Trigger warning for suicidal thoughts/ideation
Life is a road trip. You drive off, alone at first. You know your destination, but how long until you get there and what will it be like when you arrive? You have to prepare yourself and take care of yourself, because you can’t stop at every gas station on the way. Will the journey be easy, and in the end, will it be worth it? You never know what will happen: when traffic will get choked up, when you’ll get a flat tire, or when your car will just give up and break down. If that happens, will someone care to stop and help you, or will you help yourself, or will you be left to die? There are rest stops and bathroom breaks and more than once you’ll get lost, but in the end, you always have to get back in your car and drive. There’s not much else you can do.
You can choose which roads you take, forced to assume they all lead to the same place in the end. You can choose to drive offroad, off the beaten path, or perhaps take the same path so many times it becomes a road itself. You can choose to follow in someone else’s tracks, chasing their rainbow headlights and hoping they’ll share the gold at the end of the trail. You can choose to drive into unknown territory on a whim or drive off a bridge into the dark abyss below. After all, every road leads to the same place.
Eventually, you may have a companion, a partner in the passenger seat, someone to take over when you’re too tired to drive any further. They’ll share their CD’s and puts their bags with yours. They may get off somewhere along the way, but you’ll always have their memory, their photography in the back and the imprint of their body still warm on the seat. You’ll share the joy of the ride with their ghost, taking the turns and forks alone as you take your trip towards…towards what?
Are we driving towards death or happiness? Is the end of the journey truly that or is there something more for us, another trip to take? Perhaps at the end is home, a place you can return to when you’re done discovering the world. No one knows what’s at the end of the road, but it’s the only place any of us can go. We have to drive towards it, slow or fast. There is nothing else to do.
Right now my life feels like I’m driving at night. My headlights are the only light I have; my dashboard is dying and even the stars feel cold and distant. My back seat is full of crushed boxes and burned photography and the tape player is stuck on repeat. I’m tired of listening to the same tired song, but I don’t stop singing along, not when my own voice is the only company I have. There are only ghosts to my right and no lights in my mirrors and it has been nighttime for eleven years. I have been driving alone for as long as I can remember, but that’s not very long. I had passengers, but I lost them. I have a map, but I’m too scared to look at it, too scared to admit I’m lost, too scared to look at where the end of my road is. I’m so tired now I can’t do anything but stare out the window watching the shadows of the trees that surround me like a narrow wall or a tightening noose, and not for the first time I wish I had the courage to drive my car off a bridge.