Blacktop DNA: Getting the Road Out of My Blood

On Sunday, I drove around south-central New Mexico with my niece, running minor errands before the week began. We chattered about relationships, school, grief, and change.

At some point in my rambling, I began talking about the thousands of miles I’ve driven this past nine months and how much I have adjusted to long hours on the road; about how fifteen miles was no farther, to my reckoning, than twelve. I related how accustomed I’ve become to long trips between parks and small towns compared to all the times back in Surfside when a mere thirteen miles to get groceries felt like a haul.

As I neared a stoplight, I did as I was in the habit of doing; I checked my review mirror for anyone or anything behind me.

I had the briefest split second of panic: Where is Blanche?

My panic was quickly alleviated by the almost immediate recollection that I had unhitched days before and Blanche was safe and sound back at the house.

In that brief discussion about all those miles traveled and the comfort I’d acquired in doing so, some part of my mind had slipped readily into travel mode and the physical and mental state I have come to feel is my proper environment. I expected a trailer behind my truck although I hadn’t pulled her for five days, and I’d traversed Las Cruces several times since arriving.

I don’t know what struck me more about this momentary lapse of situational awareness. Was it that I so quickly slid into my “I’m pulling 3000 lbs; am I stopping reasonably carefully?” mindset? Or, was it that I was in that mindset so firmly that for a fraction of a second, despite all evidence to the contrary, (I would have felt a trailer being wrenched from my hitch and people would be chasing me down in a rage due to the havoc) my brain warned me that I lost that 3000 lb load and now what?

How did I get here?

So much about this journey has surprised me:

1. the non-linear and often repetitive nature of the healing process;
2. the odd sense that everywhere I go in this country, although the geography changes, the scenery remains the same;
3. the amount of time I can waste just thinking;
4. the way the road, the lifestyle of living in a tiny space, and the isolation, all get in your blood and seem to change your very DNA.

Addressing each point briefly:

•  The process has been arduous and at times virtually invisible as I floated through days with a range of emotions from aching sadness to rage to ambivalence to utter torpor. The need to survive and the occasional shining joy motivated me to keep driving.

•  All small towns, regardless of geography, have similar “feels” and the same tired, little stores with either grumpy, old men manning the helm or bored youths or bright and sunny women. All “major” cities have the same dark sides, and the same sad, gentrified-into-bland areas, and the same friendly stretches of older neighborhoods with the same reclaimed tire & wheel yards.

•  I can spend an inordinate amount of time thinking, worrying, hoping, crying, raging, or just sitting in silence wondering why I bother to continue.

• I can’t see the future. I can’t see a life in a house or apartment. I can’t see a life with a partner or even a close companion. I can’t see a life at all. Not that I don’t want these things. I simply can’t envision them. I have always had some idea about my future, some plan of sorts, and now I have a void yawning before me. Even with ideas about what I want to do, they seem as unreachable as the moon.

With regard to the last, the problem with not being able to see one’s path is that one fears stepping into an abyss. When one has had half a lifetime of being told to be afraid of everything because everything and everyone are a supposed threat to you, the abyss is real and terrifying.

I’ve spent several days looking at blank pages in a journal with the intent of creating a to-do list that sorts out my goals.

The pages remain blank.

As much as the travel was eating into my savings, as much as it offered me little in the way of hope, it was “safe” in the same way the friendship with TWM was safe. I couldn’t be emotionally or spiritually hurt on the road. My ego took small hits, but not “you aren’t worthy of a job, a partner, or a real home” hits. When I stay in one place too long, the sense that I am not worthy of those things becomes very real. Traveling, the DNA of it, is the DNA of rootlessness. Rootlessness translates to acceptance of uselessness for me.

I continue to talk, ad nauseam, to my brother about the events of the last nine months, my anxiety regarding the future, and the churning in my gut at 3:00 am when the void yawns before me in the dark.

I must put Blanche down for a while and allow a city, a town, a job, to seep into my blood else remain rootless and all that implies. Perhaps, in time, I can find usefulness that allows me to return to the road and happy rootlessness.

Last Updated on March 24, 2023 by Lee Ellis