen and I would manage to pass.

At last, my Traffic Police test (the test we have to pass to obtain our license) came.
I could probably pass my circuit part through sheer hard work and practice but it was the road part that gave me a lot of problems cause I found that I was unable to process feedback “on-demand” at a speed that was fast enough.
At last, I devised a strategy which was to do a careful analysis of the entire road route, pick out the problem points and kind of work out the areas where it would be less probable that a car would be behind me when I had to attempt a lane change.
On the test day, I was more or less running on autopilot. Reach this certain point, attempt lane change.
Like a not-too-intelligent computer with a “hopefully” good enough algorithm.

My strategy worked.
I passed my motorcycle riding test at the age of 18 (minimum age) on my first attempt. Somehow, I left the driving school with a license and a total lack of understanding of how to change lanes safely.

I was glad to get my license, but I did have a sneaking suspicion that I wasn’t really qualified to be let out loose on the road.
Ah well, I thought, all this will sort itself out next time.
Anyway, most people say if you’ve got your license, you should have the required ability right? Maybe my fears are unfounded after all? Especially cause whether you’re pretty or not doesn’t really influence your grades cause there are multiple testers and they don’t see you up close (not that I’m pretty or what but hey, you never know).

Many people think being lucky is a good thing. Luck does you in sometimes, by making you too lucky. You get everything too easily, without real ability.
When you finally need to call on your real ability, it won’t be there for you.
At least you’ll probably end up unscathed after your horrendous mistakes.

Around 1 year later, some time after my 19th birthday, I bought my own motorcycle, with the support of my mother.
I was aware of the limits of my own ability, so I did all I could to educate myself on the safety aspects of riding a motorcycle.
I read tutorials and browsed motorcycle forums everyday and tried to observe people driving every chance that I could, so that hopefully I could pick up on whatever I had failed to learn.

Around 1 month later, I realised that it hadn’t made any difference.
Around 1 month later, I realised that I was not the kind of person that should drive or ride.

I’m not making this statement just because of a one-off incident.
I don’t know why, but I can’t judge distance in mirrors properly.
I have had unusually slow reflexes for someone of my age ever since I can remember (yes, I am a klutz at sports too).
I panic very easily and can’t make decisions quickly. When forced to make quick decisions, the results are really terrible.
It’s like my mind is running at a quarter of the speed of everyone else’s.

I’m in a rather confused state right now, I love riding and I love my bike, but I know that if I continue, it’ll just be a matter of time before I end up dead or hitting someone else, and I’ll definitely be inconveniencing a lot of people while I’m at it.
I love to sit beside someone else who’s driving and think of what decisions I should make if placed in a similar situation (frequently I make the correct decision), but somehow I find it close to impossible to reproduce these decisions on demand when I’m actually driving.
And then I end up pissing off everyone else on the road.
I wish I could ride well on my own ability but it seems that no matter how I try to cheat my limitations, they’re always back to haunt me again and again.

Apologies to all those female riders whose good name I just ruined (I can’t help being female after all, I wish I was some undesirable alien with only one of my kind left on Earth so that I wouldn’t need to ruin anyone’s good name except my own). Don’t worry, I’m probably not going to be one of you for a really really long time.