Universal Highway

The night sky is speckled with glittering light and the music is all my own. Big Red is handling the drive nicely, unusual for my elderly Honda Civic, but I’ll take it. The other cars wiz by me on the unlit highway. Typically, I’d be right alongside them, matching speed or passing, depending on how badly I want to get home from class. Living on the Cape means one of the closest commutes to a bachelor program is an hour away. I don’t mind the drive. It clears my head from the garbage that happens in the morning and everything in between, but tonight is different. Tonight, class opened my eyes to what life could be if I did things a little different, if I opened my mind to the possibilities of something outside of my plan. A plan that didn’t do much for me over these years, but it at least got me to a place to reevaluate the way I moved forward.

I’m only a minute away from the exit to get to the split where I am forced to make a choice between the most direct path home and the scenic route. Ironically the road that takes me the fastest is labeled the scenic highway, a doubled lane stretch of road that drivers love to exceed the already excessive speed limit of fifty miles an hour. It’s a speed I love to exceed on the days where I don’t want to spend so much time alone with myself, but today it seems I need a little one-on-one conversation about where I’m headed. I’m currently working a waitressing gig that was only supposed to last until I figured out what to do in life, and that was fifteen years ago. Each day that goes by pushes me closer to the beginning of a new week and that sprinkles a little water on the fire I had inside me, a fire that fueled my every action to become a teacher, or a writer, or anything that was a positive societal use of a degree that many thought was nothing much. English. What is English? What is this degree in a thing that I speak naturally, that I grew up learning the basics of, so I could manipulate the little words to create a beautiful something to make people stop and think about what it means to be amidst the chaos of life? I’m only a couple months away from graduation, with no job prospects, no plans, nothing on the road ahead of me other than wishing I was home and hiding from the world but simultaneously taking it on.

“I don’t know,” I say aloud, answering the question I ask the universe in my head, “I just don’t know anymore. I wish someone else would just take over already.”

I watch as I choose the long way home, the green sign with the bright white arrow beckons me to turn, but something cosmic has taken over, pulling me hard toward the Bourne bridge with its lights that add to the already beautiful backdrop of this warm, spring night. It feels like a daydream, a spaced-out sort of moment, where I just watch behind the eyes of someone else. Like a first-person video game, it makes me feel a little queasy, not having control over my movements as the world spins around me. Headlights behind me grow brighter and a horn accompanies the intensity. I look in the rearview mirror and see my life. I’m stuck. I work the easy jobs because I know I can do them. They don’t challenge me, don’t force any growth or put me in a place to achieve the things I want. My heart is empty as I walk through the motions, doing what needs to be done, only to wake up each day in a fog of panic and apathy. The horn, once a long stream of noise, has begun to pulse. Why won’t they just go around?

My arms stiffen when I realize I’m in the left lane. The fast lane, a lane for passing and going beyond the status quo. I don’t remember being here. The car behind is right on my bumper, driving so close I can see the lights from the rear end of my civic reflected off the angry face of the driver. They’re waving their hands in the air as we near the lip of the bridge. I want to move over. I want to get into the safe lane to cross this unsafe, narrow, four-lane bridge, but my body won’t let me. Instead, I stare back. I stare behind me in the mirror at the person I’m cutting off from moving forward. Time slows as my heart races, thumping beyond the rhythm of the music I can’t hear anymore. It’s less than a minute to the other side of the bridge. Another minute until I’m on the rotary painted with confusing lines that are supposed to make it easier for tourists to navigate the annoying traffic device, and another minute until I’m safely tucked away onto the road that brings me home.

Another horn blares as everything goes silent. I look forward, but it’s too late. I collide with the tip of a truck that has inched just enough into my lane. Steel meets steel and Big Red takes flight. My body once stiff, floats with the impact. I can see the driver of the truck struggling to gain some control over his machine. Panic is written across his face, and he meets the next impact from another car with teeth gritted and eyes shut tight. I wonder if this is the end. I wonder if I’ll ever see home again, to complain about how the exit numbers have changed or whine about navigating the copious detours around the sewer project in town, or to flip off a rude customer from the kitchen where they can’t see me. Will I make it to the other side of this bridge before the ambulance picks me up and flies me away to a trauma center in another state? Before I take my final breath, will I be able to hug my family again?

It’s as if God hit play on the remote as I land, roof-first, on the pavement. Pavement. A blessing. The first blessing in this whole mess. I breath deep as the car spins to a stop. I wiggle my fingers. I have control again and feel at my body, moving up and down my torso, to my face and my head. Feeling for danger with shaking fingers, finding thick, wet rivers of blood that I hope are mostly from the glass. The seat belt hugs me tight and my head pounds with the blood rushing to my head. I reach for the buckle but it won’t let go. I can’t get out.

“I’m stuck, I’m stuck!” I scream, franticly pulling at the buckle, pushing the button in as hard as I can. The headlights from the truck are shining into my window. My shadow casts a panic around my car as I hang helplessly upside down, far from the other side of where I want to be.

“Help! Help me, please, I’m stuck, I’m stuck,” I yell out to no one in particular, “please, I don’t, I can’t stay here. Please, I need to get out. Help...”

The tears come with heavy sobbing that turns to hyperventilating. Panic seizes my body as I realize I’m not in control. Everything shakes and my head throbs to the beat of my rapid heartrate. A feeling of wooziness sets in and I become lightheaded. Footsteps move slowly toward me, I can hear the glass grind into the pavement and a person appears outside my broken window.

“Help! Help me please, my seatbelt. It won’t let me go,” I say, “I’m stuck.”

I see a mop of blonde hair, the same shade as mine, dark from the winter months tucked away from the sun, and it’s my face that greets me. The makeup is done neatly, the eyes are a bright blue, and there’s a calm that I don’t recognize. She moves closer, slowly, and smiles.

“It’ll all be alright,” she says, “The universe has sent me, so I’ll take over from here. You don’t have to worry about anything anymore.”

“I...I don’t understand,” I say to her. She lifts her finger to her lips.

“Shhh,” she responds.

And everything goes dark.