The Weird and The Wacky Meet

Where YouBetIAm comes to write….

Freedom

                                  Rain pelts down on my windshield.  I can hear nothing but clink after clink fall down on the metal surrounding me.  The heater blasts stale air into my face and onto my hands making them to dry and redden.  Water drips down from my hair onto the crisp newness of my shirt.  Everything is swirling, nothing seems real.  And the only question running through my mind is, “What the hell did I just do?”

                 Somehow I manage to put the van into reverse.  I peel out of the driveway glancing back over my shoulder to make sure there is nothing behind me.  The rain has forced everyone and everything except me into dry places.  I must be crazy to make such a rash decision on such a wet night.  The piles of my stuff in the back of my van fill the tiny space with the smell of wet cardboard and confirm my suspicions about my sanity and.

                 As I drive, rationality starts to beat me over the head with her blunt fists.  I’m 19, I only have $450 and a 1987 VW Bus to my name, and I just walked out on the only people I can call family.  Not that my parents were ever much of a family.  I remember my last argument with my mother, the one that drove me to toss everything I own into my van and to head to parts unknown.  All I can remember is the sarcastic tone and blunted yelling.  I can’t remember her exact words, just my need to run, to be anywhere but near her.

                 Part of me wants to head back, patch things up.  But I know my mother and I will not survive another fight and I need to grow up.  I keep driving.  Miles and miles pass.  My gas tank slowly pushes fuel into the engine.  Rain keeps falling down around me.

                 I formulate a plan for the next few days.  Then the next few months.  I can see myself starting off my life real slowly. I won’t be homeless, even if it’s bug infested with bad plumbing, I can make an apartment work.  I can continue on in customer service in a different place.  I am not afraid of the work, and being poor doesn’t scare me either.  All I can think is that I’m free, and who knows what that will bring.

 

Copyright 2004

by Amanda Evans

Date: 05/10/04