Just Me and the Road
The first time you drive alone
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My instructor gets out of the car at exactly 11:04 on a Tuesday morning, and suddenly the passenger seat is empty and the street is very quiet and I realise that nobody is going to tell me what to do next.
This is what I wanted. I passed my test two weeks ago and since then I have driven with my mother, with my father, with my older brother who holds the door handle the entire time even on perfectly straight roads. But this is different. This is alone.
I check my mirrors. I check them again. I check them a third time because I do not know what else to do with my hands. Then I start the engine and it makes its usual sound and I think: okay. Okay. This is fine.
I pull out very carefully. Perhaps too carefully. The man in the car behind me has time to drink an entire coffee while he waits. I do not care. I am driving. By myself. In a car. Which I am controlling.
The first set of traffic lights turns amber just as I approach. I brake a little too hard and my bag slides off the seat. I leave it on the floor. I will get it later. I am busy being a driver.
Somewhere between the second and third roundabout, something changes. I stop thinking about each individual action — mirror, signal, check, go — and it starts to become something more natural. My hands are relaxed on the wheel. I am sitting back in the seat instead of hunching forward like I am trying to see something very far away.
I put the radio on. This feels luxurious. Nobody to change the station. Nobody to say the volume is too loud. I turn it up.
I drive out past the edge of town, onto a road I know but have never driven myself. Fields on both sides. Blue sky. An empty road ahead.
I am not going anywhere in particular. I just drive.
Later, when I park back outside my house after forty-five minutes of going nowhere, I sit in the car for a moment before going in. The engine ticks as it cools. The radio is off. Everything is still.
I think: I can do this. And next time I will go further.