When I got my car on my sixteenth birthday, the first thing I did was drive. That’s the only reason I wanted a car, actually. To just drive. To get away from my family. To run. To hit the gas and just steer. Driving was something I could control. I had the control over which way I turned, which how fast I went and when I could hit the brakes and make it all stop.
It didn’t take me long to realize that planes travel faster than cars and I could get to my destination faster with an airplane.
But then I didn’t have the same control that I did when I steered my wheel and hit the gas with my lead foot.
I only loved to drive alone. Because then I could pretend that everything was okay. That I had complete control while everything around me was falling into a great black hole. I had to stand by idly and watch it disappear around me. I could do nothing to stop the debris that was falling around me as I just drove. If I drove fast enough, maybe I could go back in time and catch up with what went so terribly wrong in my life. Maybe I could rewind and fix the past.
Maybe.
There was a time when I didn’t want to drive. When I saw my father leave the driveway in his own car. I had seen the action so many times before, but now, it was a new view, a new action. The way he threw himself into his seat. He turned the key so fast, so hard that I thought maybe he would break it and then I wouldn’t be alone anymore with just Mom. I saw the way he backed out of the driveway so fast that he almost hit the sidewalk on the opposite side. I wanted to run down the stairs and out the door. I wanted to scream at him, the tears already in my eyes. How could he leave me?
But my parents never had any explanation for what they did. It was all a misunderstanding, they would tell me later.
I turned up my music so loud that I could only hear the Beastie Boys as they screamed “Sabotage” over and over. Then I turned on Metallica. Then Nirvana. Then Disturbed. I turned it up so loud I heard my mom knock on my door again and again, begging me to turn the music down. But I couldn’t. If I turned it down, I would have to hear my thoughts. The thoughts about how he abandoned me, how he left me alone to wrinkle and wither up…Those thoughts would resurface. I would have to hear them. With my music turned up so loud, I could at least block them out for a little while.
After I got over the fact that I wouldn’t be seeing my father for months, I started driving late at night again. There was a curfew for people under eighteen not to drive, but I didn’t care, preferring to break the rules rather than to try to obey. Keeping myself in check was not a forte of mine.
Whenever I drive, I have to have music playing. I can never have radio. Talk stations don’t really fit with me. I have always been more of a non-commercial guy. That’s why I don’t watch television, preferring movies always.
So when I am driving, I always play music through my CD player or my iPod when I haven’t broken my adapter. When I download a new set of songs, I immediately make a CD, inserting it after I’ve started my car. I don’t understand how some people can just drive quietly. I always sing along or hit the steering wheel when I need to make a point or hit along with the drums. My breath is always taken away by the sound of the wailing guitars or the voice of the lead singer.
And even thought my thoughts always catch up to me, I still drive, still steer, still hit the gas. Even though my eyes are barely able to make out anything due to the tears.
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written for a novel I am currently composing slowly, but carefully. this is in a guys point of view, just in case you were confused.
thanks for reading,
Anya
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