Tuesday, May 30, 2023

10:21pm | Toilet

The path ahead feels murky. Why do I feel as if that is a new thing? What am I pretending to be surprised for? Did I ever really know, with certainty, what life ever held for me?

—-

In college, I sat in the front seat of a hot frat guy’s pickup truck, after he drove me around campus  from a Greek event. We were chatting, he turned off the car engine, and I stared, almost suffocating myself with breathless anticipation, straight ahead, at a small crack that traveled across his windshield. I was jealous at the crack’s ability to be present - I myself, was like a bushel of cotton candy under a hot summer downpour, melting away with juicy sweet anticipation of what I would tell my girls, waiting for me in our dorm, about my experience with what I just KNEW would be the first guy to ever ask me out. 

2

Minutes later. 

I was on the sidewalk, waving bye and promising to talk more tomorrow. Not about our first date. Well kinda, about the first date we could get together to further discuss his proposal to me to run for Vice President of our student government. 

I had no idea when I woke up that morning, that by evening, I’d be on the path towards a transformative college experience that I loved. But. 

I wonder how many great things in life I chose and chased after. Vs. feeling honored to be chosen and chased after. So many things have felt so close to the dreams I should be dreaming for myself, have turned out to be great things, have been GOD things that you don’t dare turn down. 

But I always felt like a kid playing dress up in hand me down clothes too big and too mature for me. I just wanted to do hoodrat things with my friends, but it was important to be A LEADER. A role model. A girl genius. Lonely in loud spaces. 

Half the time it was me yelling. For a chance to breathe. To be in a room where I felt comfortable. Where I could let my ghosts catch up to me, and we could both rest. And reunite with the bits of me that didn’t fit in these dreams. 

Now. I’m confronted daily with messages to plan ahead. To set bold dreams. But everything I’ve accomplished has been in reaction to others. 

Doing what a mentor suggests. Going against what my parents mandate. Following along with what I should, could be doing. The things that follow next. That’s been the assurance I leaned on. Surely these people - older, wiser, dumber, knew things that I didn’t in life, so I could hitch my wagon of dreams, and ambitions to theirs. 

And now that I’ve done it all, lived the dreams others have for me and find myself in a wreckage of regrets crashlanded on a lonely beach, I’m forced to think back to the passenger seats I’ve sat in my whole life. I’m a damn good and occasionally angry co pilot of my life. Never fully bought into this path, but I hoped that there would be a rest stop after the next milestone, or the next, or the next, when I could finally take control of the map, destination and wheel. In the meantime, I’ve scribbled my hopes in the margins of agendas. Whispered dreams to myself while driving. Brought out tender desires like freshly created appetizers for people to pick over and determine their worth before I even have a chance to sample. 

I’ve never really known what’s next because I didn’t think I had the option to choose. So I both didn’t care because it would be figured out at some point, and was furious about being sidelined in my own life.  I was left to hope for a hero or anti hero to build my life around. And I became both for myself. The hero with no emotions, able to succeed despite odds, never asking the right questions about which side of the battle she should be on, and if its even hers to fight, and the anti-hero I could blame a lack of passion or connection to my life on - surely if I just accepted the way things are, suppressed this hope, longing that never went away, I could shave off the edges of myself that don’t fit in this journey and finally be happy.

So many people love the me they know. 

I can’t stand her. 

She fucking sucks. 

Not copyediting that. 

Not, ‘well actually’ing’ the feeling that, the rubbery false skin I’m in that crawls at how I talk and acquiesce and contort myself to survive in spaces I hate, is a sign and reminder that if I don’t wake the fuck up and take the wheel, I’ll be strapped into the passenger seat of a car ride of my life that leads to hell. A hell of my own passenger navigating. One where I react to the world vs create worlds to be reacted to. 

So. I jumped out the car and cut the tires so it can slow down. Threw shit out the window ahead, sped past stops preprogrammed. Right now, I really don’t know what’s next because there’s no one in the drivers seat. Unfortunately, there’s been no one there for a while. 

The autopilot settings? I’ve been mad at programmed destinations put in by people years ago, or yesterday. But they don’t know. Someone suggests I should check out a spot to get new tires, even though I already have a place in mind. I go, have a terrible experience, and am mad at myself and them. I say I want to rest and quit my job and am mad because no one is coming to save me. Because, how dare what I want to do, be enough?

I’ve forced myself to be the supporting character of my own life, not even worthy of driving unsupervised. 

But I’m 35. I’ve been driving this boat for a long fucking time. Even on autopilot, nobody knows me, like me. Nobody knows me, likes me, because how could they? This me, the me that I can accept is fully human, flawed in all the juiciest ways, she’s been playing lady in waiting to this automated shell of me. She’s been let out for understudy or clutch performances, but never given the permanent role to lead this ONE life. 

Because its just the one. No take backsies. As much as I’ve fantasized about going back to live the lives I’ve missed, them doors is closed. 

So no. I never knew what was next. But I always had the opportunity to draw my own map and follow it. 

I don’t have to burn down my life to choose a better one. I can do it gentler. Because I’m tired. And the flames will burn the things I want to know about myself, what I can mine from this time. 

Because the view from alongside my life is an interesting one. I’ve had the chance to live inside a home of unlimited potential and opportunity, that relegates any inkling of bad feelings to the ghettoized part of my psyche that stores the unwieldy parts of me. 

Now that the blight has spread though, I can see how fucked that is. I didn’t care about my life, because it wasn’t really mine. The purgatory of the passenger seat lulled me to numbness, while potholes, miles, accidents, very real life around each bend and beneath each tire, is taking its toll on my very real self. 

So yes, I’m on the side of the road at the moment. And I’m gonna have to learn how to read maps. And drive this car. And stay awake for journeys and rest and get the oil changed and stretch and all the Car & Driver metaphors that relate to stepping up to the plate and grabbing the bat.

Metaphors won’t work anymore. This is real life, plainspoken. 

Fuck being scared of a murky path. Gimme a flashlight and a map. The worst that could happen? Cross between being eaten by an alligator or turning around. Either way, a great story. And it’s my choice. 

Fin/ 11:17pm