A Series of Car Rides

Part 2 - Denouement

Despite the fact that I don’t particularly like driving, car rides have accidentally become sacred to me. Maybe it’s because driving is one of the few times I feel like I have complete control while the rest of my life seems to keep moving on without me, or maybe it’s because I make some really good late-night playlists, but I’ve grown to care for them.

I want to reiterate once again: I didn’t want to write about my breakup. But for the longest time, it just felt like this never ending channel that kept feeding and I had hoped that if I just laid it all out there, it’d finally stop and I could just breathe again. It worked. This was the result — the slightly uglier part that is my end all be all. After this I’m done, I promise.

Now, for whatever reason, my breakup has been felt most profoundly in car rides so here are the car rides that hold my heartbreak.

Part 2 - (somewhat of the) denouement.

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it’s 9:42 pm on a random Thursday night and i’m about to drive home to get broken up with. i’ve just clocked out of work and i’m sitting in my car. my face is completely still even though my heart is in my throat as i scroll through my playlists to find the right song to play; i already know that i’m not going to be able to listen to this song for the next following months so i have to plan accordingly. my best friend Myeve is texting me everything is going to be okay and i think i believe her because she’s right about most things. i put on Night Shift by Lucy Dacus because i find it funny in a way. as i drive home i try not to think about the actual act of it so i think about other things — how i’m going to have to miss school tomorrow, how i should break the news to my mom, how the surprise chocolate mousse i bought for him was probably not going to change his mind but i was still going to try anyways. i don’t cry or even tear up, instead i sing along to the song with a frightful detachedness and take care to drive exactly the speed limit. Lucy’s voice is mournful and her lyrics eerily damning and i wonder if i’ll be able to write about this experience in the coming months or if it’ll be too painful. i wonder if it makes me selfish to already be thinking about writing about my breakup, especially since it’s not only my story to tell and because it hasn’t technically happened just yet. i muse to myself that at least he’s kind enough to do it in person instead of over the phone. my mind continues to wander and i think about my now non-existent prom date and the Letterboxd list of movies we were going to watch together i’m going to have to delete. i think about my room and what i’m supposed to do with my Legos and the stuffed dog he brought from Canada because he thought it looked like my dog. i try to remember the last time i saw his dog and how i would’ve said he was such a cute and good boy more if i had known it was the last time. i think about the texts i’m going to have send telling my friends and the resulting interrogations, the outraged exclamations of tire-slashing and house-egging, the promises of future glow-ups and it already exhausts me. i look to my right and wonder if i should just pull over and sleep on the side of the road for the night. i wonder if i’m supposed to hate him already or if i even will — i really don’t want to. i tell myself that i’m making it all a bigger deal than it actually is, after all, it’s not the end of the world it’s just the end of— it doesn’t matter, it has to be anti-feminist in some way to have my world revolve around a man. still, i hope to God i’m a pretty crier. i make it home first so i go to a nearby parking lot to wait. after driving in circles around the Miso Ramen Bar parking lot, which by some ironic play of the universe is the restaurant that is “our spot”, i go back home and park in my driveway. i sit there for a few more seconds, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath before i get out.

to this day, i still can’t stand the sight of mini coopers.

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it’s been a week after the breakup and i’m sitting on my couch journaling my feelings because that’s what you’re supposed to do after getting heartbroken in order to heal or rediscover yourself or something like that. i’ve officially told mostly everyone in my life what happened and received a surprisingly overwhelming amount of sympathetic support. when i had told Kate, Ada, Lola, and Via the whole story the weekend before, they ended up crying with me and we all ended up together in a massive heap on the floor before laughing about how we were a massive heap on the floor. it’s weird to be loved. but now my eyes have officially de-swollen after nearly a week of being puffy and red and i mark it down as a win. i’ve been watching a lot of TikToks on breakup advice, usually given during grwms by 20-something influencers with vocal fry or by aggressive “love coaches” talking too close to the camera. my wallowing-in-self-despair-breakup playlist (appropriately titled: fuck it we bawl) gets paused as i get an ominous call to come outside. i open the door to see Emma and Jo standing on my front doorstep. they convince (borderline force) me to leave my house and drive to Dairy Queen for a late night little treat. we pick up Sam and Suhani on the way and cheer as we see them skipping down the driveway through the headlights. we roll the windows down before we all bicker over the right breakup song to play. somehow Picture to Burn comes on and for the next 2 minutes and 53 seconds i forget that there exists anything beyond me, my friends, and Taylor Swift’s fake country accent. i look out at the empty streets and also simultaneously realize we’re only a few months from graduation and i close my eyes; i try to remember this moment as it’s happening. after the song ends, i request to play the one Drake song i’ve ever listened to (i only know the refrain towards the end where he sings fuck my ex on repeat) and Suhani is the only one who knows all the lyrics because she’s a secret Drake fan but we try our best to keep up anyways. i scream FUCK MY EX! from the top of my lungs despite the fact that i’m not even angry at him but it’s fun to pretend i am in the moment. i’ve learned that shared rage and hatred builds the strongest friendships. i’m slightly lightheaded from it all but i’m also too busy laughing to really care. when we pull up to Dairy Queen, still screaming, Pari, already parked, looks at us incredulously through her window and i can’t find it in me to be even the slightest bit embarrassed. after some shared sweet treats and failed attempts at Scottish accents (fun fact: Pari can do a perfect Scottish accent but only if the words are Emma Bracken), we repeat this process again on the way home.

once i’m back on my couch, i reopen my computer and begin writing a love letter to my friends.

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it’s 86 degrees out today, finally spring is here, and i’m driving to Boba Baba to meet Kate and Anuva. Kate rarely comes to Cary and i’m excited to have her visit what is clearly a Cary staple, it feels like i’m showing around an exchange student or something (note: Kate, in fact, lives only 20 minutes away in Raleigh). it’s a short drive so i turn the AC off and instead keep the windows down. Shatter by Maggie Rogers is playing and i have my pink sunglasses that are also secretly prescription on. i woke up feeling good, a rare occurrence, and as i’m singing along, the wind is blowing my freshly redyed hair all over the place but it feels nice so i just bear through the hair flying into my mouth. there’s pollen all across my windshield but everything is in bloom, especially the sparse cherry blossom trees lining my neighborhood street. i find it slightly funny how even nature seems to also be encouraging me to embrace new beginnings; sometimes i do hate how disgustingly metaphorical my life can get. the drive is nothing special and only a tiny highlight out of an otherwise rather boring day but out of nowhere the thought i thought would never arrive finally crosses my mind: i love being single. the feeling only lasts for a brief moment but God, is it exhilarating. in those few seconds, the heartache that had burrowed its way into my chest and the fact that i had cried myself to sleep nearly every night for the past month is forgotten and instead my old sense of independence had returned if only to say hello. after the moment is over, i restart the song in an attempt to re-catch the feeling but it seems to have flown out the window.

still, i’m light as a feather for the rest of the day.

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i see him on accident for the first time after the breakup almost 3 months later at a stoplight. the sun is out, my karaoke playlist is on, and for once i have a free afternoon; it’s shaping up to be a good day. i’ve actually been having a lot of those recently and it makes me ecstatic to think i’m “moving on.” as i’m humming the end to a SZA song, i glance at my side mirror and suddenly he’s there — i can see his face, clear as day. he pulls up in the left lane in front of me and then i see him looking back again and again to see if it’s really me. i don’t move a muscle; i don’t think i could if i tried. a million thoughts run through my mind — do i rear end him? do i flip him off? how is he doing? does he regret it? is there anyway at all that i could simply stay right here and never move again? and then i’m suddenly struck with the realization that we have officially become strangers nowadays. i think about how a couple days before i had remarked to Kate how good i had been feeling because it felt like my life was mine again — my new normal had nothing to do with him. but during those few seconds at that red light, it felt like all my hard work, all my progress, all my healing, was worth nothing because as i looked at his car, i thought, how could i have given so much just for it to mean nothing in the end? just for us to become two cars that happened to be near each other at a red light; the people within leading lives that ran in deliberate circles around the other — that was all we were to each other now. i thought about a universe where we had always been strangers, not just for the time being and i longed for that other life. i once again cursed my current life for being unbelievably metaphoric — the symbolic nature of us going our separate ways and how despite the fact that i quickly passed him and refused to allow myself to look when doing so, i kept my eye on the rearview mirror the rest of the way home because for some completely insane reason, i had hoped he would follow me. my stomach is forming knots and my mind is going into overdrive in an attempt to rationalize and compartmentalize my feelings so as to not ruin all of my healing. this is just a bump in the road, i keep telling myself. in that moment i think i hate him, i honestly truly do, and that only makes me feel so much worse. i’m quiet for the rest of the drive, my hands shaking when i unlock the front door and i head straight to my bed before i allow myself to begin crying.

i take a different way home from school the next day.

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it’s sometime in the present day. my car rides are no longer my sacred moments of contemplation and reflection. i simply drive to get from one place to another, and i don’t play my breakup or healing playlist, i just leave it up to chance and the algorithm. my drives home from work no longer fill me with nausea and i’ve regained the weight i lost from the beginning of the breakup. i’m not going anywhere special or even driving with anyone, in fact, it’s a boring day to top off a quiet week. as i’m entering a narrow road leading downtown, i pass a vulture dragging around a squirrel corpse on someone’s front lawn, the meat long gone and the pelt swinging back and forth from the bird’s beak. i think about how pointless it is to still try to hang on when there’s nothing but the skin and broken bones left of something that was once alive. i think back to a week ago when i passed his house but was too busy mentally planning my target list to even notice. i think about us being strangers and i don’t think it has to be a sad thing, it just is what it is. i don’t hate or love him anymore, whatever i ever felt toward him, it’s all just a relic of the past — something i can place on the shelf to collect dust and occasionally look back nostalgically on. i muse on how i used to vehemently detest the quote, “i hope you get everything you ever wanted, and i hope i never hear a thing about it,” but i finally understand it now and it rings through every bone in my body. i still cry every now and then but the times in between get longer and longer, the teardrops themselves getting thinner and thinner. i smile when i realize that i’ve started thinking of the breakup in the past tense — i went through a breakup, rather than i’m going through a breakup. the road in front of me is empty and the sky is overcast with clouds. once i get home i’ll continue reading Sense and Sensibility, maybe go bother my sister in her room. for dinner, i’ll have some leftovers from work and pick a movie from my Letterboxd watchlist to finally tick off. i’ll have to grab my glasses from my car so i can watch it on the living room couch. i’ll probably reply to some texts confirming i’m on for volleyball on Friday or scroll on Instagram for a bit during the boring parts though. i’ll take a nice long shower before going to bed and dreaming of random inconsequential things, but not before i give my dog a kiss good night. then i’ll wake up and do it all over again.

life goes on. it’s nice.