The Drive North

As I write the last few sentences of the previous chapter of my life, I have come to reflect on many things. It surely deserves to be called its own book—Book One - The Lost Girl. That is how it has felt to me watching all these parts of my life come to a close. The characters that existed in this first book do not reappear in the second but all the lessons remain. Writing the remaining sentences brings out a lot more emotion than the previous thousands.

Today, hours before dawn, I took an adventure to my home of ten years. It sat vacant and quiet in its comfortable cul-de-sac. A for-sale sign waited in the front yard. I was there because a toilet float valve had malfunctioned, and an inspection was happening in five hours. In ten days, those ten years will be wrapped up. Sold to a new set of owners. But coming back to these moments of my past life has always been interesting to me. The amount of nostalgia and grief I can still feel for a life I do not miss is ironic.

The house felt different standing in it while darkness held the outer walls. The emptiness made the noises seem larger and far more dangerous than they had ever seemed when I lived within those rooms. I swore I heard whispering and had to investigate the basement only to realize that it was merely the valve I was working on letting out extra air pressure. I was on edge for the remainder of my time in that neighborhood. I collected my letters from the letterbox for the penultimate time. I will be back once more, but for now I have completed my nighttime tasks without a soul knowing.

The stars were twinkling above me—at least what little could overpower the glow of the cities below. I merged onto I-15 north with the same energy drink I have been buying for the last sixteen years. The one immutable piece of me through all this transformation is my preference for feeding my insomnia. Somewhere on the empty freeway, I remembered the first time I had driven this direction with nowhere to go.

Twenty-year-old me, carrying around that same feeling I had in my empty house. Life just didn’t feel safe. I still lived with my parents, which was considered a very shameful thing to not move out by eighteen. So knowing I wasn’t fully welcome, I would often escape when I could and sleep across a variety of couches. My current escape was a woman seven years older than me whom I had become unhealthily obsessed with.

I would come over to this woman’s house after work because she would often throw parties. I was hopelessly lusting after her like it would somehow cure me of all my sadness. I loved the chase. We were intimate, but we would never get close to having a relationship. Eventually I felt that familiar sense of loneliness where even if she was interested I no longer felt it.

Thanksgiving Eve was the backdrop to this absurd journey. My crush was of course hosting a party I was invited to. She called to check when I was coming. I was not going to be showing up. I gave an excuse that I was going to do something else. Then I took a drive, comforted with a box of the usual I always kept in my car. I planned for a short drive, just to clear my head. But each mile, my resolve to not turn around grew.

My flip phone had no navigation and eventually I needed gas—a problem made worse by the fact that I was in the middle of nowhere Idaho. I took the first exit that signified it had gas and the town it led me to was further out of the way than I anticipated. But lo and behold, there was the gas station. I pulled up… and it required payment at the cash register. I stared into the dark windows of the attached convenience store, where the cash register sat. I was dazed, I needed to find gas urgently.

Panic made my driving erratic. Having picked a road to try to get back to a freeway, I eventually ran into a twenty-four-hour gas station. I pulled up to the pump and got out, rapidly pressing all the buttons so that I could continue whatever this journey was. That is when I noticed an Idaho Sheriff pull up behind me, the lights on top illuminating as he came to a stop.

We talked briefly. He asked where I was heading. I had no clue where I was going. After my near-disaster, I hadn’t even thought of it. So I had to explain how I had just driven two hundred and forty miles just because I felt like it. Why am I driving in the middle of the night alone, on the eve of a holiday, having just driven hundreds of miles away from everyone I knew? In my conscious mind, I didn’t know why.

I submitted to a vehicle search while I finished filling my car. The deputy said something I didn’t listen to—probably to go home or drive safer. I was too busy coming to terms with the fact that no one had truly missed me that night. It felt as though no one cared where I was or when I was coming back. It was well past midnight on Thanksgiving Day and here I was alone in potato country.

I drove home. A drive that was painful. Driving back into the prison. A prison that had no guards, no fences, and no bars. But a prison I voluntarily stayed in because it was what was expected of me. That drive taught me something I would not understand for over a decade: distance is not the same thing as freedom. I could get two hundred and forty miles away, cross state lines, and still have nowhere to go.

I understand the difference now. At twenty, I was running away from a life that hurt me, hoping distance would become a fresh start on its own. Now I know that choosing to leave means letting go of what is not needed. I am not fleeing Book One. I am closing it—and beginning the next.

— V.