There was something insurmountably satisfying about being behind the wheel of a car again. The seats were cracked from decades of use, the blinker ticked loudly, the gear shift felt sticky and unused. It was my first car. I'd come home on my on my sixteenth birthday to find it in the driveway, key in a card tucked under a potted plant on the back porch.
At sixteen, I'd had no money, a boyfriend I thought hung the moon, and a serious delusion involving going to Harvard. But twenty was different – I'd been away at school (a liberal arts school in the North) for five months. Coming home for the summer had meant giving up my grocery clerk job (thank goodness), in an exchange for an internship that kept me behind a computer all day in a law firm downtown. I was single and annoyed with half of the male population.
Sixteen had felt antsy to see what the world held; twenty felt the exact same way. And with the knowledge of what the next summer morning would bring – another commute downtown with my mother, more coffee for assholes, and more appointments made behind a sleek desk in too high heels, I couldn't fall asleep.
I sat up in bed and thought of my life since I'd first left my sleepy Midwest town for to pursue a degree. The dismal winter months of my first year of college had me imagining a life by the coasts of California. I was broke and cowardly then. I didn't have access to my car. I had classes to finish and a whole other slew of excuses for staying in my dorm in Pennsylvania.
I pulled the blankets back, turned the TV back on and thought once again about the next day's promise of shitty, unpaid work. Then I got up. It doesn't have to be like this, I thought, pulling on the shorts I'd worn earlier. I'm young and there's so much to do, I thought, stuffing all I could fit into my duffel. Don't think, I thought, a mantra really – writing a note for my mom and step-dad; petting my dog; down the stairs and into the car and onto the highway.
Oh shit.