The Ramblings of the Hopeful Overthinker

I look over to admire you from the driver seat as you shifted gears, the windows rolled down while I watched your hair blow wildly in the wind. I laughed with reckless abandon as we quickly hit over 100 mph on the highway and it felt like time stopped. I took a snapshot in my mind just so I could remember it forever.

Our love felt dangerous in that way, the way it feels to drive recklessly down a two lane road with no end in sight. My whole life I was always the careful driver but with you I was such a thoughtless passenger. I never paid attention to the road in front of me, I was too busy staring at you. My mind often thinking it was all a dream and that maybe one day I’d wake up, even though I never wanted to. Because then I knew it would all be gone.

The picture of you is so vivid in my mind, your hand on the shifter, the focus on your face, the mess of your hair and the wrinkles on the corner of your eyes hearing me laugh at the fact we were moving way too fast, much too fast for us to last. Maybe the tires would break loose and we would finally lose control of everything we were.

But my brain has a Polaroid of you, like the one that fell out of my wallet the night I was pulling my ID out at the bar. And I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you staring back at me.

I thought I had gotten rid of all the reminisce of you, all the evidence of something that felt like a murder. And all I could think about was that time, when everything was moving like the speed of light. The street lights were a blur, the exhaust screaming in my ears and I was praying for one more moment with you, hoping the moment would stretch far beyond an eternity. But I was just the thoughtless passenger to your recklessness. All I could do is watch from the passenger seat as you sped us down the point of no return.

Because I knew in that moment, nothing would be the same. I knew how excruciating it would be if we crashed and burned. All of our memories would go up in flames and I would have to fight my way out of the car while you watched it happen. I knew I wouldn’t come out of this unscathed, there would probably be burns all over me while you were completely untouched by the fire.

And, all I had, in this moment was a Polaroid, as proof that it was more than just a figment of my imagination. It was real, you existed and you drove me down that highway and completely out of my mind.