Last week, I escaped.
Flights had doubled in price. The train was nearly as expensive, and the trip home was offered at a before-sunrise hour. Fiona ((my car)) sat parked at the curb, reminding me she’d safely brought me to and from North Carolina a few years ago — and if I could make a 12–13-hour drive alone, 6.5 to Buffalo was absolutely doable.
I shoved what I needed into bags, said goodbye to the boys ((it was the first time I’d left them longer than overnight)), and took off. My phone, which I dropped in a parking lot last summer and shattered the back of, has been clearly on its way out. The battery drained quickly, even when it was plugged in in the car, so I made sure to buy a new portable charger and bring my iPad, just in case. I always pride myself on being super-careful and diligent about packing, even if it tips me over into neuroticism. Which, let’s be honest, it doesn’t always take all that much to do.
The first three-ish hours went great. Very minimal traffic, and my phone was ON it with iTunes on shuffle. Near Binghamton, I decided I’d get gas and take out my portable charger, since my phone had less than 20 percent of its battery power left. I hooked everything back up, got back on the road, and missed the entrance to the highway. GPS rerouted me through this woodsy service road, and when I hit a bump, my phone and the charger went flying off the stand. Great. I pulled over when I realized I couldn’t find the charger. There I was, basically in the woods, kneeling down next to my driver’s side, trying my hardest to peer under the seat and between the center console to no avail. “What the f—how does something disappear in the front seat and well of a car?!” I exclaimed to no one in particular. My frustration with this notion was longstanding by this point: For some reason, I feel like things have been mysteriously leaving me. Jewelry that falls off a dresser into the unknown. Socks that go to the laundromat with mates and come back single. T-shirts and bralettes that are literally worn one day and gone the next. Not to mention fabric scissors that have been missing for the entire two years I’ve had them, still in the package. Oh, and lovers//friends, because of course.
Eventually, I huffed back into the car, and saw the charger sitting on top of the bag in my passenger-seat well. Finally. I hooked it back up, got the GPS and music back on, and was back on my route. The entrance ramp to the highway soon came up, and just as I was using it, a small, reddish-gray squirrel flounced out from the greenery. “Oh no,” I thought. “Oh, please don’t go now—” To my horror, I watched as it ran into the road, narrowly missing my driver’s side tire. It didn’t miss the passenger side.
I have always, always been terrified of hitting an animal. It’s definitely one of my biggest fears, since I was never sure how I’d actually recover, and I’ve had some close calls that have left me shaking. There’s also a family of squirrels that live in the tree on my front lawn — they’ve started to come to the window and wait when they see me with a container of nuts. I’ve seen two generations of babies.
And that was all I could think of as I felt the squirrel under the tire and looked back in the rearview to see it rolling off onto the roadway. I was screaming by then. Full-on, feral, hand-over-my-mouth howling that I wasn’t in control of. Sobbing apologies over and over. When I realized I was fully losing it, I pulled off the highway and into the parking lot of a dilapidated, likely abandoned diner. No one was around to witness my absolute hysterics. I don’t know why, but I started to think about Nico, and the way I lost him quickly. All I wanted was to hug my cats, and they were so far away. Instead, I pulled out my phone and texted two of my friends. I took huge, deep breaths until my hands stopped shaking. When I was finally able to get back on the highway, I tried not to look at the dead animals on the side of the road, hoping beyond belief that I wouldn’t add another one. I wished I had someone with me.
I was slightly dazed for the next hour or so, turning my in-car rock concert off and switching to my favorite podcast. Traffic built up miles before the State Fair exit. When I looked at my phone, it had two percent battery life left. For some reason, both the car plugin and the portable charger were doing nothing. I pulled off again into a rest stop, quickly texting Kells to let her know I had to make a pit stop. I was in the middle of texting someone else to let them know when the phone went black. I dug around in my bag for a phone charger, plugging it into the car port. Nothing. I pulled my phone case off and attached the portable charger. Still nothing. Okay, not a huge deal, I had my iPad for this very reason. I opened it, went into Google maps, and saw “No Internet Connection.” I tried for the next 10 minutes to connect from the parking lot before realizing I needed to go inside and see if I could find an outlet or some login info.
After another half an hour, I had pulled up directions for the rest of the route on my iPad and gotten my phone up to 12 percent after plugging it into a wall outlet and letting it sit on a cold tabletop. It was starting to get dark out. I got back into the car, noting that it was likely just a straight run to the exit, and left my phone off. No music to loudly sing along to. No podcast to giggle at. Just the sound of tires. After a few minutes, I looked down at the map on my iPad screen to double-check what exit number I needed.
No Internet Connection. This time, there was another type of screaming.
“WHY?!” I howled, to no one in particular. “Why does every single thing I ever try to do have to be so incredibly difficult? Why am I always alone to figure everything out?” And then, more tears. “I just keep going when things are always hard. I just keep going, like I’m supposed to. I have been struggling so much; I decided to be ‘brave’ and ‘get out of my comfort zone,’ like I’m supposed to. What am I doing wrong? What lesson am I obviously too stupid to grasp at this point? What is it that I am always doing wrong?”
I’m not sure who exactly I was talking to. I’m an agnostic. Maybe my therapist, who’s always asking what I can take away from these experiences? Myself, since I’m always preoccupied with keeping my mood up all the time? The universe, because there has to be something, right? I can’t really be this alone. It can’t really be that everything is working against me.
What I did know is that I couldn’t cry as hard as I wanted to, since there was no place to pull over. Eventually, my phone popped back into function and I was able to see that I needed exit 48. I was at 43. Dear gods, thank you. I’d been in the car for eight hours at this point. The miles stretched long between exits here, and just as I was creeping up to 47, all I saw were tail lights glowing like animal eyes in the dark. It was 9:30pm. On a Thursday. And I cried, again. My now-functioning GPS said 45 minutes, when it really should have been closer to 20. Semi-frantic texts from Kells came in once I took my phone off airplane mode, and I instantly felt bad for missing them. Eventually, I saw that road work had closed down most of the highway, and soon, I was weaving past tons of traffic cones and lights. Just when I thought the closures went past the exit, I saw a makeshift lane leading to the ramp. I was so tired at this point that driving around them felt unnatural. Like I was doing something wrong, again.
I made it to Kells’ complex at 10pm, a full nine hours after I left. I made sure to mop any stray tears off my face by the time she came down to help me bring my things inside.
“I was so worried something happened,” she said, when she hugged me. “I don’t know why, but I can’t stop thinking about what’s gone on…” and she referenced some abusive/dangerous behavior I’d been exposed to in the last few months. While it might have been a stretch—we did laugh about how ridiculous it sounded that someone might be following me on the entire nine hours—it really did solidify how well Kells knows me. It was like she was already tapped in on what was happening in my head. Maybe if no one else heard my outward breakdown alone on a highway in upstate New York, she had. All I knew was that as soon as she opened the door to the apartment and I could hear Riley barking excitedly, everything felt so much better. I’ve walked up the stairs to Kelly’s apartments to be greeted by happy dogs for so many years. This felt very much like home, even though it was far from where I live.
Later, when I flopped down on an air mattress, I went back to my outburst in the car. Maybe I was just tired. Maybe I was still sad. But overall, I was frustrated. Frustrated that it really does seem like everything is working against me a lot of the time. Frustrated that while I need my space and my alone time, it isn’t how I want to live the entirety of my life. And while I was so glad for my friends who had reassured me that I wasn’t a bad person after hitting that poor little squirrel, did I really not deserve to have anyone next to me? I had to drive nine hours for someone to hug me and tell me they were worried?
The rest of the trip was without incident. I stayed off my phone. We sat in the sunshine on the balcony until our shoulders turned pink. We went to the cool restaurant with the robotic waiters and the best Pad Thai ever. We sat in a beer garden next to the creek. We strolled along Lake Erie, visited the new Southern Tier Brewery, closed out a night with giant pretzels and espresso martinis at the NYBP. At one point, when I went to my car to get my dress for dinner, I realized this was the happiest I’d felt in probably six or eight weeks. There wasn’t a lot of time for me to ruminate on bad things, but there was plenty of time for me to think out loud to my best friend. Who gets me. Who I might literally be lost without.
But I’m pretty sure I’ll just fly next time.