the_distance

My fast pace was the only thing keeping me warm enough to stay alive. The snow crunched beneath my sneakers, and was ankle-deep. My socks were wet already. My ears and cheeks were burning, and even the air I was taking in was hurting my throat and lungs. It was incredibly dark and unmercifully windy. I knew that something like this would happen, because "these kinds of things always happen to me." My phone was dead, and so was my car, about three miles behind me. I was in the middle of Illinois somewhere, alone with my thoughts on a rural road. I had nothing left in me when I walked out my front door earlier that evening. I got in the car and turned down my rearview mirror. I picked up a tall cup of coffee and turned the radio up way louder than it should have been. I opened all the windows and put my hood up, then I got on the highway and went. I had already set a new distance record when I crossed the state line, so you know that I was particularly despondent. Driving with no destination is the only form of therapy that I really practice. It works especially well when your only choice is to come to terms with something that cannot change. After an undetermined amount of miles, your thoughts become stretched out and less potent. You surrender to whatever it is that's beyond your control, then you turn around and go home, somehow feeling defeated and comforted at the same time. I was close to reaching that mile marker when a snapped serpentine belt left me stranded on the roadside. I hadn't seen a car in at least an hour, and the drifting snow made it almost impossible to follow the road to the nearest indication of civilization. I wasn't really bothered by all of this. I was already at the bottom, and my brain was already too tired. And I knew I'd be back on Monday just in time to resume the life that will always be waiting for me, no matter how fast or far I run from it.