Tag Archives: lost

Recalculating: What I’ve Learned About Life from Driving

I recently bought a car. Scary, I know. I haven’t ever driven in Boston, so I have no idea where I’m going. I hate, hate, hate being lost (metaphorically or literally), so a GPS was a no-brainer. I named the GPS Tina and she is quite helpful and simultaneously rude. I mean, the tone of her voice is quite condescending at times and I swear I can hear her roll her eyes at me just by the tone of her voice when she says “recalculating” for the sixth time.

I haven’t quite figured out how to get very basic places yet. My office, for example. I can’t get from my home to the office without a GPS. I’m a kinesthetic learner-I learn by doing. And I can do the same wrong thing a hundred and fifty different ways, but the one time I do something the right way, I “get it” and it sticks. I haven’t quite “gotten it” in regards to getting to work without having to hear the dreaded “recalculating” scoff from Tina The GPS.

It is very often the case that I’m right on track and I’m very close to where I need to be, but then something, perhaps veering to the right or missing the turn in the roundabout (Dear Massachusetts. I feel like I’ve missed a lot of turns in my life and it got me very philosophical and thinking about all the times in my life I’ve been lost, like when I got divorced, when I discovered that it’s possible to have female friends if you try hard enough, when I realized that I needed to make peace with my mother and myself. Most recently, the drive to and from New Jersey has been an epic adventure, but it’s not so scary because no matter how lost I get, I know I’ll be okay with something to guide me back to where I need to be. Literally and metaphorically. Even when changes are good, they can feel scary and it’s helpful to have people by your side in case you get lost and need to recalculate. When you’re alone and lost, you feel lost. But when you’re with someone else and get lost, it’s an adventure.

Thank you for going on an adventure with me.

A place where we belong

My mother used to bring me to the bar when I was a child. I was nine; she was thirty-nine, and she wanted to pretend like I didn’t exist, so she gave me money to play with one of those arcade games, the one where you drop a quarter in and you maneuvered a crane around, trying to grasp a stuffed animal. The stuffed animals were cheap, made from rough materials; They weren’t the kind of stuffed animals you’d cling to at night when you had a bad dream. They were the kind of stuffed animals that you’d put on your desk at work that the immigrant cleaning people who live ten to an apartment steal to bring home for their children, the kind of stuffed animal that you leave in the back of your car that will turn colors in the summer sun, the kind of stuffed animal you give to your dog as a chew toy, and it will inevitably be ripped to shreds within 45 seconds, its polyester-filled guts strewn about the living room carpet as your dog licks its paws.

I am this stuffed animal.

This experience in the bars cheapened me. Drunk adults would walk by me, admiring my large collection of cheap stuffed trinkets. I’d play for hours, and I got very skilled at this game. I knew the proper timing, the proper angles, the proper toys to target with my quarters. I frequently won. There were nights that my mother would forget about me at the bar, and I’d turn my stuffed animals into a bed or a pillow and sleep until someone came to find me. They’d wake me up gently, and the alcohol on their breath disgusted me. I wanted to be left alone with my stuffed friends, the only things in the world I could count on, the only things I could trust. I knew they’d be there when my drunk mother would forget about me.

I had a collection of these stuffed animals at the beach house. At the end of the summer, I couldn’t take all of my stuffed animals with me, and my mother would make me choose my favorites. I cried as I had to throw them away, afraid that they would feel unloved like I did, fully understanding what it feels like to be discarded. To be treated like a piece of rotting trash; a chicken carcass, uneaten vegetables, a spoiled container of milk. They were my friends, and I dreamed that we’d find a place to run away to, where no one could get to us. Where no one could throw us away. Where we mattered. Where we belonged.

As an adult, I feel like that child, trapped in a world filled with fear and abandonment. I’m one of these stuffed animals. I see people in the world as a crane waiting to pick me up and I am eager to escape, and I am petrified at the same time. What will happen to me when I am not with my other fuzzy friends. What if I am just as disposable as the cheaply made stuffed animals. What if I am forgotten? What if I am brought home, only to be compared to all the other stuffed animals, and quickly discarded? I’m eager, and anxious, and hopeful, and afraid.

And yet all I want to do is escape and find out. Don’t ask me when. Don’t ask me how. Don’t ask me why. Just ask me to get out. I know there has to be somewhere I belong. I’m just trying to find it.