09. Uncomfortably Numb
This was written for Survivor: LJ Idol, happening over on Dreamwidth. Voting is going on right now here until the end of the day today (I know I'm late; it was a long weekend!), so I'd appreciate your support if you liked this entry (as a reminder, I am playing as gunwithoutmusic over there). Please also read and vote for any other entries that you enjoy; we all really enjoy the support!
"'21 Bonnie & Clyde"
1,123 words. Approximate reading time: 5 minutes, 33 seconds. Audio version here.
I’m exiting my office building’s parking garage when I notice a ladybug climbing up the inside of my driver’s side window. It’s not really an unusual occurrence to find a bug in my car every now and then, but usually it’s some kind of fly or a spider or something. I don’t really see ladybugs too often. Many cultures believe that ladybugs are a good omen, and represent love, prosperity, or good luck. So she isn’t unwelcome here; in fact, I kind of like seeing her. But I’m not sure that she’s ready to come all the way home with me, so I crack the window a little bit to give her the opportunity to jump ship. To my surprise, she just climbs to the top of the window and balances there. It seems she’s enjoying the ride more than I expected her to.
As I enter the highway, part of me wants to roll the window back up; the air outside smells of asphalt and rubber, with the exhaust fumes from the truck in front of me pouring in through the window for an added bonus. But the ladybug seems to be really enjoying herself, and if I closed the window, well... she probably wouldn’t enjoy that very much. I can’t bear to harm her when she hasn’t done anything but keep me company on my long commute, so I keep the window open and deal with the stench of the highway outside.
I named her Bonnie, which I guess makes me Clyde, the two of us just riding along together, her without a care in the world, me with more than enough cares for the both of us. I carry us both twenty-five miles along the highway toward my home. For me, this is a normal, everyday commute. For Bonnie, it’s basically the equivalent of me going around the entire world four or five times, which is really quite a lot to think of, when I look at things from her perspective.
As I take my exit off the highway and come to a stop at the red light, Bonnie hops off of my window and flutters away into the world. I could swear that she waves goodbye to me before leaving, but maybe she is just doing something that ladybugs do. While I continue on the short drive from my highway exit to my driveway, I reflect a little bit on this experience.
At first, I feel a bit sorry for Bonnie. I’m sure she wasn’t planning on being carried all the way across the world. When she took refuge in my car, she surely didn’t think she’d be forcibly ripped away from the world she knew. Did she have ladybug friends or a ladybug husband and a few little ladybugs at home? It’s sort of a shame, taking her away from all of that.
But then I also find myself envious of her. She hitched a ride with a complete stranger to a strange new world that she had never seen before. Sure, for me, it’s just a long-ish commute between work and home, but for her it might as well have been a rocketship to Mars. And how confidently she just leapt from her space shuttle and carried on! I wish that I could be like her.
A new life sounds really wonderful sometimes. It seems like day in and day out, nothing ever changes. I wake up, get dressed, and go to work every morning. I search for a new job and shirk my responsibilities to my current one for eight hours, then I drive home, greet the dogs at the door, have dinner, watch some television, and go to sleep. I wake up the next day and repeat myself. The only difference is the weekends, but even those generally follow some kind of formula. It feels oppressive sometimes. Other times, it feels like nothing, like I’m some sort of robot or worker bee, chained to my routine and watching the ladybugs fly away on grand adventures.
So, yeah, it’s easy to find myself envious of Bonnie. I find myself thinking that it would have been nice if I had been born fifty years earlier, in a time where one could just up and disappear and start a new life in a new town. Go by a different name, shed your old skin and begin again. And with no one any the wiser. It seems like an impossible task now, intentionally disappearing without a trace, but I’ve read enough stories where someone did just that, in a bygone era, that I can’t help but wish for that freedom sometimes.
The freedom to disappear. To leave any unhappiness behind. To find adventure in every day. To pursue happiness as my God-given right. To be, not a new man, but a complete one in myself. If I could be more like Bonnie, maybe I could be completely happy, all the time.
But, as wonderful as those thoughts can be at times, I don’t really feel like they’re very productive. I can’t pursue happiness. It isn’t a hunt or a chase. If I chase happiness, it will always elude me.
That’s not to say that I can’t ever be happy, or that I shouldn’t strive to be happy in life, but that I’ll never find the happiness that I seek if I go hunting for it, reinventing myself, disappearing from my life, “starting over” while dragging behind me a footlocker filled with skeletons that is always tied to my wrist. I have to find happiness in my present. I have to find happiness in the here and now, and hold fast to it while I follow the path that the fates have decided for me.
It’s too easy to let myself become numb to the good things in life while placing the bad things under a magnifying glass. I can’t let myself do that. If I do, I forsake the here and now, and the here and now is everything we have.
I pull into my driveway, finally home after a long day and a long drive. I take a deep breath and exit my car. As I put my keys in the front door and turn the lock, I hear the pacing of my two dogs, excited to see me (or maybe just excited to get dinner, but I’m sure they missed me, too). I open the door and assume a defensive stance while they bounce around excitedly and slam their bodies into mine in a bizarre form of greeting.
I take in the here and now for just a moment and I can’t help but smile. Maybe it’s the same every night, but honestly? It ain’t that bad.