there will be no u-turns today

When everything falls apart, I run.

I run, fast + far, with no intent on returning. I had meticulously orchestrated every facet of a “grown-up” life and had the tax returns + shoe collection to prove it. Now, I wriggled and squirmed away from security and responsibility, drawn to freedom like a drug.

I pack up my Corolla with a loose plan and not enough appropriate stuff, and drive. Stopping only to pee, I arrive into Esperance on dusk, throat scratched from scream-singing + hungry as hell. Technically, I have thousands of kilometres to go, but in my books, I have DONE it: no u-turns, no mind-changing, no looking back.. not even a peek.

Well fucking done.

The road rolls out before me, drawing me into a new narrative. With every kilometre I leave behind, I am one step closer to self-revival and one step further from the person I no longer want to be.

Outside, the Australian summer smoulders. Heat from the tarred road blurrily dances into the horizon as air-con blasts my bare toes. Right now, I want to be nowhere else but here, in the cab of this Corolla. Everything But the Girl wails hauntingly to me at top volume. Her words are sad + yearning, a language in which I am fluent. In between are long, heavy hours of silence. This car is a chrysalis; some kind of haven for this breakout/breakdown of mine. Under the gaze of no other eyes, I marinate in my sensitivity, feeling whatever the fuck I will. A 120km/hr vipassana with truck-stops.

I am somewhere over the border into South Australia when I remember the weed in the boot. Grateful to not have had that “situation” arise in a quarantine check, I momentarily contemplate the appeal of some foggy-headedness into this equation. But alas, with a schedule of ten hours of driving a day + no co-pilot, I choose an alert state over an altered one. Besides... I want to be lucid. This movie - the one titled “My Sketchy Saturn Return” was unfolding in front of me... and it was rather amusing.

The palette of the country is alarmingly vivid. Endless, cloudless azure skies perch on shoulders of burnt orange earth. Anthills + saltbush+ dirt for days. Emus, camels, kangaroos + town names like Cocklebiddy, Bookabie, Mundrabilla. Every piss-stop-pull-over burns my feet and rips a litre of sweat from my brow. Flies attempt to dive into my mouth and up my nostrils.

After a few days, I am peering down into wild, dark waters of the Bight. My thoughts drift over the edge of the continent, into an oceanic abyss. I am somewhere between past + future. No mans land. My subterraneous past life of breakups + breakdowns had consumed every inch of me + my liver. Its toxicity had leaked into every square centimetre of my life. Now, I was plan-less, address-less and staring into nothingness. But here, in this expansiveness, I could breathe. I do not know what it looks like, but I am ready for something more. And so, I drive.

I had forgotten the vastness of this country, the insanity of its colours. I had forgotten the slow + sensuous rhythm of the desert centre and its ability to mesmerize + hypnotize.

I pull over in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere and eat morsels + dregs from the esky. The sun screams and the ants are ferocious. I grab my guitar and a pen + paper, smacking away the little biters, because I'll be damned if this isn't the perfect bloody place to write a song. As I edit + scribble words, fingering chords on an out-of-tune guitar, my heart lifts a little.

By the time I reach Broken Hill, the vast desert has given way to green paddocks and horses. It is around about here that it sinks in: I really am not going back. I’m on my own. Routine + comfort + predictability I did not pack. Soon I will be in a new home, in a new job, making new friends. All of a sudden, the idea of a brand new beginning seems scary as hell. Is this a mistake? Am I mad?

And before I know it, my heart is in my stomach + I swear to god, my foot temptingly toes the brake pedal….

But so it seems, that prior to the execution of any plan, we must indeed shit ourselves a little bit. It is a test, a trip up, a nudge from the universe in the final stretch of our homerun to get us solid. In this place, voices rush in to degrade, criticize + ridicule but it is up to us whether we pay attention to the little shits or whether we swat them away like flies.

But I am born + bred in the West and I know a thing or two about dealing with flies.

And so, I muster all the hope, adrenaline + courage I can.

There will be no u-turns today.

Soon enough, the road trains + transporters fade out and before I know it, valleys of the lush green hinterland are engulfing me like a giant welcoming hug, spilling into the crystal blue waters of the Pacific.

As the winding road carries me to the coast, I'm convinced that I know so much more than I actually do. I've romanticized my future + vilified my past like a trooper. I've not yet tended to the big gaping wounds around my heart - that will come much later. Little do I know that I'm about to receive an onslaught of harsh lessons and little do I know that everything is about to change and will continue to do so, until I get the point. If I was smart, I'd surrender now and start listening deeply, closely.

But that onslaught of lessons has my name written all over it baby.

So for now, in this new home-of-all-my-hopes, I will just be excited. I will just be here, quietly exhaling... after one hell of a fucking drive.

❤️