The Road

Everything I know is changing. My world has become a constant paradigm shift from familiar to uncomfortable, from ordered alphabetically to cluttered chaos in a whole other alphabet entirely. I feel like a toddler stumbling on my feet to take my first steps, a teenager behind the wheel of my first stick shift. And yet I keep stalling at the intersections. I cannot move this vehicle known as my life forward enough to pick up speed and hit the cruise control. I want something familiar, just one simple thing to remind me of where I am. Something I can recognize as my own or something that I've known; not something I once knew that is no more, or something that has been washed away by the storms, the winds and the downpour.

When I was little and I would nap on car trips in the back of the minivan, I could always tell we were getting close to home by the look of power lines and the telephone poles. In the night, I knew the acceleration up the hill leading to my street, the deceleration of going down the other hill and turning into the driveway. I knew all of that by heart, lying down with my eyes closed in the dark. It was as familiar as my own breath.

And now I keep looking for something just like that. First left and then right. And then left again thinking that if I turn my head again the next time I look, something will be there; something has to be there. But it isn't. The street lamps have all burnt out. The road is dark and winding and the guard rail ended many miles back. Eventually there's a dead end and a place to turn around but I haven't gotten there yet...