The drive home felt distorted. Cars whizzed by as I crept along. Their car horns trailed off in the wind and fell on my deaf ears.
I was told that my time here was dwindling down to a year and a half… if I’m lucky. There was no brochure or guidelines given. What steps to take, how to cope, or options of extending my time were conversations for another day. The doctor gave me my death sentence, then pushed me on my way.
If you were told you had eighteen months to live, what would you do? How would you deal with such catastrophic news? Let me answer that for you. You wouldn’t!
You would do as I did: you would drive home ten miles per hour, lost on roads you’ve driven countless times. The world around you is seen through the eyes of a dream. You’re disconnected. Your thoughts become fleeting jumbles of words. Driving an automobile is the last thing you should be doing.
I’ve never once sped in my life. Big surprise, huh? But on that day, amongst the muddling, one thought came through with such resounding clarity that it made me holler it out.
“What’s the fucking point!”
It woke me from my dormant, dream-ridden drive. What is the point of being cautious? What is the point of it all? I’d spent an exuberant amount of money on my Mercedes Benz SL Class, and it was time to find out what it could really do. My foot became led on the gas pedal, and my body was thrown back into the seat. It felt as if life had just jumped into my nerves, thrashing in through the opened windows. The wind whistled a warning, but I wouldn’t listen. I had no fear. I was told I was dying, so what’s scary about a little speeding?
Pedestrians on the streets shook their balled up fists in anger, as I whizzed through suburbia in a blur. I responded with a middle finger of my own.
Did I just flip that old lady the bird? I drove and laughed uncontrollably at the thought. Her wrinkled face had contorted to a different kind of appall, outlined by all the years she’d lived, and all the shit she’d seen. And there I was, the antithesis of it all.
I got onto the highway and really let it rip. Three lanes opened in up front of me and I stomped down on the gas. I could feel my organs pressing against the innards of my flesh. My heart had a motorized pulse that lived on its own, working its way around the death, injecting me with a little bit of life.
All of the windows were down and the wind blasted through, screaming like a banshee. Memories in the formed as regrets mounted. All of the times I was in the background of life, working, and barely observing,
“You’re doing it wrong… life is about living.” My father’s voice, cracking in my mind.
A new sound was heard, louder than the wind, louder than my thoughts.
Sirens.
Blue and red lights flashed in the rearview mirror. My instincts caused me to ease off the gas, turn on my blinker and pull off to the side of the road. I’ve never been pulled over before. Though there was that one time I had a flat, and a cop stopped to helped me change it… but I doubt that counts.
Air exploded in and out of my sickly lungs as I gripped the wheel tightly with both hands. How fast was I going? Eighty? Ninety? A hundred???
Who cares! A newer, better voice shouted in my head. It was my own, but unchained.
I watched in the rearview mirror as the cop got out of his cruiser and walked towards my window. The idea came to me without reservations, quickly and unconcerned. I suppose that was the worrisome part—the part that had no worry. Analyzing every step I’d take, measuring and counter-balancing every possible outcome, these were the traits I thought defined me. Though in that moment a switch had turned off, and I realized how easier it was to breathe.
The cop reached my rear bumper when I threw the car into drive and slammed my foot on the gas. A cartoonish smile extended my face, with creases outlining my mouth and my teeth baring their white.
My eyes stayed on the cop through the mirror. The surprise on his face as the exhaust spit on it made me laugh, which a half hour earlier was something I deemed impossible. The laughter came more when I saw the cop turn and run, and trip over his own feet, or maybe over the unlikely chain of events that had unfolded in front of him.
He hit the ground, and I slapped the steering wheel, over and over again. Laughs exploded out of me to the point where they were completely silent. Tears rolled down my cheeks, mutating from solemn to hysterical, blinding me. The road had been lost in a nebular haze. Still, the laughter kept growing. I didn’t make it far before I crashed into a light post. Maybe thirty yards. Not exactly the high-speed chase you were hoping for, I know.
The gigantic bulb jarred loose from the pole and crashed down on the hood of my car. My laughter reached new, bizarre heights; especially to the cop, who got to my window with his gun raised. It finally stopped when his handcuffs hugged my wrists. Cars past by slowly, and watched a woman with running mascara be escorted into the back of a police car.
Living in the moment was one of those cliche sayings that a motivational speaker might regurgitate. But there I was, existing in each second, and feeling how long a minute can be. You’ve never felt your heartbeat—truly felt it—until you put yourself in a situation, where reactionary is the only emotion to cling to. Tunnel vision takes hold, as the past and the future become meaningless words without definition. The present is the only world there is, and when you find yourself there, you find yourself alive.
I learned that the day I found out I was dying.
Ironic, don’t you think?
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