ARE WE THERE YET?

"What I really want " I said to my friends, "is to go on a road trip. I want to be able to find that special person and drive off to different places and see all there is to see, but most of all I need the person who wants to go. You know. The one who makes the trip more fun than actually getting there. The one you go for, not with."

      I slowly turned the spoon in my cup of coffee staring at the steam that evaporated off the hot metal. The silence around the table gave me a warm comfort that I had made a moment of deep reflection that we could all stop and think about for a moment. I looked up, expecting to see the faces of my friends staring off into their own versions of the future. I imagined one staring pensively out of the rain spotted glass window, and another finding a great well of expectation in the minor divot of the table top. When I looked up, the exact opposite stared at me like ravenous wolves. Each face trained on me,and with baited breath, internally vying for the position of 'alpha male' that would allow them to be the first to express their own version of disagreement. Even the girls.

"Screw that. "I'm not going anywhere If I have to ask permission first every time I want to do something. What if they say,'no'?" and "Road trips aren't half what people say they are. Everyone I know says they are great ....for the first 1000 miles. Then they suck."
 "Well did they ever say why?" I asked.

"No, they never seemed like they wanted to talk about it once it came up, but they sure went out of their way to change the subject to someone elses road trip. Like my Mom, ya know?"

 My friend, Martina, was always a very outgoing and talkative person. More so than the rest, but for all of her eagerness to make endless small talk about trivialities , it was rare for her to go into the personal lives of herself and her family. Pensive was usually not one of her usual traits, but when she even hinted at the look of it, I knew to perk my ears toward it as valuable.I had learned a long time before, that Martina was alot like the old E.F. Hutton commercial. When Martina talks...people listen. Or Should.

"No, I don't know. Tell me what she said."

I leaned in over the table hoping to be able to glean even more information from something that the world had every intention of implying was the expected chain of events, but that seemed to be a near enigma when it came right down to what it was supposed to give us. As though it was misery, and they merely wanted company within it by bringing eagerness and hope into the fold of misery without telling us why or how.

" I dunno. I mean. She's happy and all. I guess. She keeps herself busy all the time and always has something she's doing, but she always seems like she has one more thing on her mind. Something she isn't saying or doing. Like as long as she keeps doing everything for everyone else she can always say that she didn't have the time to get around to it. So she just keeps going until there is no time left at the end of the day to have to deal with it. She doesn't want anyone to know that it shows, but it does."

     This time, she did dip her gaze into the swirling clouds of milky white cream in her coffee. Like a scrying glass that offered the promise to an answer from which there was not yet a concise question.

."I don't want to go on a road trip. Not if it makes me like that", she said but in a very hushed and guarded tone. As though what she said was tantamount to treason.

"Maybe mine won't be any different, and I don't want to go if I can't find the reason why....and what's worse is that I think she does know why, but won't tell the ones who would care, while she works so hard for those who don't. I mean, what good is martyrdom if all anyone ever sees is a victim nailed to a tree?".
     

     But I was different. From listening to everyone around me I knew that road trips weren't always supposed to be easy, and that there were going to be times when I was tried and irritated, but riding the journey alone wasn't worth it if I couldn't share it with someone else. I wanted the road trip for all that it was explained as and what it was supposed to be under the best circumstances by trying and not just what people had to say about it by being too indifferent. I took what they said and compared it to the things that had always expected the road trip to be, and then looked at the ways that I could divert the things that turned them into the stuff of nightmares. Sure, they knew OF them, and that most people tried to go on them, but very few had any real desire to ask what it was for in the first place. But I knew. I knew I had all the right reasons to go and all the right questions to ask before I committed to it. I knew I was able to do every part that was expected and was eager to take on all of it.

I was so very wrong.

When I first started out, I thought we were going to be riding together. Same car, same trip, and same journey that was made by both of us being able to accomplish everything equally, right? Where one could not do something, the other would pick up and both of us would be able to help, and be helped, depending on the situation. That the car was ours, and that where we were going was where we both wanted to be. I cared not to look at the map, or who held it. I just wanted the open road and anywhere that it led us as companions. The trip was for her, and it was for me, and it would become everything to ourselves that we put into it with each other. I didn't know the first thing about cars, or journeys, or destinations for that matter. I only knew that I was old enough to drive, that I yearned and ached for it, and that it was expected of me to be on a road trip in the same way other people had. I didn't take the time to realize that there were, indeed, two seats, and that while it was very important to take notice that the car had a steering wheel, and obviously a driver, no mention was made to the requirements of the passenger. That was just an implied and secondary consideration. I came to realize, after the promises were made by me, that the old adage 'caveat emptor' had reared its ugly head and made me totally bound to the worst consequences of deception., and that is, not necessarily a spoken lie, but a hidden and unspoken half truth.

     Everyone goes on road trips, or so I was led to believe. And while I wasn't exactly sure of what would happen along the way, I assumed I was smart and caring enough to learn what wasn't there in the beginning. Things would change, and we would change with them to become better and stronger and more respected in ourselves, as well as for each other. I made sure that who I was going to travel with believed they were capable of driving, but never thought to ask what the qualifications were. I assumed she was of the same mindset with the same definitions , as we were going in the same vehicle. But questions asked as to the ability of a partner to know the purpose of the road trip are useless if asked incorrectly, just as much as if they were asked and never noticed that they weren't answered at all. I did ask, but I asked the wrong questions. Answers that were given to some of the questions, didn't seem to apply to what I had asked. And how would I have known what to ask if I hadn't been in the position before to draw from the experience? I asked what people told me to ask, but not what I needed to ask for myself. I guess we never got around to that part. I only assumed the implications I attached to broader questions and took the small things, too trivial to ask about directly, as obvious. I asked about whether we had the gas to go the distance, and did we have sturdy tires, and did we have a map. Not whether we had the fuel to veer from the path when we needed adventure or a break together, or if all four wheels would stay on the pavement. Would reckless driving from her that tipped two wheels off the ground be what allowed me to leave if I chose to, or did my voluntary acceptance of the whole trip commit and obligate me to clutching at the dashboard in terror and with blind loyalty as my only defense until the moment passed? And how long should a moment that bad be? Is there a reasonable time limit before I decide its gone on too long? Most importantly, it was never thought by me to ask if I would be allowed to choose the road or hold the map. All of those questions were inconsequential to ask of her now "Too late. Shoulda been more specific" she had said. At least that's what I was told by others, and most probably because they themselves, had been conditioned to forget what it was they wanted or needed when they started their own road trips. The only advice they could give now was all they remembered, not what they forgot. And without me knowing what they forgot, how would I know that is was gone?
But off we went.

     At first we shared the wheel as much as we rode in the passenger seat. The need to stop from time to time completely forgotten by the exhilarating feeling of movement beneath us. We were moving, and that was all we knew to expect at the moment. Forward movement. That was all we knew to measure it's success with.

     Somewhere along the way though, the ability to drive was replaced with a small suggestion that she did the driving as she was better than I at it. That perhaps the trip would go more smoothly if I simply enjoyed the ride and she did what she wanted to do more. That she needed to drive, but that it was her 'gift' to me that I be able to sit and enjoy the ride and not concern myself with it. Not wanting to be an unappreciative car mate, I agreed. If that is what makes her happy, then who am I to refuse the ability to have her offer it in the way she felt she could provide it the most? Funny how 'gifts' like these seemed so gracious when they were first given, and how, as time went by, it felt as though it was I that had given the gift, and that the gratitude went unnoticed in the offering of it. I found that it was no longer stated as a desire to do it because it was wanted more. it was done because she believed she was better at the driving and didn't like being the passenger, but as the driver had the right to refuse if she so chose. I tried to remind her that this was OUR car and OUR journey and that riding along takes away from half of the adventure if the other seat can't be used as well. That the ability to drive is just as much a joy because it allows the journey to be directed from time to time and be seen as the one in control of the road just as much as to be the passenger who gets to reap the benefits of relaxing a bit. But one is no less important than the other, and neither is to be seen as a job as much as an opportunity. That statement was ignored over and over until finally it could be honestly said that she had more experience driving and that it was unwise to not maximize the effectiveness of the trip by allowing someone less capable to drive. Once again, a small gift given that had an unseen price tag attached to it which I could not afford to pay. She now had the justification to remain where she was, indefinitely, and I had the dubious obligation to remain where I was, whether I believed it was justified or not.

     The rear view mirrors were adjusted in such a way as to bring into view, not the road behind us, but the faults or failures of the past that I was held accountable for, whether real or perceived.   How ironic that for the countless pot holes we had hit along the way already, while the majority of the miles were under her gas pedal, the only one the mirrors ever seemed  to be trained upon were the ones that 'proved' my obvious inability and could not, in perpetuity, be trusted to again.  even though I was never even given another opportunity to hit more than that one.

      I  also hadn't  realized that, in my attempt to assign myself as our caring problem solver,  I unwittingly assumed the responsibility for the failures, whether mine to carry and own or not. It was my desire to have our mutual goals succeed even if it meant I would not be the primary recipient of the accolades. That, I could have found pride in. But with each reward that was accepted as an individual accomplishment for which she believed she was solely deserving, I became the mantle to which we hung our failures upon and could be pointed to as the cause of what held us back from more than we had at any moment. Minor flaws grew and compounded on previous ones until I found it nearly impossible to defend myself from the overwhelming implications of weakness and dependency. I never looked into the mirrors if I could help it- never wanted look back and see how many miles had been unceremoniously eaten away already. They seemed to reflect my own face all too often, and when they didn't there was the all too quick 'assistance' to have it pointed out.They stared back at me as glaring reminders of single instances that became the accusation of the whole that I was obviously not equipped to do what I asked for, nor had the ability to do better than she. As though my future inability was already  definite based on the past failures that should have been a way to learn, just as much as her success in the future was most definitely assured because she hadn't made them yet. It was made even worse by the small letters at the bottoms of the plastic frames that held them.

"OBJECTS IN THIS MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR"

     A sad addition to this new found point of control was the subtle, but ever growing, reference to the car with the use of the singular possessive pronoun, "my" when previously, it had always been referred to with the plural form, "our". As though the gripping of the steering wheel somehow implied unspoken sole ownership of the whole by the manipulation of the most influential part. With "my car" came even more startling revelations. Since the radio was tuned to her channels, it became 'her' radio. As did the speakers that played it. It was 'my' air conditioning that blew from 'my' vents that I was enjoying and 'my' map. I didn't fully realize this strange evolution until it was suggested that I get my feet off of 'her' dashboard, and that if I was going to eat I had better not get food crumbs on 'her' seats. Plural. Not even my own passenger seat now. Just her seat that I sat in. My world dwindled. I turned my head and looked out HER passenger window and wondered how much of this was OUR doing at all anymore. Exactly how much was left of me, at all? I often felt that if I just took control of it by lashing out and demanding it back, that I might be able to wrench the control back to the center again. But with each passing mile, I had less and less of my own to bargain with and even more reliance on what was left, regardless of whether it was rightfully hers or not. When your own personal resources dwindle, it makes the task more and more daunting. Who was I to contend with a woman and her automobile when even at my most fearsome position I was still only holding ground on her seat? Right or wrong, who balks at a man whose only weapon is a bag of M&M's? Sure, I could get out, but not without everyone looking at the person walking on the side of the road as a person who was obviously the deserving party and without ever thinking about the culpability of the driver's view who had not kicked me out but made staying worse than jumping?  Funny how the ability to see the whole picture from only one side seems to guarantee their supposed innocence while making the one with no leg to stand on at all as deserving of the full guilt and shame. But this is what happens when you accept to have your own personal identity defined by someone else  with no consideration of them as to how they got to where they were. If I jumped from the car now, I would be neither driver nor passenger. Just a person who's fault it obviously was because it was me walking the side of the road.

The conversations I needed so much to define us and that I fully  expected to fill the journey with, gave way to the radio. Then it was turned to a station not of my choosing at all. With each attempted discourse  it got worse. If we spoke at all it was only about what she wanted to say. For anything else, or anything about me, her eyes would roll to the sun visor and then the radio went on, and then up if it was disagreed with, until I was but a dull anomaly of the right front speaker- a tweeter to which the treble could not be adjusted to, but that could be ignored and drowned out altogether by overcompensating with the others. The air conditioning wavered between stiffling when what was needed was a cool blowing comfort, and at other times an icier reminder that the warmth that was needed was even harder to gain under the control of a hand that turned it on or off at will, or adjusted the vents to where she wanted them, and not where they needed to be. Even worse was that it almost seemed to be a pleasurable experience for her to look as though she were accommodating, but always just a little less than what was needed to remind me who was now in charge.

     The miles stretched out endlessly. The seat, that once had lumbar supports and promised happy bliss in their recline, became as consoling as a picket fence atop which I sat in restless discomfort. ALL was as it always had been, but I was miserable in its mundane and static conformity to her wants rather than my needs.

     I didn't want away at first. I just wanted out for a little bit. I just wanted to stretch. I just needed to know that the ground was still there and it was by choice that we drove, and not by necessity or force. Just the ability would have been enough to make me feel as though I was there by my own hand and not by my obligation or duty. But it never ended. It continued until the thought of it had to be replaced with the desire to know that there WAS a way out. I still didn't want out of the car or to end the ride, but the need to know became as unbearable as sitting in silence and not knowing at all either way.

     I fought even the thought of this urge for hundreds of miles. I listened to everything I had ever been told or believed TRYING not to have this thought, but there was absolutely no other option left to me that was not in some way dictated by her.  I felt my eyes glance down at the door handle, and thought to myself that it was enough just to know it was there. I didn't have to try it or actuate the mechanism to see that it was right there beside me and I could, at any time, simply ask to be let out. I looked back up at the road ahead and lived with the thought of it in my head. For now, I said to myself, that was enough. I convinced myself that all I need do, is ask to be let out, and it would be so.

     It wasn't enough though. I needed to know that the handle was there just as much to let me out as it was to open the rest of the journey to us out past the limits of the windows. The places that would have been so fun to be at and a part of, with the simple request I always thought I would have been able to make to stop the car, and open the door. A country fair to stop at and laugh as we ate cotton candy and kissed on the top of a Ferris wheel, or a park to lay in the grass and pluck the petals off flowers in a way that always ended in "she loves me", or swimming pools and cool creeks to wade in, talking with each other while we dabbled our feet beneath the shimmering surface. What we were doing as important as who we were with. And who we were with making what we did at the time seem secondary to their company at that moment. But every time I suggested it, I was met with a silence that was too long to have not been noticed by me as the same thing as being told I was being ignored completely. When I pointedly asked, I was met with that look and the statement that we didn't have time if we were going to get where we needed to be. We had goals or plans, I suppose, but this was one of those occasions were 'I' disappeared to be replaced with 'me' that meant it was my doing we were having to drive without stopping now anyway.  The world, and my life, rushing by in a multicolored horizontal blur outside the windows, and there I sat, knowing full well that the need in me was fully apparent to her, regardless of whether she planned to do anything about it or not. This had gone on long enough. Not so long that I wasn't going to try and stay, but long enough that I had to reassure myself of the possibility of being able to go if I had to.

      I finally got up the nerve to touch the handle of the door. Just enough to feel the presence of cool metal. I didn't look this time as I had before, and let my fingers slip blindly in and around the lever by sense of touch alone. I still had no idea what I would do or say if the door swung free of the frame. Would I be left there unable to speak, with the world rushing below and beside me, or would I simply tumble out of the door like a paratrooper to take my chances of a hard won impact with the ground I so longed to feel beneath me? Maybe broken and bloody, but on solid ground that I could stand on and call my own. It didn't matter, and I tested the door handle once ever so slowly, just to see if it would give that mechanical  'click' of opportunity.

I found them locked from the drivers side. Opportunity? Perhaps, but not without the knowledge that it no longer rested in my own hands. It was completely dependent on the fact that opportunity now rested like a bit in my mouth and that the reigns had become wrapped around a hand that was not mine. Opportunity, but only if I was forced to request it, and in doing so, be responsible for justifying it only to be told  'no'.

I looked over with a quizzical and confused expression that asked exactly what my face implied. The answer I got was as stunning in its quickness as the silence with which it was projected to hit me in the face like a baseball bat.

"There's nowhere else to go. Your too far along the trip to have anyone else even want to pick you up from way out here, anyway. And besides, we're moving too fast for you to survive the sudden stop. What you want isn't worth the risk, is it? Sit back...and...read a book. You aren't going anywhere. Those are 'my' door locks."

     I sunk into the seat in a hopeless crumpled and defeated heap and asked, like a child left alone for too long with no clue as to the destination,..."Are we there yet?". I had asked this question a thousand times in my head, but this was the first time I spoke it aloud. I had a feeling that I would ask it a thousand more. The silence that I received was all the answer I would ever get. This may have been the point where I suddenly realized that something had gone very horribly wrong. That in my passion to discover and experience all I hoped it would be with her,  had somehow blinded me to a slow creeping discontinuity between what I needed, and what was slowly coming to be but only if she chose to let it. 
      Was it always there and I hadn't noticed? Like the small crack in the plastic dashboard that no doubt had been making the audible squeaking for quite some time but that I suddenly took notice of and realized? That it was far more irritating in the knowledge of its real cause that I had ever given to the sound alone before? It was more disturbing than I wished to even admit to myself at the time. That regardless of my awareness of it, it continued to grow right beneath my own nose. The complaints that roll through a persons own head are never taken very seriously and are usually just attributed to our own fussy attitudes. But when it is applied to a voice it becomes something more real. To hear a response to the question, however trivial, gives a whole new spin on what that thought was trying to say to me. It gave a reality to it. And that was a very unsettling and scary feeling. Like suddenly realizing that the three people you just met on the playground and had been talking to like new friends, actually had the real intention of beating you to a pulp as soon as they could regardless of how happy they seemed to be at the moment by your company. It was only a matter of time before the happy facade washed off and showed the true faces of thugs. Ugly, mean and savage in their indifference. There was no choice that had not already been taken and that all it needed to become a concrete reality was to recognize it. Looking at the situation in a way that had it look implausible was always my doing. But realizing that the implausibility was now orchestrated with the desire to keep me from the options I always thought I had for myself, was unfair. I began to rationalize to myself, that her reasons for keeping me there must be more noble than I was making them out to be. Why would a person go to that much trouble if it wasn't for love? It wasn't until I noticed that keeping a person is not love for me. It is keeping me there for want or use that is easier to do than having to have me WANT to be there by choice. I was a use, and the more I could be held to the idea that it was based on love, and not want, the more useful it became. The same desire to be held close and needed would have been just as simple by having me choose to be there by what she expressed as love, but it is easier to have me assume that is what defines it while a completely different feeling is being employed to have me be a use. Of course she wants me. I perform what she wants, but if she holds me there with a tool that could never be ascribed as belonging to love to get what she needs, then I know that it is not for love to have me continue to feel it. It is a use that I, MYSELF, justify with my need to be loved, not by her need to show that love and to have me stay by my choice. I sanctioned  how I was now treated and seen by how willing I was to have love. The cars that used to travel beside us or passed from the opposite side of the road on their own journeys, thinned out, until their occurrence was occasional at best, and then rare,and then they disappeared all together. The side show carnival attractions that looked as though they would have been so much fun with what I deluded myself was joyful company were answered with grunts of disinterest or outright derision at the absurdity of the request and gave way to vast stretches of monotonous desert to spent in equally deafening silence. The last bastions of hope- the diners or truck stops- dismal and depressing as they were, being the only things left. And even then, we would not be stopping until even they disappeared.

     As with many roads, the switching from the road  I thought we were traveling on, and where we were now, was as different as night is to day. Funny thing about turnpikes and off ramps to the places where we become disoriented and lost,though,  is that they are made of the same pavement as the road to where we wanted to be, and it takes time to see it. That is unfortunate, because I was never really quite sure of how it was I should have been able to notice that something was wrong.  Under better circumstances, a conscientious companion would have been able to alert me. But that is not what I had now, was it? The last thing she ever would have done was let me take notice of it.  It takes time to realize that our internal compass has been somehow duped. The Sun does not rise in the north and birds do not fly east for the winter, regardless of how often we try to convince ourselves otherwise. The time had come to refuse the silence.



"Where are we?" I asked.

 "What does it matter where we are? There's a road and you said that's what you wanted. So...here we are."

  The intentional avoidance of the real question by making it a matter of geography and immediate circumstance was insulting.As though a child had asked something ridiculous and the only tactic to avoid any further discourse was to be as trite and smarmy as possible to have them question the audacity at asking the question more than their need to know the truth.


 She gripped the steering wheel and flipped her thumbs up and down in obvious irritation.
"What the hell do you want from me? You wanted a road trip and here we are. You wanted me to go with you and here we both are.We are doing exactly what you said you wanted to do and now you are acting like you didn't ask for this.""I didn't" I mouthed to myself and sat in stung silence.
     


    Time passed. And it kept passing. I slept. I ate what was there regardless of whether I liked the taste. It was all ash anyway. Everything running at the baseline monotone hum and regularity that was slowly numbing my thoughts and feelings that I was a far better person and that I was not wrong to be expecting so much more.  We are not selfish when we ask for more than mere fractions if it was originally agreed upon that half was the norm. When we ask for the fair share we are called selfish. Not because we asked for the share but because we had the audacity to ask at all or to point out the disparity.  It put everything to sleep just like my legs. Stay perfectly still and dreading the dull ache and threat of deep vein thrombosis while hoping that nothing jars me from the immobility and causes the 'pins and needles'. And so the miles streamed by in the constraining cocoon of my own making. Our car. My cage. I tapped my feet to the music, but it was never noticed that my foot beat in time to a completely unseen and different drummer. A tattoo on the funeral drum of my mind that had no congruence to her radio station and had no desire to contend or compete with either anymore.

      One day the car stopped. I sat up in eagerness and excitement. Like a dog that suddenly realized it would be off the leash. It was as though a small spark had suddenly reawakened and I could see what it was that I wanted. A chance. A chance to refuel myself as much as the car. A book, a crossword puzzle, a magazine. Anything that would allow me to retreat into myself and the things I dreamed of without the need to leave the safety of the car. The cage. The leash.


 "Just stay there. I have a few things to do and get."

"Well, can I get out and pick up a few things too? I need to get a..."

"No. You just sit there and....do what I need you to do."

 "Which is nothing" I mumbled to myself.

     The pain of the seat doubling in its discomfort with the knowledge that I would not be allowed to leave it any more now than I could with the car moving a hundred miles an hour. I wondered which was worse. The physical agony of rolling out of a moving car, or the emotional bloodletting while stationary. Like a stigmata of blind faith that would leave me bloodless either way.

       We had parked in front of a small gas station at a fork in the road. Across from us, facing in the opposite direction was another car. A woman stared out from the passenger window. I smiled, slightly embarrassed and shy, and waved out the window at her, and she smiled a thin,understanding one in return and, waved back. Her long straight fingers that twinkled like a star as she rolled them from the pinky to her forefinger and then back. It was a very knowing expression that we shared between the two of us. As if we had transmitted the same knowing of being in the company of a kindred spirit, combined with the sadness of where we had been caught sitting. Not seen as capable or trusted to be in the drivers seat, but relegated to where we were now and expected to be seen because of what we are treated as. Passengers. Just passengers.

      I watched the neon sign flicker in the window. OPEN (blink) OPEN (blink) OPEN...  But all I could think was that it said "OPEN, (but not to you)...OPEN, (but not to you). I wanted to look at her again, but dipped my head in broken shame. This was not how I wanted to be seen. And as I finally gained the courage to look back at her, she dipped her head into her lap as well. The same pained expression and behavior of what I felt expressed by the meek posture of subservience in her. But I kept looking at her until she regained the strength and courage to look and notice that I had not thought less of her for it, and she straightened even more to show me she hadn't thought it of me, either. "What a pair we are" I thought to myself.

     The driver door swung open and she climbed back into the car shaking me from my brief touch with the better world outside. Her hands filled with a bag of "necessities". I opened the bag and peered inside at what caused such a deviation from the road as I had come to know of it.Two quarts of oil, window washer fluid, a novel she got me....about war, a bottle of water, and a bag of pork rinds.

 "This is all there was?" I asked staring into the top of the bag.

 "No,there was all kinds of stuff in there. This was just all I wanted to get. I don't see what your complaining about. I bought you a book, what more do you need?"

      My mind reeled at the massive list of the things I could have answered that question with, but kept myself quiet, feeling guilty and ashamed that I hadn't appreciated the 'thoughtfulness' of a book. The fact that it had more interest to her as an option for her own wants than it would have been to me as a necessity could not be proven any more concisely, than by giving me a book on war. Maybe you can't judge a book by its cover, but I could certainly tell how much worth was put into myself by the irrelevance of a purchase without a thought to what I needed.

      We pulled away from the station and immediately felt the rumbling discomfort of the road. As though we hadn't stopped at all. The woman in the other car catching a brief glimpse of me as they sped out at the same time and rocketed past us on the left and further on up the highway. The red taillights of their car dimming as they pulled farther and farther away.

      Emptiness always seems like  a much deeper well than it is first perceived when you realize the reality of the solution and know that its still too far away to change it. I had memorized her face in that brief instant, and the thought of her gave me far more pain than comfort. This was not what I expected from a road trip. This was a roller coaster. A roller coaster I sat in the very rear car of, wondering what was so fun about the "ride" if I was always the last car that someone forgot to hook up. And since I was in the back, who noticed? The only movement being when the ride comes full circle and slams into me from behind. THEN everyone gets out, and asks me how the ride was and assumed I was up front the whole time. Sometimes I wished that just one person would see the reality beyond the mere perception and realize what I was incapable of saying to anyone. Please, Christ, SOMEONE call this woman out and let me know I am not as crazy and selfish as I think and told I am.

     The car made occasional stops for one thing or another from time to time, and with each stop, it was assumed by both me, and her, that my place was right there in the passenger seat. To remain where I was put and simply wait until she returned with whatever it was she felt was important. Sometimes it was close to the car where I could be seen or talked to if she wished, and others it was so far away that there was no way she would come when I called, whether I needed her to, or not. My position as passenger making the ability to be spoken to or heard completely dependent on whether she wished to speak or get close enough to hear what I had to say. 

     Speak, and don't be heard through the thickness of glass. Leave the car to be heard, and break the demand of what passengers should be doing. In either case, there is failure, or there is fault. No middle ground at all. I mentioned, on more than one occasion, that I needed to be able to talk to her and know she was there, but she had concerned herself with other things outside of the confines of the car that I knew nothing about nor that she would tell me of even if I asked. Not that I couldn't know them or their workings if she had tried, but that it wasn't important to share or to have me be a part of them anymore. As though I had become nothing more than a piece of the vehicle and not a person who rode inside. A cup holder. An automatic pork rind bag opener. An inconsequential accessory to a vehicle that is introduced to others through the window with no more importance as a person or to the trip as the glove box. Just...there.

      Perhaps the most frustrating feeling is to have someone look into the car in envy. As though they needed to satisfy themselves with the appearance of the car and the charming stature of the driver to feel that everything was just as capable and perfectly functioning as it appeared. No requirement that to be seen as a good driver the vehicle should probably be moving rather than static perfection, though. But inside I was screaming. Screaming to say that what they were seeing and perceiving was only temporary. That stationary, a horrible driver and a cardboard cut out of a good one ,have the exact same appearance and proficiency. The true frustration came when the cardboard cut out climbed back into the seat and roared off with everyone green with envy at the idea of a perfect road trip while I sat in the passenger seat, green with the nausea of motion sickness. That, again, the wool had been pulled over other peoples eyes with the same blanketing invisibility of a car cover, and I had assisted in it and sanctioned it in my forced silence. Would they listen if I had said anything, or would they simply scoff at my obvious ungrateful attitude toward what was plain to see was magnificent? But it wasn't plain to see in small snapshots. It was like looking at postcards of a speedway race and getting the idea that that was all that was needed to get the full experience of the race. Without them in the seat to know it, how could they possibly understand? I don't know which I hated more. The knowing that it was so much less and miserable in it, or my inability to be able to say anything. Denial is a mute voice that no one hears but ourselves. The truth is a silent voice no one would listen to even if we screamed it.

     The trips outside the car for her became longer and longer, and when she returned from them, she spoke less and less of what was done outside. With nothing to do and no one to talk about in her absence, there was nothing to relate to her, and with no desire to relate back to me that which was of any importance or business of mine at her return, the silence between us became a deafening roar over which even the engine that continued to churn out the miles, was but a whisper. Our journey had been transformed into two separate trips. One that she did outside of the car, with her own set of guidelines separate of my influence or input, and mine, that was dictated by where we both thought I should be, what was left for me on the inside of the car, and what could be checked on at her leisure- A one-sided controlling influence that could be answered for by me, but not called upon in the reverse.

     One day I woke up and stretched my feet into the wheel well to find that we were not moving at all. We were parked in a small rest stop. Nothing around. No people, no stores, no driver, and no miles being driven. The road trip not necessarily over, but the  sitting being the same as if it had. I sat and I waited. It was not unusual that she would go somewhere without telling me where she was or when she had left, or even when she would return. More information that was of no business to me.Time would tell, or so they said. What it actually said, and when was still a mystery to me. I waited as patiently as I had always done before and with the same knowing that the result to the trip, as it was now, was motionless whether miles passed beneath us, or not. I sat in the seat and did as I have always been expected to do. I simply waited. I did absolutely nothing.
And then I waited more, and did more of nothing.

     I finally came to the realization that all was exactly as it had been. The car was just as it had always been, and I was sitting in it just as I had been expected to, but that the journey was simply not going anywhere anymore regardless of how badly I needed it to. I had been replaced as a driver to be turned into a passenger and then left to my post as passenger for long enough to feel that I had no more influence than the luggage in the trunk. But it wasn't me who had changed. I was still a driver regardless of the fact that I did not drive, and I was a passenger even though I wished for something else to do but sit. Even the car was exactly what I expected and needed in a car to make the journey. Deep inside of me, though, there still burned the desire to be on the trip, so what had changed that had allowed this road trip to turn into a man who put the full control of it into someone who left him to sit on the side of the road....waiting? Waiting for what?

      I became keenly aware of how long I had been sitting in the sun when all that was left to me was no longer comfort, but mere sustenance. When the bag of M&Ms melted on the dashboard and made a sickly sweet smell that tried to cover the scent of decay I could not find the immediate cause of. It was something, and it was not me. Something HAD changed. Like I said,it was not me or anything else around me. All was the same. The only thing that changed was my perception of it. And all I needed for that was to stop confusing myself with the mere movement as the thing that defined progress.. My viewpoint had shifted. For all of the times that I had had my sanity questioned or my ability to perceive criticized, it suddenly hit me that it was not the events that had changed to cause me to feel like this. It was only the angle I was allowed to see it from that had me questioning my own abilities because of how I saw it, not because of what I saw. It was as if a light had been turned on long ago, but had just been shifted to remove the shadows to which I had become accustomed to as normal. It wasn't that I was unaware of what I didn't know. it was that I didn't know how to THINK about what I already knew. Sometimes, the only thing that changes is where you allow yourself to stand when you look at it. And when you do, you are absolutely stunned at what was right under your own nose.

     I took stock of my surroundings within this car. For the first time, in as long as I could remember doing it, I looked at it in a way that took into account my importance and influence to what I saw. Not what I was given as a default,but what I needed and expected. All that I saw, and all that was provided to me, was done so in a way that it satisfied the general expectation that it be provided, but no further. It was an awareness that she had not tried to give anything of herself at all with regard to my part or inclusion. If I had to live with something less. simply because that's all there was to give, that would have been more meaningful, but to live( to merely exist) with so much less, when the ability was there to do so much more, was a slap in the face.  No, this was the opposite. It was as though the effort to exceed the need wasn't made at all and that I was supposed to be grateful for the meager attempt to satisfy the most meager condition alone. To be quite honest, I always felt more worth and meaning in cherishing  things for the intention to give something greater and fall short, than to be pleased with things of supposed value and no absolutely no desire to give anything more in the way of thought.

It wasn't my car. I just rode in it. It wasn't my seat. I just sat in it. It had all of the ammenities anyone could hope for or want, all tuned and adjusted and conformed to someone elses liking. She owned a map I couldn't hold, a road I couldn't drive, a window to look out of but no brake to stop to experience what I saw. Not without at least offering up my wants and desires to be decided upon by another as to their importance and then paying a penance or a price for it after the fact. It was like having the whole harvest of wheat offered up to be riddled by someone else and the chaff handed back to me as if that was all that was needed to nourish me. Precious grains that would have fed the both of us far more, dropped to the ground as I worked to recall the recipe for Famine Cake. If I remember correctly, it is chaff, and water, and dirt. The only gained from it is its namesake. Famine.



     I waited again, but this time it was for a purpose. I waited long enough to set inside my own head the resolution that I would not be left to sit when I could change it. No person should be expected to sit for this long without also being well  within their right to define it as abandonment. Who puts the priorities of another person aside as less important than the options of themselves and still expects or demands to be respected for it?

       I leaned over and took control of the one thing I needed more than anything else. More than the need to start a car I wasn't sure I even knew how to drive anymore, and more than the need to look at the map to see where I was. Even more than the need for a driver who felt no need or desire to do what she said she did better than I but still couldn't seem to stay in the seat to even do even that by driving for us.

      I reached out across the seat that now sat empty and unused regardless of it's inherent power and ability to do otherwise, and set my finger to the underside of the door lock. For one split second, I stopped to take notice of the fact that this was the first fully conscious and independent choice I had made concerning myself in a very long time. True, it was only a door latch, but to me it held back the whole of the world behind that door, and the realization was nothing short of epic.

     I leaned back into the passenger seat and grabbed at the handle the way I had wished and hoped for so many times before. I touched the cool surface and curled my fingers around the same curve of metal that had defeated me in the past. I took one breath, and pulled. I felt the audible 'click' that separated me from everything I knew and relied on, and allowed me to step my feet onto the ground that was not moving too fast to step on without dying as I had been led to believe it would whether the car was moving or not. I stepped onto hard ground that,regardless of the fact that it was no more than my own feet could cover, was mine to hold as sure and rightfully deserved purchase.
I stood there in the sun, and just looked around. I did not like what I saw. Sure I was right where I was led, and was still here feeling as obligated to it as I was anything else within my control, but that was the crux of it right there. It wasn't within my control that I was here at all. This was not the road trip to which I had asked the questions. This was not the place I wished to stop and it wasn't the things I wanted to experience. It certainly was not where I felt I should be standing ruminating over it while the person I thought I should be spending it with and for had seen fit to plan it to her liking a wholly different path with her rules over and to whom she felt absolutely no interest in continuing unless by her rules alone.. There was no 'ours' anymore. There was hers alone. How I was willing to accept and excuse it as 'ours' allowed her to continue to keep what she had for herself at the expense of me feeling the full impact that it wasn't, but allowing it as such, nonetheless.

     I walked around to the front of the car. Nope. Apparently we weren't moving that fast at all anymore. Not enough to kill me when and if I had I stepped out. A small black beetle ambled along in the dirt and paused beneath the shadow of the tire. A tiny little beetle weighing no more than a gram in front of two tons of car and it was unconsciously accomplishing what I had been too terrified to even comprehend.  I walked around to the drivers door and opened the latch. I didn't exactly want to get back into the car, but as I did, I took hold of two things. The steering wheel, and the map. I didn't know where I was going to go, but I knew where I was not going to go. It was  here. All I needed to rectify that, was to move down the road away from where I was now.

     I turned the key in the ignition, and revved the engine with my own foot. I reached my hand around the gearshift lever and pressed in the clutch to shift the car. The transmission gave the audible decelerating hum and then the click that set the gear in place. I let out the clutch and pressed the gas pedal down. The dirt and gravel spit from the tires and then the rubber dug deep into the warm pavement as I lurched off the dirt edge of the road and back out onto the journey I needed to travel. Apparently, I was as capable of moving this car as much as I always thought I could regardless of  choreographed failures. Maybe not perfect, but moving, and in a direction I had just as much ability to steer towards as she had.

I was scared. More scared than I had ever been in my entire life. What the hell was I doing? I panicked briefly and stepped on the brake to have the car grind to a stop in the middle of the road. I half expected to have the door suddenly come flying open and have myself dragged into the dirt like a thief stealing someone elses car. I had become that much of a stranger to half of my very own life. No. She had not taken notice at all. In fact, had I spun doughnuts in the center of the highway and honked the horn in reckless abandon to draw undeniable attention to my actions, I doubt she would have given any more care now to a display of that magnitude than she had to any other I had made in the past. If anything, she would regret the loss of the car more than me.

      I remembered this moment as the edge of the epiphany. The point where all of the thoughts and expectations had bunched and contracted my muscles and stored the energy that would propel me into my leap of faith. I could feel the very tip on the edge of my toe leaving the surface from which I had just placed the full weight of all I had left to give when I landed somewhere else. I took a quick snapshot of what I was doing, and what I had planned to do. It seemed an overwhelming task for something that had changed so much in just two minutes, but I scanned the mental picture without the aid of rose colored glasses and pinned it to the cork board in the inside of my brain. "Such a silent peace." I thought "Who would have thought the space between an epiphany and a leap of faith would have been such a small step and so undeniably comforting?"

     I wanted a road trip, and here it was. I wanted a vehicle to be in and move me, and here it was. I had a map, and a hand to hold it. I had but one seat to fill and needed the other to be filled as well, but had I really had both seats filled in a very long time anyway? What was the difference now? Had I been able to move from one to the other as driver and passenger, or had I simply been relegated to one? And if that was so, shouldn't the seat that allows me to choose for myself be better than the one that allows for no movement of my own? The seat may be just as uncomfortable, but now it was for me to decide when I had had enough of the miles and step out to define the purpose of the journey more  as a long string of stops to enjoy what was once just the rationalization for a meaningless  horizontal blur.

     I drove by myself for a brief time until I reminded myself that the road trip I needed was not the journey itself, nor was it the car. It was intended to be spent with someone along the way. That was the purpose for all the other parts in the first place. Especially the car. To do the things I had stared at out through the windows yearning to do in the company of someone who felt it and needed it like I did. Not only that but felt me as a part of the experience. I reset the radio station but was reminded that it was a cover for the talking I had wanted more and pulled it from the mount. I tossed it unceremoniously out the window to spin and tumble on the center line of the road. I readjusted the mirrors. Not to that which I had been forced to have them pointed to reflect my forced and undeserved 'failures', but to the things I hold as pertinent memories of the past that serve to remind me of lessons I learned to direct and influence my now happier future. Not control it.

      Up ahead of me, and pulled to the side of the road, was another car. No driver to be seen, but the same woman I had waved to before, sat in the passenger seat. I pulled up beside her window and shut off the car. She sat in the seat with the window rolled up. The heat in the car making her hair stick to the side of her face in wet sweaty pleats. I unrolled the window and rested my head on the side of the window frame. She stared straight ahead and refused to turn her head except for the brief acknowledgment that I was there beside her. As though by not looking she could simply make me disappear from her own chosen reality. A common tactic I had seen used on me with someone else. No big surprise that we inadvertently adopt those behaviors that worked so well on us.

I waited.

This is a different kind of waiting than what I had become accustomed to. This is waiting for purpose. It's waiting for something that is worth more because of the patience it requires for it to come to fruition. Because simply waiting is no solution to anything without some kind of return. "Only time will tell" is a pale excuse given to someone who has it within them internal strength to be expected to wait, but hasn't got the common sense or self worth to know for how long is acceptable before it looks like insanity.

     She fidgeted noticeably in her passenger seat and then slowly the window rolled down into the door, but she remained staring straight forward. A subtle gesture that said, "I need to listen, but I can't speak yet".

 "Hi" I said, feeling quite embarrassed that there was nothing more deep or meaningful to say to a person to whom I had only said a single word.

 "Hi." she said as she ran the tip of her finger over her bangs to pull them as far as she could into the eye she tried to shield from my view.

"What are you doing out here?"

 "Oh, you know. Just waiting."

 Her face remained straight forward, but I had already seen that her face shows far more by how it looks than by what she says. The soft corner of her eye drooping in embarrassed grief even as her smile tried in vain to nudge it back into place. I waited for the buzz of crickets and cicadas to punctuate her answer and the silence within herself before I continued.

"For what?" I asked.

     For a very brief second I felt that I had said a little too much, and caused far too much collateral accountability in her  with just two words. She tensed visibly and then shot a quick look before snapping her head back to the front. Long slow seconds payed out like the string from a kite as she fought between what she was willing to be heard to say, and what she really felt.

 "Well,...isn't it obvious that I am on a road trip? I mean...there's me and I am sitting here in the seat where I am supposed to be and this is a car...and I am here...you know....waiting".

 The last word "waiting" trailed off with a finality of an explosion inside  her own mind but that came out from between her beautiful lips as a sound like a moth rubbing its wings together under a flannel blanket. The weight of the world on such a tiny word.

"For what?" I asked again.

     I could already see that this was a woman of beautiful stubborn pride, but that the sting of tears bit at her eyelids like salt in an open wound. Like tiny gnats that nipped at the raw edges of her emotions with a merciless frenzy. Her lower lip quivered and she bit deep to fold it tight against her teeth. But that beautiful pride would not turn her head to me to see it while she did.

 "I know you are on a road trip..." I responded slowly and carefully chose the tone and speed of the words I spoke. Like a kitten that peers out from under the couch with the desire to bat at the laces of your shoes but is too terrified to venture past the pleat at the bottom.

"...but you and I both seem to have been traveling along with a very real and noble expectation to be on the trip without asking ourselves what we needed from it in the first place, and how much we have given of ourselves in order to achieve it for someone else."

      I waited to make sure she knew where I was going. "Do you know where you are right now? I asked glancing up and out at the wide dried expanse of dirt and dust.

 "No" , she sighed. "No I have no idea where I am and to be quite honest I have no idea how I got here".

 "Is this where you wanted to be?"

 "No it isn't, but I don't know how to get back to where I want to be. I wasn't holding the map and I don't know what road to take to go back". "I'm trapped". The words slipped from her like a death knell.


"I don't know you yet, but I know who you are and I know what you wanted. If you didn't, you wouldn't have been able to tell me a lifetime of information in one single look through a dusty windshield. And I wouldn't have understood it unless I had lived the very same thing". She slowly turned her face to me and the full impact of regret and loneliness streamed down her face. She savagely wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and tried not to have the hot tears roll down her cheeks, but she didn't turn her face away from me this time. It is amazing and horrible to watch a person be crushed with the overwhelming force of abstract things. As though feelings and emotions became as physical and real as stones.

 "But I don't know what to do." I don't know how to drive anymore, and I guess I am not very good at it. He says I am not, and who would ever want a person who is just a passenger anyway, and even if I could, the place I want to go isn't where I really want to be and I can't hold the map..and...".

 The fears and regrets poured from her like water from an ewer. They cascaded from her thoughts and out her mouth like the tears from her face. Had anyone else heard this she would have been incomprehensible for all that erupted from her in burning anger and sadness and frustration. But I knew every word of it. She was me and I was her. We were both in such a need of the trip for what we needed in ourselves, and we believed that the car and the destination were so critical to it that we had handed it all over to another to make as they saw it and wanted and not as we needed it.

      She finally deflated into dejected sobbing. The tears just ran from her face with no more control or use than a tap that poured salt water.,

 "...and I don't know what to do anymore". she breathed out the last few words in a thready shuddering. Like a sigh that pulled from her the very final hope that was within her.

 "Open your door" I said quietly.

 Sheer terror held her perfectly still for a moment. Like a woman with a respirator who had run out of air from a scuba tank she had been trained to never remove but still clutched at the mask  because it was the only place she knew she could get air regardless of the emptiness of the tank or the abundance of air on the other side of the mask. If only she could realize she was already out of the water.

     Slowly, The seal of the mask broke lose and the clean air filled her lungs enough to see more than one option."If I do.......do you promise that you will help me? Because I don't want to even start if I don't know someone is going to be there and I can't do it myself and I need to know that if I do that I need...and I'm not what you think I am and...I can't even....and I'm scared ".

"Open your door" I said again as sternly as possible without making it sound like a demand.

She moved almost imperceptibly, putting slight pressure against the latch, and slowly pulled the door open. I opened the door to my car as well.

 "Put your feet on the ground"

     She swung her long legs around and very carefully placed them into the gravel beneath her. As though she agonized whether to put the weight of her world onto the mental equivalent of thin, slippery ice, and run the risk of falling through, or to freeze to death above it by being too scared to venture to the safety that could only be found by crossing it.

     I leaned up and out of the car to show her that not one single step would be made by her without the knowing that I would not allow her to slip through the ice. She stood, but clutched the side of the door handle as though she were suspended upside down and it was all she had left to keep from spinning into an abyss of frigid water.

"Let go" I said simply. She stared at the car, and the road and finally out into the open expanse that I had just looked at myself not two hours before and saw it for what it was. Wide open, and not where she wanted to be, but hers to do with as she saw fit. To stay in it or to leave it. And then she let go of the door handle. No plummeting descent, no futile screaming into an inky blackness. No icy suffocation. Just the relaxing of muscle and bone from cold steel. She stood very briefly with her hands empty and waved them around at her hips looking for purchase. I held out my hand and her fingers caught the tip of my palm and wrapped themselves against it. Such a brief moment that implied the absolute necessity of this woman to know that she couldn't let go unless there was something to hold on to and trust it for all she expected of it. She leaned forward and I let herself fall into me.

 "This is the first, and the last time I will ever tell you do do anything. From here on out, everything we do, we do together."

     She smiled and smoothed herself into all of the spots that seemed to fit perfectly into me. Not only against me, but inside of me. She let me hold her until the metal plates of fear slowly dropped off of her like a suit of armor corroding. Each breath refilling in her a safety and comfort. Like a bellows to a furnace.

 "I need to ask you something" she said, the strength of her voice returning to her.

 "Go ahead".

 " I used to think I knew what I needed to ask of someone to be able to go on a road trip. But I don't need to ask it"

"No, you need to tell it" I answered before she finished.

"Exactly. I need to know that the trip is not based on how well you drive or how nice the car is. I need to know that I am the reason you go on the trip at all, and not the trip that takes me along with you. But most of all, I need to know that you understand that I don't have all of the answers. either. I need you to answer what I do not know to ask, and I need you to know what I need when I can not speak. I need to know that I can be afraid, and I need to know that you will do everything you can to make it stop. And I need to tell you that I need to be able to have us be both driver and passenger, but not so long that we don't stop along the way to be what we are TO each other and not just FOR each other". She stood for a moment and then looked out onto the dusty highway before she looked behind her at the two cars.

"So which one do we take?"

I looked behind us briefly and then turned to her and smiled. "We don't take either one. We leave them for what they are, where they are. as a reminder to anyone who finds them that being a mere passenger in a car we can't leave or control has no need of a person in the seat at all if we aren't the reason for the trip , or consulted on where it should go. I want to build a new car to spend with you. not for you, or despite you"

     She took my hand and we walked out onto the road. No locked doors, no closed windows. No maps or seats with assigned roles to pit one against the other. I listened to her talk and noticed that her hand had no need of having to reach across a gearshift for now to hold mine. We set about a whole new plan. A road trip that set the expectations long before the abilities of one or the other could cloud the true need for the journey as we expected it to be. That it wasn't the ability to drive the car that was important if it wasn't going to stop along the way and be able to be walked away from the number of miles driven. We had more important things to do while we stayed perfectly still.

     Now the road is different. We drive together as a pair and not just one driving for the want of another. She gave me her keys and let me put them in our engine. It will be my foot that moves for her to allow her to put her bare feet to the dashboard and I will try to keep the sun on them, but only until she wishes or needs to feel the press of the pedal against her foot and know she is in control. She will let me hold the map, but she chooses the road. I may race the engine beyond common sense and let her scream in delight from time to time, but only as long as the exhilaration keeps pace with her safety and her need to know she is protected. All four wheels firmly set against that which will not be risked for a greater temporary rush or as a base point for fear and anxiety as the just compensation for a difference of opinion. Our car has no need of a radio, and we tossed it to the dirt the same as I had before as a reminder that conversation does not have a need of a station nor speakers that can be turned up to tune out. We did, however do irreparable damage to our new car before we ever sat in it.

      I kicked the mirrors off the sides of the door and left an ugly twisted gash on the metal. But I will not fix it. Mirrors are pretty, but it is their beauty that belies the inherent evil of constant reminders to the past we could not change even if we wanted to, and the belief that past mistakes need to be in front of our face to learn from them. I am no fantastic driver, and never claim that there aren't those who go faster in their prettier cars. But I know how to drive, and know that this car was made by us with more .I know how to ride and to trust her to steer. It chooses a road with no need of limitations to its smoothness for speed nor does it balk at a rutted and unruly bounding surface that trades speed for adventure. It can run for mile after mile but has no need to continue, or be more important, when there are things along the way that require us to walk away from it to find each other again. To dream in parks, to laugh and play in pools, to kiss and eat cotton candy on Ferris wheels. We were both made to travel , but we need to do it with a smile on our faces with the assurance that the road we travel was by our choice. I was not made to be a driver unless she needs me to be. I was not made to be a passenger unless I need her to drive. Neither was she. We were not born to be either. We were made to make road trips, but we were born to go on them with a person who knows them for what they are. It is a journey we travel to be alive, not a destination we sacrifice living for. More importantly, it is a journey we make to give life to someone else and to gain the exhilaration of what it is to live your life for them.

Did I do it wrong? Of course I did. But the error was not in choosing the road trip or the car. It was not in wanting and needing to be with someone who shared the same dream. It was in choosing a companion who could not drive and could not tolerate sharing. Holding everything else accountable rather than the true cause, made everything else the reason it failed, while eliminating the benefits of them by appearing no better or worse than what was already there.

Years later, we crossed an intersection and noticed the car I had once lived in. Sometimes, roads cross each other. It is just the nature of roads. We had first met on a fork in the road, so it should come as no surprise that we would cross other roads as well. Even some we had crossed before. We had not expected to return to this spot again. Not the location where the car sat now, because that was of our own choosing, but a spot that would be so close to a memory that was not all bad...but far more bad than the good. But while we were here, I wrote a small note to give to my previous companion. I found it no great surprise that the car I had once lived in, was in a completely different place where I had walked away from it so long ago. Maybe that was the one thing that I needed to see. That it removed a bit of the undeserved responsibility for the loneliness I felt  I may have caused her by me choosing to leave. Why I was so concerned for her feelings now, when it was expected that I sell mine out to her for so much less long before, is beyond me. That is one of the larger reasons that I left, though. Because I felt things in ways that she did not. And I felt far more of them. Worst of all, is that I felt them with a deeper impact to myself then she could ever feel in herself under the same conditions. Loss is felt by your own standard and having another person say they have felt loss and understand, means very little unless they can do it with the same impact to themselves as it is felt by you.

     The journey is not the path. It is simply the very brief time  we are given as the span of our lives to experience. the path is who we choose and how we choose to travel. By car, by boat, by walking, it is made all the more relevant, not by the speed with which we do it, but with whom we share it.