Feeling Everything and Feeling Nothing: Roadtrip Chronicles
Roadtrips were things I used to romanticize. I remember creating mixed CDs in high school and imagined an older, better version of myself driving through states listening to the songs. To roadtrip beside someone who loved me was an even more tremendous fantasy. I’m not sure what it was about the idea of a roadtrip specifically— maybe it was the nomadic nature of a roadtrip, how effortless it could be to escape the machine of the day to day.
In my adult life, though, I’ve come to an apathetic acceptance that roadtrips aren’t what I thought they would be. In late 2017, when my partner and I drove from Jacksonville, Florida to Los Angeles, California, I planned six days of routes, itineraries, hotel rooms and free breakfasts. The first stop of our roadtrip was New Orleans where the weather dropped and rain soaked us as waited in long lines for our beignets. Next came the worst flu I’ve ever had, and the inside of an Austin hotel room, where I sat on the cool bathroom floor googling pictures of barbecued meat I couldn’t eat. The majority of that roadtrip was frustrating, painful, and chaotic. By the time we reached our final destination before LA (Sedona, Arizona on New Year’s Eve), my partner and I were so exhausted and depleted that we didn’t stay awake to welcome the new year. We left a day early, so done with being in the car we didn’t even care about the money we spent on a two-night reservation.
And now, after a year and a half indoors, we’re returning home after another roadtrip together. We booked the trip after impulsively buying tickets to a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. This trip involved a better car, more money to spend on nicer amenities, better communication and stronger patience inside of the relationship. We drove through miles of red rocks and curvy highways, one of us snoozing in the passenger seat, the other listening to a podcast the other can't stand. We stopped for coffee and for gas station gatorades; we held hands and walked through unfamiliar streets that spat cooling mist at us in the 100 degree heat. So much of the trip has been lovely— the robes in our hotel rooms, jumping into the pool that first day in Utah, reading by a river while the love of my life snoozes in the grass. Other parts have been annoying, almost unbearable— the clumsiness of getting back to full capacity, the crowds, how fucked up everyone wants to get at every event, maybe trying to catch up on lost time. The check in process for one AirBnB proved so awful that I walked into another person’s home, right into their living room where they were threading fishing line into a pole.
Objectively, I’m able to note that travel hiccups happen, that we’re privileged to have these problems. But in the subjective, this shit sucks. Walking into a reservation you made in the hopes it will be romantic, beautiful, inspiring only to see a weird painting of a bear hanging above the bed— especially after enjoying the comforts of home for so long— feels so, so deflating. I feel pressure each time our car enters a new city limit, fear that the reservation won’t live up to my/our expectations, won’t provide me/us with a burst of purpose. Social media tells me that relaxation may actually be the goal after all; not full itineraries but empty brains, empty hours. But the emptying is what I’m scared of, I think.
The first morning in Utah I woke up before the sun. I sat at the base of cliffs and listened to desert birds wake up. The views were gorgeous, and I took photos, but there was an overwhelming sense of nothingness behind it all. I felt myself taking the photo to somehow imbue the moment with some kind of meaning, begging for it to be more than it was. It’s this sensation I’ve been thinking of the most this week. A feeling of nothingness. It’s hard to describe, but two artists I adore describe it well: Phoebe Bridgers in her song Chinese Satellite and Brandon Taylor in his novel, Real Life.
Took a tour to see the stars
But they weren't out tonight
So I wished hard on a Chinese satellite
I want to believe
Instead I look at the sky and I feel nothing
Why go out there to be like these fish, like the people at the pier, bloated and commercial and with so little desire in life except to see the next day, nothing except the pure biology of it all, the part of life that must, by necessity, resist death, linking day upon day, time meaningless, like water?
I’m struck by how confused I am on the concept of relaxation. Is vacation meant to stimulate, to reenergize us back into the world? Or is it supposed to strip away, to literally empty us out? I know that ideally it’s a balance, but how can anyone find that balance? For so long I’ve thought that things were only worthwhile if they sparked something in me. If I felt inspired or awed. It’s not hard for me to fall in love with things or to stencil in a metaphor wherever possible; I’m a Pisces Moon, after all. Give me hummingbirds in a feeder and a breeze through my hair and I’ll cry, having finally experienced the serenity of life if only for a moment.
Sometimes, though, I do feel that profound nothingness. The wish still there, the hope that there will be more, but the inarguable truth that the void is just… there. It can’t be argued with, or proven away by demonstrations of joy. So much of life is simply a biological forward momentum that I’m just carried away in, wrapped up in. It’s even that way on a roadtrip, on special romantic nights when the candles are lit and the food is just right but something still hovers, not perfect. All week I’ve observed myself trying to force deeper philosophical thinking, creative thinking, romantic thinking, but all my brain and body really wanted were just some moments, some images to hold onto. The wind and lights on a full crowd of faces at Red Rocks. The splash of a fish beside me in a kayak. The echo of my scream in a ravine. The unexpected hug from behind in the elevator, my partner’s arms smelling like what I love the most: home.
I think I’ve played the role of optimist for many people in my life. I’m terrified of cynicism, not because I don’t feel it but because I feel it a lot. This week especially, things have felt either meaningless or as if they contain every meaning in the world.
The gift of love is sitting in each other’s nothingness. Or sitting in communal nothingness. I always want to point out new plant growth, hummingbirds at the feeder, horses grazing in a field, those weird birds that can dive underwater and then have to fan out on the shore because that kind of presence feels hopeful to me. Observable, objectively gorgeous. I’ll nudge my partner and tell him to look. Sometimes I rely on simply being in a place, putting on a song, reading a certain poem, to deliver me some kind of incredible insight or experience of beauty. But I admire my partner so much for being honest, for knowing what his body wants and needs, for being able to identify what feels like comfort for him and what doesn’t. I’m trying to see if things are worthwhile even if they sort of suck. The constant conundrum of being human is that life is both pretty boring and infinitely fragile, both insanely superficial and hopeless AND mystifying in its beauty, its metaphors. I choose to take the metaphors where I can get them. To wish on satellites if there are no stars shooting across the sky.
A true magical moment this week: seeing Lucy Dacus perform at Red Rocks for her first time. Her first show in over a year, at a venue that reopened full-capacity only just now. Lucy talked to the crowd throughout her set, saying how surreal it was to have never been in attendance at a show that size and to now be playing one. At the end of her set, after thanking the crowd for coming and mentioning the communal grief and pain of the past two years, Lucy cried during the last verse of Night Shift, one of her most beautiful songs. The crowd, full-capacity and awkward in our new shared space, stood up and cheered, applause that went on for minutes. Lucy cried and her bandmates hugged her and something inside of my chest unfurled, a peony of hope finally in bloom. Despite the drunk girls leaning on me, the long wait times for food, the not-sexy AirBnb we’d be returning to, that moment of beauty matters.
I’ve always known that life can be mined for inspiration, for awe. I have found it watering my plants, putting on eyeshadow, sitting in child’s pose. But it’s the mining I’m trying to have a different relationship with now. I don’t need to prove to myself that beauty is here, possible; I don’t have to take on pressure to find something in the nothingness. Nothingness is a gift, clean white sheets and hot coffee, a pool chair instead of a hike, a pizza delivery instead of a reservation. It feels so freeing to sit in the tub at the Waldorf Astoria in Vegas and to not feel a fucking thing, not awe, not excitement, just the body floating in water.
And lastly— we did not get married in Vegas, although we joked about and flirted with the idea all week. I love the idea of getting married without a plan, without my nails done, without getting my chipped veneer fixed, my highlights done. But Vegas doesn’t do it for me, doesn’t do it for my partner. We’ll return to our cats and to our bed tonight and I will cherish our quiet, beloved nothingness.
New ~author pics~ thanks to Jenna Powers Photography. These were taken during our engagement photoshoot because I simply had to have them.