Driver's ed / daily life's ed.

Sometimes I fixate on a memory, and when I finally come to realize I've been replaying this memory over and over again, I question its purpose.  Naturally, right?  The image I have on repeat is me, age 16, with my Aunt Dorothy in San Diego in a parking lot.  She hands me her keys, and without any confidence I take them.  Wide-eyed in my Abercrombie sweat pants, I sit in the driver's seat for the first time ever.  "Remember, you are in control of one ton of moving vehicle!" she didn't so much warn me as cautiously inform me.  "Check your rear view mirror."  Only at the end of the choppy, totally un-smooth circuitous parking lot driving, I realized I had been looking in the mirror on the flip side of the sun visor instead!!!  (Maybe it's the blonde hair, I dunno?).  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve replayed this on the silver screen of my brain. 

The significance of this snippet lies in my realization and belief of the following: that stepping out into the world each day feels a lot like driving for the first time.   Maybe that’s a little extreme, but think of it this way: I know my routine, but in a world that feels so happily familiar to me—much like a car to a passenger—I'm constantly challenged by the unfamiliar.   That’s life in general, really.   I have very positive challenges being a part of AmeriCorps, since I volunteer my tiny hiney off doing amazingly fun and communal activities I never thought I would do!!!  I have a neutral challenge at work at the Food Bank, and that would be overcoming my periodic boredom and finding how to constructively fill that time.  Then there’s that constant difficulty that has existed with me for several years.  Mostly the struggle is muted, and other times I am blown away by the force of the void.  In a nut shell, I describe today’s highlighted challenge as the pairing of intense anxiety with the complete and enjoyable thrill of my freedom living totally apart from my family with a foggy future in the distance.  Phone calls can’t make up for seeing someone in person, I’ve learned that.  I may have been living with my parents if they were still in LA, that’s for sure.  But since they’re in New Jersey, there’s just no way.  Not at all.  It’s a great place with great people, and so NOT for the Me of the present.  Being a person whose happiness is infinitely linked to my mindset, which consequently is less exclusively (but still intensely) linked to my location/lifestyle….well it’s just a no brainer for me to stay in CA or similar.  But that means I have to deal with the emptiness that I experience from time to time.  The echo of something that was there, and still is, but is so far away and often superficial.  The feeling of abandonment, the feeling of having disappointed, deflating their expectations of me to follow.  The pain that comes with knowing that all I want is a hug from a loved one today.

It is all my choice, every day, and all over again.

And no matter how much pain, my gut keeps telling me I'm driving in the right direction.