the loneliness of the long distance driver

(or how traffic is a poet)

Your favorite freeway to cry on has to be the 110 where it pools and splits between the 101 and the 10. It feels symbolic, the slow move, no matter what time of day it is — how everyone is trying to merge over five lanes at the same time in different directions.

You are constantly thinking of car analogies because that is where you spend the most time.

You.

Are.

Always always.

Always.

(Always.)

Driving.

You can’t even remember the last time you sat shotgun in someone else’s car. Like, for example over the weekend your friend was supposed to pick you up to go to a another friend’s birthday dinner but your daughter texted from her sleepover and told you she *might* want to come home early so you had to bring your car just in case you had to do an early exit pick up situation.

Just in case you have to do a _____ situation is why you’re always in your car. Because the only way you have ever been able to justify leaving your kids is to be SO ON CALL for them you are willing to drop everything and leave if and when they need you.

Except they always seem to need you.

Even when they don’t.

And now that they’re older you feel like the one with the curfew because you kind of have one. Because you promised you’d be home in time for bed. Because there is always a domestic disturbance — a sink that won’t drain or a shirt that can’t be found or a fight that needs mediating and you have taken calls in every possible scenario and in every possible position, craning your neck toward whatever bedstand your phone is on, hands over mouth because shhhhhh my kids are calling me don’t make this weird.

As if there is any way for it not to be weird.

Anyway, sometimes you have to leave a dinner party early and sometimes you have to climb off of a naked body, get in the car and drive 20-45 minutes home to unclog a toilet.

Plunger as post-coital cigarette.

And in the 20-40 minutes it takes you to get home you shape shift from one version of yourself to another.

Try to, anyway.

Switch lanes.

Change freeways.

Let people merge.

Even when you feel alone.

Are alone.

(Look around. So is everyone else.)

Just keep driving.