Being in control and fate of the death tree

Glance down 150km p/hr, look up nah… surely that’s not possible. Glance down again, 155… hmmm, doesn’t feel like it, feels more like 80. Flo Rider blasts into my ears through my brand new $250 headphones. The passenger seat is full of the mornings other spontaneous purchases that I can’t actually afford, but its payday and I don’t particularly care. Yet.

My body is tingling, the hairs on my arms prickle and my rose coloured sun glasses are changing the colour of the high yellow grass in the paddocks into an inviting vibrant green. There is nobody around, it’s just me, the music and the open road. I slowly depress my right foot further on to the accelerator. Glance down, 165 now. It’s like nothing, I have complete control. 

175. Time and space no longer exist and I am traveling in a vortex, transfixed on the clear path ahead, trees flash past and I am absorbed by the bitumen as it shimmers in the heat of the day.

180. feels a little faster now, not fast enough though; foot flat. 

195. The tree line is approaching and so is a bend and a large truck on the other side of the road a wave of exhilaration passes through me, singing along to the music I debate trying to push through to 200. Just a little more cant hurt…

The music can read my thoughts: “feeling forty-three million feet up in the sky full of diamonds…” Fuck yeah I am! 198. I am no longer a physical being, just a collection of energy particles combined together to create an illusion. I am simply a hologram, capable of separating and re-forming at will. 

The truck is suddenly closer now. I wonder if I could separate my particles wide enough to pass right through it, after all we are just made of energy. Would we enmesh in gross physical carnage or would we pass straight through the space time continuum and each other continuing along as though we had never met? 

The straight stretch of road runs out and I am forced to slow for the bends, 150. 140. The truck driver shakes his head as he passes and I blow him a kiss. We could have traveled time together, he and I, yet he will never even know. 

I round a familiar bend and notice that the ‘death tree’ is lying down and parts of it have been chopped up; it must have fallen over onto the road in the storm the other night. I am struck by an absurd pang grief for the old gum and the knowledge that I don’t know how I feel about that.

The ‘death tree’ is a very large, broad-trunked eucalypt, positioned in an ideal spot around a sharpish corner to palm off ones’ suicide as an ‘unfortunate accident’ should the need ever arise. I have pointedly aimed my car at it at high speed on more than one occasion but always pulled back at the last minute. Knowing it’s an option has been enough.

Flashes of random irritability, anxiety and suicidality have been haunting the edges of my current hypomanic state and although at that moment I certainly wasn’t wanting to die, or even believing that it was physically possible for me to die, the knowledge that that particular option had been taken away from me forever was rather odd.

Before I know it I am pulling up in my driveway, the journey home has seemed much quicker than usual. I catch my reflection in the windscreen and assess myself for a minute. I’m driving too fast, I’m spending too much, I can see that I am but I am doing it anyway. My mood is escalating.

From a logical perspective I am aware that driving at nearly twice the speed limit is a bad idea, I know intellectually that if I was caught doing that I would get arrested, lose my license, be fined thousands of dollars and generally humiliated. I understand that traveling at those high speeds poses risk to the safety of other drivers.

But I am unable to find the guilt and care that should come with that knowledge. It didn’t FEEL dangerous; I was completely in control, wasn’t I? 

Even when I was counseled by a tweep before buying my new headphones (Thanks Carrie) asking wisely if I needed them? No. Would I regret buying them later? Probably. Can I afford them? No. Was I completely in control when I pulled out the credit card? As much as I hate to admit it, the answer is a resounding no.

My thoughts are racing, they are slowly losing construction and I am drifting in and out of myself. I fear that I’m heading towards a mixed episode rather than an epiphany and it scares the shit out of me. I am losing control. Again.