Driving West
2,533 miles. 37 hours. 4 days. This is how far and for how long my mind was allowed to wander. I gave myself this time. If driving across the United States does one thing, its remind you of how vast the world is – and how small your place in it feels. The stretch of drive from North Carolina to North Texas isn’t what I would describe as glamorous. It’s long, flat, and monotonous, with endless interstates flanked by fields and the very rare roadside attraction that seems to always promise more than it delivers. If you like road trips and if you’ve planned one with stops along the way, it will feel exciting; an adrenaline-fueled dash from one destination to the next. I imagined this was how our trip out West would feel; that we’d be overwhelmed with the anticipation of moving somewhere we’d always dreamed of living. But this was not that trip, and this was not that experience.
In a strange way, the landscape matched my mood quite perfectly – heavy and consumed with a sense of waiting. Waiting to know more. Waiting to have a better understanding of what lies ahead. Waiting for someone to rescue me from this nightmare I’ve been thrown into. For long stretches of highway, I stared into the distance, down roads that seemed to have no end, into fields that stretched until they blurred into the horizon. Tarik sat beside me, steady and present, but I found myself spending a lot of time in my own head – retreating inward, lost in my thoughts for those first 18 hours. Tarik is my best friend; someone I can rely on and trust wholeheartedly. We were together, yet I felt alone, like I was cocooned in my own mind, bracing for what lay ahead. Not only for me, but for him too. And for our daughters. Little did I know at the time the worry I had for my daughters would only grow in the coming months.
The highway became a metaphor for everything I was grappling with – vast, unknowable, and unrelenting – in every way. There were no neat turns, no planned stops to punctuate this maze I couldn’t escape – just mile after mile of open road, with no clear sense of where I was going or where it would end.
When Tarik and I left North Carolina, we started our journey together in the moving truck. A month earlier he had driven one of our cars to Dallas and left it there for some repairs. On day 2 of our trip, we drove through Dallas to pick it up and just like that the rhythm of the journey shifted.
Firstly, because all the lights on the dashboard immediately began to light up like Christmas lights set to music. It would be my luck, in this moment, that as soon as I step foot on the gas all hell breaks loose. I immediately phoned Tarik to say WTF. He assures me all is well with the car, that it’s just been checked, and not to worry. This is typically how situations between us are handled. I have a strong reaction to chaos (I like to say I’m passionate) and he remains ever steady in his calm and logical approach. It’s an infuriatingly effective dynamic – me spiraling into what if scenarios while he calmly conveys reassurance like a human lighthouse in my emotional storm. As annoying as it is, he’s almost always right in these situations. The coming months would prove, time and again, just how essential this balance is.
Secondly, for the first half of the trip, we shared the journey – and the silence, some tension (my tension, let’s be honest), and the occasional conversation. But now we were traveling solo. Without him to distract me, I let the weight of everything sink in. It was just me, the open road, and the endless agitation of questions in my mind. It gave me room to think, to feel, and to wrestle with the questions I couldn’t answer; that at the time, no one could confidently answer.