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.
