I’m 44 and Still Driving Home Alone

Sometimes, you’ve just got to make peace with what you’ve got

My car moves through the cones of illumination cast by the streetlights. Darkness. Light. Darkness. Light.

I turn on the radio. I switch through the cycle of programmed stations twice. Three times. I turn the radio off.

It’s so quiet.

I get to the end of the overpass and turn onto the rural road that leads to my neighborhood. There’s a half-mile stretch here of no streetlights. Just the dark road.

I cross the train tracks and turn on my blinker. Light. Dark. Light Dark.

I turn into my neighborhood and return to the patterns made by the streetlights. Sometimes, I turn on the radio again and then immediately turn it off. There’s no comfort in the music.

I glance at the houses I pass. I wonder if anyone is awake inside. Did they go to bed angry? How many kids are under that roof? Are they worried about tomorrow?

I wonder if anyone in those houses lives alone, like me.

I turn onto my street, one branch of a three-way intersection. Straight ahead is my house, at the end of the road. The green door always makes me smile. Always makes me feel at home.

My garden comes into view. That makes me smile, too.

But it’s dark until I pull into the driveway and my motion-sensitive lights turn on. They’ll stay on for 90 seconds before it goes dark again.

And I’ll close the garage door behind me and unlock the back door and step inside. It’ll be completely dark in the house. And totally quiet. And still.

There is no one there. Not even a dog.

I will walk in ungreeted, unwelcomed, and climb into bed by myself like I always do.

There’s a strangeness in those drives home, alone in the dark with 99.5 or some eighties station on, smelling someone else’s saliva on your skin, his aftershave or shampoo or whatever it is that makes him smell the way he smells,

I always assumed there were circumstances in life that I would outgrow. Maybe “outgrow” isn’t the right word — maybe “evolve out of” is slightly more on point.

Twenty years ago, I was driving through the cones of the streetlights in Santa Fe, after spending most of the night in a lover’s bed.

They always asked me to leave when we were done fooling around. Once, I had to run across an apartment building parking lot in the pouring rain at 2AM, having left my boyfriend-du-jour warm and cozy in his own bed. Another time, I left a boyfriend’s dorm room at the same time a drug dealer broke into the building, beating a resident who owed him money with a baseball bat just down the hall from where I’d been. Again, my boyfriend (or whatever he was) was safe in his bed and the next day, when the news broke, I felt so lucky I hadn’t crossed paths with that baseball bat.

I remember driving home, alone, to my empty apartment in the patterns of dark-light-dark-light. I’d turn on the radio, flip through the stations, then turn it off.

It was such a normal part of my routine that I expected my nights to end that way. To face the empty streets of Santa Fe at two or three in the morning, just me and my Jeep, pulling into my apartment building’s parking lot, dragging myself quietly up the stairs, opening the door to find the living room striped with shadows from the pattern made by the open blinds as the apartment building’s lights streamed in.

I think I believed it was a passing phase in my life. Trying something new, pushing past my comfort zone, trying to redefine who I thought I was.

It was an uncomfortable time. I wanted so badly to be able to express my sexuality freely. I wanted so badly to defy the way people expected me to behave.

I thought maybe I could endure this — these long nights and the lonely drives home to my empty apartment.

One day, I thought, I would be in the car with someone else. Someone who might make the empty streets seem less lonely. Someone who would talk to me to fill the silence.

Or maybe that someone would be waiting at home for me. The lights would already be on. I’d walk into the living room and find myself in someone’s arms and they’d say, “Where have you been? I missed you.”

Someday, surely, that would happen. Those long drives home would eventually end.

and maybe the insides of your thighs ache a little, or maybe the tender skin on your face where his stubble rubbed you raw. You think of how he laid his head on your breasts or how closely he held you, and then you wonder if he sleeps around a lot, if you’re just another cheeky slut in his repertoire.

My long drives home evolved over the years. In my thirties, they took place on my bicycle, not in my car.

I loved spending evenings at my sister’s house, playing with her three young sons. I only lived four miles away, so I would ride my bike there.

Often, I stayed well into the night — even in winter. Sometimes, I wouldn’t go home until eight-thirty or nine.

My partner hated being around the kids. He hadn’t shared this until we’d moved in together. I had always gotten the feeling that he wasn’t crazy about kids, but no — he really, really hated them.

Visits to my sister’s house were a definite no for him. I didn’t mind. I had never felt like we had to do everything together, especially when time with the kids was a priority for me while he valued other activities.

After leaving them, I would put on my reflective vest, hop on my bike, and pedal off, down the road. Some were lit. Some were not. When I crossed the bridge at the end of town, I’d become entranced by the stripes that fell across it from the lights installed in the railing. My front tire would hit one, the tread suddenly visible, then, just like that, I’d roll into the darkness again.

Dark. Light. Dark. Light.

Headlights would swing onto the road from someone approaching behind me. I’d hug the curb, hoping they could see my vest and the lights attached to my bicycle. When they passed by, darkness would fall again, except for the hazy red glow from their retreating taillights.

As I approached my house, I wondered what people were doing in the neighboring homes. Were there teenagers finishing their homework? People washing the dishes? Watching TV? Getting the kids into bed?

I’d pull into the garage, take off my helmet and vest, turn off the bicycle’s lights. I’d go inside and the house would be dark and eerily still, the only movement, my dog sidling up to greet me, the only sound, the explosions from the video game my partner was playing in the room down the hall, the only light, that which streamed from his computer screen into the dark house, because he’d been too engrossed in his game to turn on the overhead or outdoor lights when the sun went down.

“I’m home!” I’d yell, but he could never hear me over the sound of simulated gunfire.

You wanted to ask, just to be sure, just to steel your self for when he leaves you, but words like that are too scary to say aloud. What if, for instance, he says, yes? So instead of asking these messy questions, you just smile, pretend that everything is okay (that he’ll still respect you in the morning) and hope to God that he cares about you. Then you get in your car and

I’m 44 and I’m still driving home in the darkness by myself, an empty home still at the end of my journey. I’m still traveling through the patterns of coned light cast by the streetlamps.

I thought for sure by now this time in my life would be over. It still surprises me when I leave my sister’s house at 10PM, after getting all the kids into bed and sucking up every last minute with them before they move away. I walk out onto the dark street, get into my car, start down the road, turn on the radio, turn it off…

My memory flashes to all those dark nights, heading home by myself. In my old Jeep. On my bicycle.

The strange feeling of being so alone. Of wondering what other people were doing. Of hating how badly I felt about the latest guy who’d just ejected me from his bed. Of missing my partner and wishing he was more involved in my life.

But I’m getting used to it, too. I’m getting used to the silence. The darkness. Sometimes even the loneliness. (Having a partner, as I discovered, doesn’t necessarily prevent that…)

Though I still dream of just a tad more balance in my life. Just a handful of late nights with someone — not alone — to balance out all the others when I’m by myself.

Wouldn’t it be nice to look across the seat in my car when it slips into a pool of light for just a moment and see someone smile back at me?

there you are driving home in the middle of the night, all those scents of his on your body, your mind reeling, and even with the radio on and the wind rushing by, the night & you are only utter silence.

© Yael Wolfe 2020

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