de l'encre au bout des doigts

You're not looking for comfort but for numbness.

You're sitting in your car, it is cold outside and raining, the engine is shut down but you won't get out. You watched your child struggle with asthma for the whole night, you just lost your job for a younger hungrier woman, your husband moved out after months of endless violent rows, your cancer's back, it is invisible as you won't loose your hair. You are 30, you are 35, you are 40 and you are 45, you are at a crossroad in your life and you realise you don't know where it is leading you, where you are leading yourself. 

Are the choices you made the rights ones, should you turn right, or left, or keep going (for there is no going back), why is your future ahead of you so clogged and fogged up, do you have a future.

Your car is parked on the street right before yours, your car is parked in front of the supermarket, your car is on the side of a country road, you drove so far you don't know where you are, you kept going until you ran out of gas, until you ran into a ditch. It is not moving, you are not moving, you stay there and you wait until it is all-right to step outside.

First you listened to the radio, the first times, the first years. The first bends on the road you didn't quite know how to handle. You sat in your car with the radio on, you arrived home and parked in the driveway and stayed there until a random neighbour walked by and shot you a strange stare. As the years went by, as the bends got more violent, you turned the sound up more and more and you parked further away from home, until this one day when you turned it off, the sound, and let the hard violent tapping from the rain reach your ears. The reminder that there is a world outside, that it may not be waiting for you but that you are nevertheless a part of it.

It is something you do when it is cold and raining, these are your five minutes of nothingness that keep you going. When it is warm and sunny, when your life is good and cheerful and filled with hope and laughter, you don't need your car, you walk places, you take the bus or the train. You co-exist with others. 

Nowadays it is getting harder to stay inside, your hands grow colder than they used to and it hurts, but you have nowhere else to go, nowhere that will offer you oblivion from your inner demons and life's cruel surprises. You don't drink, you used to smoke but quite years ago, you never did drugs and you don't like sugar.

You have this one thing that keeps you sane, this one habit of yours of staying in your car and do nothing. You wait. You wait until something clicks within you and you know that you can keep on going, that you can get out of your vehicle and back into your life. Some people would call you crazy, most of them wouldn't understand, and if you used to care now you don't. You know what is good for you and what isn't, you know the difference between what you should do and what you want to do. 

There will be other rainy days, there will be others days inside you car, your hands clenched and your face devoid of tears or feeling or thoughts. How many, you don't know, what is important is that you do get out, that you do start your engine. You're not looking for comfort but for numbness, and you find strength. Hello life, I'm back. Let's go.