The smell of old leather mixes together with our Royal Pine car freshener, the generic one in the shape of a pine tree, which wobbles daintily in the space between the driver and the person riding shotgun. Like ballroom dancers gliding around a room, these scents waltz into my nose and tangle themselves with my nerves. One part of me feels these senses and another is completely unaware, lost in my own internal dialogue.
Normally, the driver is Anni, my mom, and the person riding shotgun is Audrey, my sister. At this point, they both know that there is no reaching me anymore. Lying horizontally, with my feet touching one window and my head touching another, I allow myself to melt into the uncomfortable back seat. I let my head rest on the handle inside the car door. My legs scrunch up so that my feet, now shoeless, can feel the heating from the leather seat. I think, wow, I must look crazy. And, to be fair, it is a pretty unorthodox scene. Yet this seemingly uncomfortable setting is where I feel the most at peace.
To me, being lost in thought is like swimming. It is a delicate balance. For the most part, I tread silently above the surface of the water, only allowing the not-so-important thoughts to cross through my mind. I have to feed the dogs when I get home. Is Audrey still mad at me? I forgot to email that teacher. Yikes. I’m really thirsty. My back hurts. Other times, I am drenched in thought. I plunge into a great ocean of stories. Some of my childhood—memories I didn’t think existed until I suddenly remembered them—some whimsical and tender. Playing games with my neighbors in the forest behind their house while the sun is falling asleep into the soft cushion of a lilac sky and little fireflies are parading around us with their flickering lights to guide our eyes. I remember that the sound of laughter warded away all of our fears about the darkness. Surely there could be no shadow monsters hiding in those trees, for we were together, and in some strange way there was a great amount of power in that.
Other times, a painful memory creeps into my consciousness. Maybe one that happened not too long ago or maybe one tucked away in a corner of the past, which makes my heart ache as though someone has just reached into my chest and squeezed it. I remember my biological mother, Paige, having another one of her fits during our visitation time with her. I remember Paige and my sister arguing. I remember the visitation lady putting her hand up in front of Paige to hold her back, as if that would stop the words coming out of her mouth. I remember sitting on the far side of the couch, away from it all, and having the third or fourth panic attack of my life. Did anyone notice? Did I get help at some point? When did the screaming stop? I remember it all in slow motion, with pieces chopped out in a way that feels like how burned photographs look. You know there is something missing—you can see the frayed edges of where a head or a part of the background should be—but you will never be able to configure a visual of what that memory was. It is lost.
Most of the time, I can pull myself out of these suffocating thoughts before I drown in them. I breathe. I am back in the car, and I can see the sun filtering through the leaves, providing warmth for my face. The leaves gently wave back and forth, each to its own rhythm, like little waves in a huge ocean. Everything is still and quiet for a second, and I can’t hear anything. The world has stopped, and all I can do is feel it all, bubbling inside of me like sputtering, swelling lava. And then, when the feelings become too much, everything comes flooding back in all at once. Anni is driving. Audrey is in the front seat. I’m in the car. I’m safe. Breathe. Move on.
I drift onto a pleasant memory. An indulgence to suppress the gloomy recollections for a small while. I remember in vivid detail the way I felt warm all the way to my core. I am sitting on a bed in a room with my best friend, drawing in her gigantic sketchbook. I love hearing her speak, so I sit quietly with my back against the wall and I listen. I couldn’t tell you now what she was saying, even though at the time I clung to her words as if they each contained a chunk of gold, and the gold would appear if I listened hard enough. In a way, her words were gold, though. She taught me a lot in her rants about quantum physics, or her awe at a new drawing technique, or an analysis of one of her favorite books. But Claire didn’t always need to speak to teach me anything. Simply having her near me was like having a good luck charm or a magical crystal in my pocket. She was my own secret weapon—a sword to ward all evil away. My memories of Claire feel the way being wrapped up in the warmth of a towel after dashing from the ocean and through the freezing cold air feels. The instant relief that there is something more than the constant cold and dark.
The back seat of a car should look vaguely the same for everyone, I think. Leather seats, a metal ribcage, a funky smell no one can quite place, the blur of landscape seen through clear windows. It is not special or unique to me. But this is precisely what I enjoy about it. The idea that while everything else will always change, you will always have this in-between stage where you are being transported to another place, and that is all you need to focus on in that moment. Nothing has ever been constant in my life, especially location. I will never be back in the forest behind my neighbor’s house, nor will I be at Paige’s house again, or at Claire’s house. These locations and these people are mostly gone to me, but I still have our memories. And I still have the back seat of a car.