I like to be in control. Even though my quiet disposition may deceitfully suggest subservience, I have always reveled in controlling every facet of my life. Ever since I was little, I have demanded to make decisions for myself, stubbornly spurning outside opinions. When I was six years old, I decided to become a vegetarian. For years to follow, my mom would futilely try to trick me into indulging in a burger by insisting that it was a Portobello mushroom.
Despite her persistence, I refused to let my mom dictate my diet. When I was fifteen, I wanted to switch schools. Again, my mom tried to convince me to stay at my old school, but with my cunning persuasion, I effectively got my way. Though this desire to control everything has led to some of the best decisions of my modest eighteen years of existence, it has also inhibited my ability to have fun.
For example, earlier this year Amirah and Neema wanted to go to Chipotle for lunch. Despite my hesitation, they convinced me that it was a mere ten-minute drive, and that we would undoubtedly make it back to school before the end of the period. I succumbed to my craving for a burrito and listened to them.
After an extensive twenty minute drive, we finally made it to chipotle, but instead of getting out of the car and actually getting our burritos, I turned around in the parking lot and we drove back to school. We made it back with only five minutes to spare, my two friends hungry and bitter. A crucial aspect of control is time management, and unfortunately the time it took to get to Chipotle used up the ten minutes I had allotted to actually ordering our burritos and paying.
I swerved my car and the headlights danced across the midnight pavement, flashes of white contrasting the color of nothingness. My car ended up skewed perpendicular to the road, the piercing lights casting a kaleidoscopic effect on the forest that lined the street. Leaves sparkled green, while stars twinkled faintly through the branches, competing with the iridescent sheen of my headlights. Luckily, the road was void of life aside from the cynosure of my eye; the ill-advised squirrel that provoked my reckless driving. I began to laugh.
My older brother sat in the passenger seat, his hand gripping the dashboard. He looked at me in confusion as my laugh overpowered the radio. “Don’t kill yourself over a squirrel,” he smirked, as I executed a three-point turn in order to redirect my car in the proper direction. We continued to drive, the silence of our conversation allowing the music to envelop the car.
This was how most of our car rides transpired. We succumbed to the paradoxical silence of the music, rare commentary accompanying the lyrics.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked, while spinning a Marlboro Light between his fingers like a mini baton. The irony of the delicacy of something so fatal struck me with a curiosity that taunted me.
“I guess not”, I lied. I peripherally watched the golden glow of his lighter radiate against the soft curves of his face. The familiar smell of smoke swirled with the contrasting scent of fresh air invaded my car.
“Keep driving for another minute,” he suggested as we neared our driveway. “I want to listen to the rest of this song.”
I obeyed and zoomed past our house. Our car was a solitary entity on the street, my brother and I enduring the weight of the night, buoyant harmonies of the song keeping our hearts resilient.
I like driving. It grants me a sense of control, something I have craved in all aspects of my life. The power to choose my direction and speed ignites a sensation of alacrity to journey on the open road, to set my own course, and to never look back.
I mentioned my ambitious desires to my brother, my soft-spoken voice barely audible over the concluding chorus.
“Just listen to the song,” he dismissed me with a wave of his hand, the cigarette limply propped between his lips as a second song began to play. Again, I resentfully complied with his demands and averted my attention to the lyrics as I circled back onto our street.
“Be still, and go on to bed. Nobody knows what lies ahead, and life is short to say the least, we’re in the belly of the beast,” the words of The Killers’ song “Be Still” occupied my mind in an unexpected way, as I began to feel guilty for my childish power driven desires.
Once I finally pulled into the driveway, I turned off my car, the gleam of the headlights submitting to the unknown. I looked through the front window of my house that framed the action occurring in my kitchen.
I watched the silent movie of my motley four other siblings and my mom animatedly dancing to some unknown song. The evident dysfunction didn’t embarrass me like usual, but rather comforted me. As I stepped out of my car, I shed the immature skin of aversion, and allowed the night’s cloak of mystery, vulnerability, and potential to drape over my shoulders. I walked up to my house unafraid of being powerless.
I opened the door, light from the kitchen flooding the lawn, and I attained a ripened vitality to savor both the peaks and pits of “the belly of the beast”, letting life unravel in a sublimely, uncontrollable fashion.