A New Driver's Guide to Heartbreak

Step one: find a companion to drive with you. At first it will seem as though they’re just driving you places. Worry not, you’re learning from them. You’re watching their every move. You know the exact curvature of their eyelashes. You do not know the name of the street opposite your house. Worry not, you’re learning.

Step two: learn to navigate. You’re sitting in the passenger telling them where to go. Map out places you never wish to go to alone. Go with them; them driving, you co-pilot. Achieve symbiosis. Watch for tension in their knuckles on the wheel. Learn to turn their head toward you with such precision it looks effortless. Driver and machine are one.

Step three: turn your headlights on. Turtles use the moon to navigate to the shore. Before you know it you’ve started to navigate off of them, the cool light of their moon illuminating your heart when the street lights are out. This is dangerous. You must use your own compass, your own head, your own eyes. Oh, but how easy it is. How tempting to be tugged by the current? How simple to forget everything and just find them through the murk? How joyful, for them to be the lighthouse to your lonely red car?

Step four: find your accelerator. Sometimes, more frequently than you’d like, something terrible will happen to you or them or both of you or the world and you will crash into them, going 90 in a 40. What else could you do? You’ve spun completely out of control and all you can do is turn into the spiral. Turn your head into their shoulder. Turn them into the only thing in the world. What else could you have done? When trains were first implemented there were concerns that the human body moving too fast would cause all of your organs to come flying out, mind first, then heart, then gut. What else could you have done?

Step five: know when to stop. At red lights your companion puts their head on your shoulder and lifts the hand that takes you everywhere for you to kiss and time will stop. Then the light will turn and you must go again. You find yourself resenting the green lights. This is how you know you have gone too far to stop.You have no caution to proceed with and the intersection is filled with gelatin. Nowhere to go but onward. You hate it. You’ve filled journals with poetry on how much you hate that green light, that ticking clock, that tailwind. You both have. It doesn’t slow either of you down. You hate that green, one eyed monster (was it ever jealousy? Or just grief waiting to happen?) And let you hurtle toward it. Go, go, go.

Step six: make a left turn. Make a left turn. Make a left turn. Make a left turn. You’re going in circles. You know. You’re both dying and you’re both circling vultures. The first vehicle you drove was a go-kart. You always took the turns too fast, too hard and rammed into the side. You were fine, but you might’ve rattled something loose in your head that’s been unmoored ever since. It didn’t matter then though, you could just keep turning left and left and left in a midsummer haze. You were nowhere and everything. Now you’re in a real car and not a go-kart, and the stakes have never been higher. You’re in no hurry to get somewhere and be nothing, so you keep turning left and you’re running out of gas.

Step seven: learn to drive to the airport. Practice it in your head.

Step eight: say goodbye. It’s not like how you practiced. Consider learning to fly a plane.

Step nine: reverse. Drive away. You always knew this day was coming. Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.

Step ten: brace for impact. In the event of a car crash, attempt to angle yourself so the oncoming car does not hit the driver’s side. Sacrifice your now empty passenger seat if you must. In the event you crash, do not leave your vehicle until it is safe to do so. Ensure the road is clear, and you are not hit by a third car, unaware you have left your vehicle, unaware you are grieving. In the event the wreckage is on fire, go low and get away from the vehicle. Take your chances with the other drivers, not the flames. In the event that you drive your car into a river, break the window and swim upwards. Upwards is the way the bubbles from your nose and mouth are going. Follow your own breathing. In the event of heartbreak, keep driving. Drive into the sunset. Drive home.