Road Trips

Solo road trips are a breed all their own. I’m convinced that the perfect time to be alone in a car is 3 hours. It’s not too long that you lose your mind, but not too short that it doesn’t feel like a really good counseling session. (But I might be biased because my home was 3 hours by car from where I went to college.) I usually spend my time loudly jamming out to music or sobbing my eyes out. On not so rare occasions, I do both at the same time. Barely mumbling the lyrics out through the tears streaming down my face. But I’m by myself, so no one cares. I can be as free or as vulnerable as I like.

            As I drive today again, another three hours, I hardly seem to enjoy it. Because I’m going to find a new home. One that’s more than three hours from my last. One that I don’t want to be at. One in Northern Utah, and I hate Northern Utah. It’s a Hellhole. But I rock out while I drive, and I cry about the lyrics, and I cry about leaving our friends, and I cry about my grandma sitting in her rest home room slowing losing her mind.

            Utah puts me on edge. There are too many people on the roads, too many people who don’t know how to drive correctly. Too many people who zip around you on the freeway, speeding down the road, not stopping at yellow lights, not caring that their actions could easily end human life, with just one wrong move, one wrong turn… I missed my turn. The turn for my job interview. Later, I miss the turn for the apartment building I’m touring. We just don’t want to miss the big turn we’re trying to make in life.

            With Jake graduating, and me already done, our lives are changing a lot. We’re starting a real life now. One that involves jobs and apartments and northern Utah for now. So, as I drive home, I ask myself a lot of questions that I know I won’t be able to answer:

Did the interview go well?

Did I make a good impression?

Do I even want to work there?

Do I even like accounting?

Can I imagine myself living here?

Will we ever make enough money to live there?

Will we ever make enough money to live anywhere?

Why are apartments so expensive to rent?

Do we need two bedrooms instead of just one?

Does this mean it’s time to start a family?

            They don’t make me feel any better, they make me ask more questions, feel more uneasy, fight back more tears. Because I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m winging it.

What if it doesn’t work?