blind spots / hindsight
am i brave if the noise doesn't scare me? if i make myself easy to carry?
blind spots
my first love was full of blind spots and forty-minute drives. i lived south and he lived north and so i drove up every weekend in my little hatchback that couldn’t go above 45 and called it a compromise because our high school was halfway in the middle. half a year into our relationship i was rear-ended on the freeway driving up for a track meet. i was okay and it barely left a dent on my mom's minivan but the guy who hit me didn't have insurance so my dad got angry because i didn't get all his information. i couldn't drive on the freeway for almost a year because i was convinced i'd get hit again. at every red light my eyes darted, panicked, to the rear view window and braced for impact. so every weekend i took backroads up north to what became an even longer drive because that's the type of sacrifice you make for love.
i had alex drive me that evening in july when i decided that the latest crossed line would be the last. i knew i couldn't drive home, especially when i knew it would take everything in me to sever the ties that held me still. we parked around the corner and i walked up as he opened the front door. he asked me where my car was and i stammered through some excuse before telling him i knew what he said to his friends, it had to be over.
then the next thing i know i was texting alex, saying thank you but go home, i'm going to stay here, somehow rid of all my conviction and making excuses for everything i knew to be true. i wish he would have gotten out from his car around the corner and pounded on the front door until he let me go but i know i would have explained it away and harbored resentment for shining a light on the mess of a shattered mirror i was cleaning up barefoot, convinced i could mend what had never been whole in the first place.
hindsight
the blame is affixed to me, as it always has been. for not seeing it sooner, for not saying no, for not leaving that night in july when i told myself i’d had enough and i really meant it this time.
sometimes i wonder what love would be like if i hadn’t first known fear. if i hadn’t had to drive forty minutes north a couple days each week and paint it as a beautifully romantic gesture when he drove down on valentine’s night after i asked. if i hadn’t had to give all of myself and expect nothing in return, or walk on tiptoes for fear of triggering a retraction of everything i’d been lucky to get so far.
i shouldn’t be trying to shoulder this, i know that now. i know there aren’t blind spots for no reason. but in denying what was so deeply engrained in me—even seven years removed—i commit an even sharper betrayal.
i want to see it as a closed chapter, a wound i have now mended. but i have spent seven years patching it over and pretending that if i couldn’t see it, it wasn’t there.
the night that it finally ended, i drove forty minutes home in the rain. i took the freeway. i should have waited until i stopped crying but i didn’t want him to see me waiting. i ran a red when i was almost home, at an intersection with red light cameras on every corner but somehow made it through the door safe and never got a ticket.
my little hatchback was scrapped later that year. i wish i could have taken a hammer to it and its stupid easily-fogged windows. blame it for all the blind spots it gave me and pretend it was that easy to let go.
Here’s to clear nights and well-lit roads,
Helena
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