What If I Just Kept Driving?

This weekend, I went on a fossil-hunting adventure. I was lucky and did indeed find a few fossils, but the bulk of the haul was in petrified wood.

I had to drive a good 45 miles out of the city to find the perfect place. I'd read about a known location and decided to take that same idea but go somewhere a bit more remote, and it totally worked out for me. But still, I'm not even getting to the point, here.

I drove quite some way out. I took lonely, winding backroads with two lanes. I drove the rarely-maintained gravel county roads. I went off the pavement and into the mud. I MAY have taken advantage of that muddy situation and gave my Jeep Wrangler a mud bath.

Once I had arrived, I forcefully stomped down the muddy banks to the sandbar of the mighty river. I heard not a car, although I could hear gunshots off in the distance and it was obviously target practice. So, there I was, standing in the middle of this sandbar, on the edge of a river that runs the length of the state, totally alone. The sky was overcast yet somehow a beautiful diffused blue. There was a strong wind up the bank, but barely a breeze down in the bottom. And I was standing, bathing, soaking it all in, reveling in the sheer rawness of it all...and then a V-shaped flock of geese flew overhead, the gentle honks wafting down to my ears. And then, another. And I was so moved by the sheer beauty and simplicity of it all that I honestly began to cry a little.

After I picked up every piece of petrified wood and paleontological artifact I could find, I made the climb back up to my Jeep. The thought occurred to me: What if I just kept driving? Where would I end up? Who do I know out of town that would aid and abet my escape? Who knows me well enough to understand that I feel like a caged animal in the city, as if I were a circus tiger, cramped, mistreated, pacing and daydreaming obsessively about returning to the wild?

I could just keep driving. My bank will let me continue to use my check card long after being overdrawn, so I could still get gas. I could eat. I could just...disappear. I could find a small, poor town in the middle of the Texas landscape, hidden by live oaks, mesquite, and prickly pear, and find a meaningless, hourly job to sustain me.

I wondered how long it would take Them to realize I was gone for good.

The hum of the road beneath my tires was serenading me into all sorts of irresponsible, desperate acts and it took my entire bit of reasoning to talk myself out of it.

Deep down inside, I know it would ruin me. Yeah, I would finally be free, but I would be putting myself into a different type of prison. One that is rarely known by anyone but minimum-wage workers. I would lose everything I worked so hard for, with very little chance of ever regaining even an ounce of it.

But still, after days like today, it seems worth it. To have peace of mind and a renewed soul...how much is that worth? And I could have had it all, if I would have just kept driving, watching the yellow lines fading into the horizon in my rear-view mirror - if I ever bothered to look back.
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The Gift

Today's challenge: The Gift. Write about the Christmas Gift you remember the most. Why? Who was it from? Where were you? What is the significance of it?.

The Christmas gift I remember the most is probably the one I need to forget. To this day it still makes me mad, and it still makes me a little angry with myself for being so thrilled over it.

Technically, it was the day after Christmas because it was so late, but it's going to have to count.

Several years ago, I took a little trip with my then-boyfriend to his hometown on Christmas Day. We BBQ'd over at his sister's house until I finally begged him to take me back to his parents' house because I had a horrible migraine. I'd taken a lot of OTC stuff, but none of it was helping. I'd fallen asleep on his sister's couch for an hour or so, but I still felt bad and just wanted to go to sleep.

We got in the truck and I noticed it was almost 3am! But we weren't headed in the direction of his parents' house. He said he had to show me something.

He took me up to an overlook near a state park in Central Texas, not far from his hometown. It was the middle of the night, freezing cold, and I felt horrible. But he dragged me out there, pulled me out of the truck, and stood me up on a big boulder on the edge of the overlook.

Then he took both of my hands in his and asked me to marry him.

There was no ring, no bending-down-on-one-knee...fuck, he wasn't even SOBER. I knew he was, in all likelihood, still really drunk, but I figured out later (after we were married) that he'd been all coked up, too.

Now, there was a ring. But it was given to me by my great-grandmother for just such an occasion. He hadn't thought it out or planned it out or put any thought into it at all, because that ring was sitting in the same place on that night it had been sitting for months, SIZED AND EVERYTHING, on the bathroom counter next to my jewelry box and he had to practically reach *over* it to get his toothbrush for the trip.

Thank GOD my great-grandmother had died 10 years before his proposal. She would have been very upset at how it all went down. But that's neither here nor there.

After I stopped crying long enough to say yes, he kind of just stood there a second. Then, as an afterthought - an overly-dramatic expression of insincere elation aimed at evoking a certain kind of emotion from me - he screamed at the top of his lungs, "SHE SAID YES," and all the dogs in the valley started barking and we laughed and pretended that everything was right in the world.

I realize now that I was practicing willful suspension of disbelief. I knew that nothing about this proposal was kosher. I just wanted someone to love me that much. I wanted to be important enough to someone so that they would want to marry me. I knew it was all very, very wrong. I just ignored every red flag. It wasn't until I noticed that my friends weren't nearly as excited as I was. Something about the looks on their faces made me realize it wasn't right.

So, of course, we fought, because I had the nerve to ask him if he still wanted to go through with the engagement now that he sobered up. I *may* have asked him if he'd ask me again sober. And that set him off. And, of course, I just backed down and took it.

Looking back, for someone he claimed was such an evil, selfish bitch, I sure did concede a lot.

It's no big surprise, I know, to mention that we planned a wedding for that coming November - almost a year - and were married for a year and a half before I threw his lying, drug-abusing, alcoholic ass out. It took another 4 months for the divorce to go through.

The lesson is that there are some Christmas gifts that need to be returned and some that don't. There are some, such as this one, that never should have been accepted in the first place...

Listen to Your Broccoli

Anne Lamott tells us, "Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it." She's referring to that inner voice that we hardly ever hear anymore.

Today, take a few minutes to be still and quiet. Listen to your inner voice and write what she/he says. That's it. Whatever it is that's in there, let it out..

Hey, you. Yeah. What the HELL are you doing? There is no excuse good enough in the world to ever make this okay. LOOK AT YOURSELF.

There's a treadmill upstairs. Why aren't you on it?

There's a camera in its bag. Why aren't you taking pictures?

There's a million books on the shelf. Why aren't you reading them?

Do you think the world will slow down or stop and wait for you to pull yourself out of this funk? Come on, now. You know better. Nothing and nobody cares about your mood and there are no allowances made just because you don't have the motivation to get off your ass.

There are two dogs that love you, but are bored. Why aren't you walking them?

You finally have some alone time, and you're reading Tweets and looking at other people's photos online. Write your own story. Photograph your own life.

Call that woman you said you were going to call about that job, rather than sit here two hours past the time she asked you to call.

DO SOMETHING. You're getting older by the minute, and you can't get that time back...

Sorry that was so lame. I was letting my broccoli speak to me and then I realized it had a very, very valid point: I have a phone call I desperately need to make that can seriously benefit my future. So, rather than letting my broccoli continue its motivational tirade, I'm going to call that woman!

Oh, and thanks, Broccoli!   
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Bobby

Facebook will be the death of me, I swear. I just can't seem to get rid of it, though. I suppose I should be glad, because guess what happened now...

I got a friend request from a very formal-sounding name I didn't immediately recognize. It took a few minutes to get it to sink in, but then I remembered. And it all came flooding back, memory by memory, hit by hit.

(i'm going to change all the names and then do my best to remember them and keep them straight! be kind!)

My first day of high school, I was in a homeroom with people from all grades. Out of all of them, there was one guy, David, that was pretty cute. I was all about meeting new people and finding the hot boys. Well, turns out David was all too eager to show me around. He was nice, but very, very weird and came from a really fucked up home. But his friends were cute and welcomed me in as part of their group.

They were skaters. Most were drug users. Oh, why sugar-coat it? They were addicts, straight up. They were mostly seniors, although some were juniors. They were into the local music scene, which was something I was trying to learn about. But, the important thing to remember here is that they paid attention to me. I kinda felt like I belonged. It took me a long time to meet everyone, but I found The One on the fourth day of school: Bobby. The complication was that David sort of thought he and I were a Thing, and he was best friends with Bobby. And we all know there's no real way to make that switch, right?

Here's the most fucked up thing of all: I don't remember much else. I don't remember how exactly it happened, I just remember that David got really, really pissed off at me and Bobby both, quit speaking to us, and Bobby and I were a Thing. I also remember being warned multiple times about Bobby from multiple people, but they wouldn't say why. The details on how we got together and all of that, though...totally fuzzy.

As it turned out, Bobby was the school's most prolific drug dealer. A few of his rules were that he didn't do his own drugs, he only dealt with people he knew, he would never use 'hard' drugs, and school still came first. He made excellent grades and made a ton of money. He knew everybody, and when we'd go to parties, he'd lead me around by the hand and introduce me to people, and I felt like a queen because every guy honestly liked him, every druggie wanted to be in his good graces, and every girl wanted him. And he was with me.

Eventually, he let me help him with his business. I spent countless hours wearing latex gloves, helping him tear apart books of blotter paper acid, dividing it into sheets, then individual hits, wrapping them in aluminum foil and then putting them into tiny baggies. It was a time-consuming operation, but we spent those countless hours talking, and really getting to know each other.

As I'm sure you can predict, my education began to take a nosedive. I was all about Bobby. I was cutting school, which he rarely did, to go bowling or to play pool and always get fucked up. He did skip with me a lot, but not all the time.

His family was majorly messed up. We'd go to his house after school and his mom would be on the couch, wearing nothing but a tiny little cropped t-shirt and panties. She was very pretty, in a Joan Jett / Kristen Pfaff sort of way. But then sometimes we'd go to his house and we'd open the door and see her naked ass straight up in the air, bent over on the couch, and her boyfriend changing positions to take her from behind. Like she didn't know we were out of school, you know? She was always drunk - very nice when she wasn't taking it up her ass on the living room couch in plain view of me, Bobby, and her youngest son, who was only 10 at the time - and probably had no business trying to raise children. It's no wonder Bobby was cruising down the wrong path at break-neck speed.

Of course, this is when I started using drugs. Only when he gave them to me, at first. I didn't really buy from him (only when i knew he needed the money), and he was really very generous with it. Of course, I took a liking to the feeling and ended up being his best non-paying customer. Well, his and a few other people's, too.

But we spent lots of time together, although not quite as much at school. He was busy with 'things,' and we were on totally opposite ends of the school all day. So, to maximize our time together, we skipped more than we should have, probably. We would sometimes spend the entire day wrapped up in the huge red velvet comforter he had, listening to Kate Bush, Jimi Hendrix, Sarah McLachlan, or the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and doing everything except actually having sex.

There's the thing.

I was still a virgin. (not technically, because i had been raped that preceding school year, but i was still in major denial and felt it didn't really count) I guess I fucked up by even telling him that, because he refused to be the one to introduce me to the wonderful world of sex. He told me up front: we would stay together as long as he could go without actual sex, and then he'd have to send me on my way. It was a weird position he put me in, because he placed more importance on virginity than I did. I told him I didn't need to be in love with someone to lose my virginity - I just needed to like them enough to feel like they deserved first crack at me. Bobby totally fit the profile, but simply refused to do it.

Eventually, he explained himself. He said that his mother had always told him that a girl will forever love the man to whom she loses her virginity. Bobby said that was too heavy a responsibility, that if someone else took it, and we got back together and fell in love, that it was meant to be, but that he would never take any girl's virginity and thus requiring their eternal affections. Bobby was a true believer in fate. He didn't try too hard to make anything in particular go his way, or whatever. He was a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. What happened happened, it's the Universe's will. He honestly believed that, if we were meant to be, we'd find each other again.

Yes, it was all a bunch of bullshit. Yes, it was borne of a drug-induced haze, from all 3 of us. Try to remember, though, that I was only 14 and was just beginning my high-dive into Hell. I still didn't understand that people don't always make sense - especially ones who are always under the influence of drugs.

Somehow, I ended up getting together with this real preppy douchebag just so I could fuck him. He thought that meant we were together. He wouldn't stop coming by my house (that is a whole other story, though). So, while he went on a family vacation that next week, I went back to Bobby.

And I know it ended again somehow, because that's when I entered the "Jason" phase of high school, but I don't remember HOW. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It will all come to light soon enough.

Bobby and I have been texting each other over the last few days. It's mostly been get-to-know-you stuff with little talk of the past. We did get to talking about my current job and whether or not he knew any of my co-workers from Way Back When, and I brought up the fact that I remember very little of my teenage years - and what I do remember is spotty and out of context and presented in isolation. He offered to help me piece back together what I don't know.

I'm scared to death. I'm scared because there's a part of me that doesn't want to know the truth. There's a part of me that doesn't want to have to feel the same things I felt before, which is probably a big reason I've blocked it - it HURTS. There's a part of me that feels like I absolutely must know everything in order to move forward with my life, but I just don't know. I'm just not sure.

There is absolutely no chance of this becoming a romantic thing. He has a girlfriend with whom he's very much in love, and he lives 3.5 hours away. I've changed quite a bit from the girl I once was, while he seems to have views that haven't changed much - especially with politics - and I just really disagree with them. He did say that I still look the same, but with hair (long story), and that I look really good, and I should call my parents and thank them. Heh. Feels good to hear, because I think he's still gorgeous. (i snuck a peek at his gf's facebook pics where they're together...)

So. Yeah. I'm sorry these posts end up being so fucking long. I just don't know how to be brief...