I Always Took The Leap

The click of the lock turning into place signals the end of the day. The wind blows warm, but not yet humid. The sun sets lazily beyond the clouds, a deep yet vibrant red fills the sky as it departs from the day. It’s a beautiful May evening.

I’m barely aware of it as I remove the key from the door and head to my car. I fumble with the key before trying to click the button. My thumb slides off it before I push it in all the way. Sighing, I look down at it and click it again, making sure this time. The car unlocks, I get in, and thus begins the familiar drive home.

The day was long, as it always is, and I’m exhausted, as I always am.

I turn the corner and all the crap in my backseat shifts and slides and moves against each other. Camping chairs and extra clothes and blankets and half the cups and mugs and water bottles I own. I didn’t turn that hard. I don’t even remember how long all this stuff has been back there. Everything in my life is out to annoy me.

At least being home will be different. Once I finally get there.

I roll down the window, only now finding an appreciation for the breeze.

The trees seem to come back as I leave town. The big scary concrete buildings aren’t here to shoo you away anymore. We can live out here together.

Years ago, when I still lived with my family, we went on a trip into the woods. Stayed in a cabin. We called it camping, my brothers and I, but that’s not really what it was. We had the comfort of an elevated bed and running water.

It was the best time of my life. Sad, if you think about it.

So I won’t.

I’ll go home, where I live by myself, and fill the eternal silence with something I enjoy, until that annoys me too. I think I’ll read tonight. I hope the book picks up. These first couple chapters have been quite slow. But isn’t that how life goes? Or maybe it’s the other way around. Everything seems so big and colorful when we’re kids, and maybe that’s why I enjoyed our camping trip. I doubt it’ll feel the same now that I’m older. Now that I’m alone.

My mind begins to wander away into the woods, leaving my body to follow the same path it’s followed a million times over.

It’s not that far away, the woods.

I glance up to the rearview, gathering a mental list of the things in my backseat.

No. I can’t. I have a house that needs rent paid, and a job that allows me to do that.

Maybe I’ll daydream instead of read tonight.

The greenery comes and the light fades and the clouds are a shade that you can’t tell for sure if they’re lighter or darker than the sky, just different. I remember trying to answer that question when we were out there. I laid down and looked up through the trees for so long that the incoming stars answered my question for me.

I miss the smell of pine. My house is beginning to smell of my work and I keep forgetting to buy candles. Maybe I’ll do that once I clean out my car. Hah!

Outside is a blur and for a moment I don’t know where I am. Trees on both sides. Tall, imposing, welcoming. Where am I? What have I done?

I’m suddenly very aware of my hands on the wheel, of my head whipping back and forth, of my heart beginning to race, and of the smile rising to my lips.

There’s a sign–what does it say?

As quickly as it came, the smile I found starts to melt off my face. I’m not lost. I didn’t act on impulse. I simply disassociated; I think that’s what my therapist called it. I’m right on track.

Was I looking forward to being lost? Leaving this life behind?

A sigh leaves me as I stop at a light. A small country light. My blinker is taking me right. Going right takes me home. Takes me to the same place I always go. Same place, same time, every evening. Where I live.

The light turns green.

Turning left takes me up the mountain, further into the trees.

No one else is in the intersection. No one else is behind me. Not even the sun; it’s long gone below the trees.

They’re not that far.

My blinker reminds me of where I need to go. Where I always go. The same old blinker doing the same old thing it always does.

I hate that I see myself in the blinker.

Every day I get up in a bed that is too soft for my liking, eat food that has little taste, and leave for a job that is so menial and tedious, only to come back to my too-soft bed. I hate that I haven’t even tried to change things for the better. I do what society has told me to do. I turn the direction my blinker tells. I hate that I’m predictable.

The big concrete buildings are scary in the same way a knife is. A regular object, useful in many ways, only threatening in the way you look at it. The history you have with it. The way someone presents it to you.

The woods are scary in the way of a campfire. It exists and does its job. Provides something necessary. Something pleasurable. But if the unpredictable wind blows a little too hard in one of any directions, suddenly the world around you is on fire. Unstoppable. Beautiful.

When I was a child, I was scared to jump off the diving board. I would stand there for what felt like hours, waiting for the courage to leap build within me. I knew how to swim. I knew there were life guards and other well meaning people around. I knew I would not be stranded. That’s not what I was afraid of. I was afraid of the fall. The feeling of my stomach dropping and hitting the water before I do. The only thing that gave me the comfort to jump was my mother shouting at me from the pool's edge.

What do you fear more? Walking away a coward, or taking the leap?

It may sound harsh from the outside, but I knew her heart. And she knew how to encourage me.

I always took the leap.

I press my foot to the gas and my stomach drops in the same way it always had.

Jumping off the diving board always felt the same.

And hitting the water always felt great.

My blinker doesn’t change.

What do I fear more?

I fear that I will stay like my blinker. Unchanging. Predictable.

I turn the wheel and press the gas.

I turn left.

I’m no longer driving passively, taking the same path I always do. My smile returns, and so does my stomach. I’m no longer following what society says.

I am leaving on a whim.

And I don’t know when I’m coming back.

If I’m coming back.