He once asked me why I don't live like I drive.

That, I think, was one of the first things he noticed about me: how I drove.

Well, that's not true. Face, body, movement, flirting.

Then he followed me to the place I was apartment sitting that first night, down the freeway. He got out of the car and told me he loved how I drove so confidently.

I do love to drive. It's how I zen, how I express joy and excitement, behind the wheel is where I go to do my best thinking.

The way I learned my right from left when I was a child was by realizing that the driver's side was my left, the passenger's side my right. Whenever my childbrain would stumble over which direction was which, I'd imagine myself in the car and I would know.

My father named me after an engine company. Not because he was a motorhead, but because he liked the name. When he drove us around, I would sit and ask him questions about how to drive, which pedals were which, what to do in certain situations. My childhood was an education in handling a car.

I did not get my driver's license until I was eighteen, though.

By that time, the idea of driving, the changes that would entail from me learning to drive, were much too intimidating. It was only when I started fighting to turn my life around from mooching, self-destructive gutterskank into something resembling an adult that I finally faced my fear of getting behind the wheel.

And it was awkward. I kept to the far right, afraid of the on-coming traffic, cringing at each pass.

I'm sure my father, the one teaching me, was shocked. I was his daughter. How could I not just slide in behind the wheel and have instinct kick in?

Then I hit the freeway.

Pieces slid together in my brain and I understood the flow. It was perfect, it was beautiful. My driving instructor let me tear loose on the freeway, then ended the lesson early and bought me lunch, as there was no need to continue.

Things just made sense.

And that bled onto the hated surface streets.

So, last night, I finally braved returning to the club that I met GV8 at, in order to move past the associations, move past the fear that I would walk in and see him with another girl. I drove through the heavy beach fog on PCH, then cut inland until the air was clear again, parked several blocks away as the place was overflowing.

I went to the club, I watched a girl in a g-string and nothing else crawl around on the floor, picking up roses with her teeth while being caned. I stepped past the man cuffed to the leather horse, being whipped, the girl on the medical table, legs spread and thighs red from impact, and sat with friends.

I did not do my circuit, looking for someone to entertain me for the night. I did not try to seek to ease my discomfort at being at the club in another's desire. When I was hit on, I let it be known that I was off the market. When a man I was introduced to continued to glance my way, even when being very obviously flirted with by a cute black girl, I made sure to shut him out, sitting on the arm of a couch, legs crossed at the thigh, wrists crossed in my lap.

I did not flirt, I did not tease, I did not engage.

I left my friends only a few times, to get out of hot rooms and to get water.

Not to find someone to distract me.
Not to find or incite desire.

Dress was casual, make-up was light, the necklace GV8 bought me on our pre-Valentine's Day date resting just below my collarbone.

I left a little after 1AM.

Hopped on the same freeway in the same direction that we took when he followed me down that first night.

Thought of him shutting his car door and walking to me across the street from the apartment. Of him complimenting me on my driving. I was flattered at the time, but the more I learned of him, the more I came to realize exactly how much of a compliment that was.

I drove home from my parents' this evening, glancing down at the speedometer, realizing that I've put about five thousand miles on this car, and I'm finally starting to get used to its blind spots, which are so very different than my last car, which means I'm back in my casual driving territory of 90MPH. I don't even notice when I get there, it feels so natural.

He asked why I can't live like I drive.

There are certain fears that torment me, anxiety that floods my system, buckets of self-doubt that shut me down so hard.

But not behind the wheel. Behind the wheel, I'm at peace.

I don't know why it's so hard for me to bring it from four wheels to my own two feet.

... ... ...

I'm doing something every night this week. No break, no rest, booked solid. I've got pieces of a desk I'm trying to build strewn on the floor in front of my fireplace, hamburger patties I made for dinner for my parents earlier this evening in my fridge, laundry that needs to be put away, and I continue onwards.

I keep trying to remind myself that I need to stop thinking of him, that I need to stop letting this emotion crowd into my brain, so I can focus on me. That when everything is right with me, it'll bleed out into the rest of my life.

I do believe that.

Been talking with someone lately, another person all torqued up from childhood and life trauma. Reminds me of how much we cling to the identity of who we are, that we are unable to let go and be healthy. To heal.

Whatever healing is. Whatever healthy is.

Who decides that? The self. But if the self is unhealthy, then who decides what is healthy? How do you know when you aren't healthy? How do you know when you are?