where am I, and how did I get here

One of the first times I felt destructable was as a teenager, while driving. Everyone says "teens feel like they're indistructable" as if it's a bad thing, a reason why they're so irresponsible, a reason for their behavior. But shouldn't everyone start out this way? In a world that to me sometimes feels like an accident or tragedy waiting around every corner, it is entirely beautiful and unique that toddlers, and teenagers, actually don't know that they can be hurt. How beautiful. How innocent. How ideal.

When I realized my own destructability is wasn't from an accident, it wasn't from witnessing anything, and it wasn't from anything happening. It was a moment. I was driving on the highway home late one night. I was listening to music, singing, and then realized I was at my exit. Even as I slowly merged onto the exit ramp an enormous feeling of disorientation consumed me. I literally did not remember driving home. I wasn't aware of my actions or time passing in the 15 minutes or so that I had been on the highway. I wasn't kidnapped by aliens (at least that I remember), I had been day dreaming, zoning out. I had done this drive so many times, and I was comfortable enough driving now that it was habit, instinctual, routine. I didn't really need to be fully conscious in order to drive, or drive this path. But the knowledge that I had done this so subconsciously, so instinctually, completely terrified me. Life, apparently, could be lived unconsciously, unintentionally, unnoticed, and this made me incredibly uncomfortable.

How many more times has this happened to me? Who knows. Too many for me to notice them all. But that's just the thing. I didn't NOTICE them all.

As I get older and life gets, I don't know, however it gets when you become more and more of an adult, this not noticing can happen on a grand scale. We fight through life, we move through our days. We react to things, bills, co-workers, events, the weather, car repairs, tragedies, collaborations... But amongst all this it's hard to find those moments to stop, notice, and decide if we're living intentionally or daydreaming our way down the highway. So often one day we wake up and realize that this job, this relationship, this project, this house, this town, this country, this war, are not what we want. We come to a point where we suddenly see our exit on the highway and wonder "where am I, and how did I get here?"