On the Road: Day Two

Two days and nearly 800 miles of travel and I can already feel the benefits of this move, the “high” from being on the road. 

Leaving the place where I spent the past 4-5 years of my life yesterday felt like I was tearing myself away almost against my will and for the first few miles I felt so sad that a knot blocked my throat and I kept thinking to myself, “This is only temporary: I can come back if I want to, whenever I want to”. 

I finally got started at noon yesterday so I got to my first destination after dark and exhausted from a long trip in a mostly boring landscape — densely inhabited and/or empty flat central California — boy, that State is HUGE! 

The quiet place I had booked for the night, outside of a small town, almost in the middle of nowhere, though, made up for it: the cold, crips air felt so pure last night and the starry sky with a dim Milky Way was a pleasant reminder of nights spent camping or backpacking. 

I woke up refreshed, full of energy and in a good mood this morning, ready to go, to embrace the road, this new adventure, and life in general. 

The landscape was mostly still boring, still huge California and then, finally, Nevada, which was almost worse — and the traffic jam through Las Vegas, made worse by a car crash, was hellish. But these were only tiny blips in an overall wonderful, amazing day. Even the hour sitting in traffic through Las Vegas was somehow good because it reinforced my sense of resilience, of what I can truly tolerate and do and achieve. 

Overall I feel so empowered, so strong, so hopeful again. Even the trip through the boring landscape was positive: with my favorite music playing as loud as I wanted in the background, I could let my feelings and thoughts flow at their own leisure. And most of what came up was similar to what had started to surface during my travels to/in/from Colorado last summer, but much more clear and intense and powerful this time: the feeling of being a boy and of wanting the world to see me as such. The idea of getting my name and gender legally changed came back with an urgency that was almost unbearable. And then even newer thoughts, at first almost a question of curiosity: how would I look with facial hair? I then discarded this idea but realized that my desire to have no breasts at all, to get rid of even the tiny tits I have, has become extremely intense. 

I have never cared about my breasts, I never used them to “enhance my looks”, I never even used bras until society in some way or other forced me into thinking about my breasts. I wear sports bras and female swim-suits only for practical reasons; but at the beach I’ve always tried to find ways to be topless. And today as I was driving through barren south-eastern California I pictured myself bare-chested, really freely bare-chested: i.e. bare-chested in a totally “socially acceptable way” by being completely flat-chested. To be allowed to swim bare-chested only wearing “Speedos” at the pool; to run and climb and work out bare-chested at the gym when it’s hot; to have a completely flat chest no matter what I wear. And yes, that image felt so wonderful, so liberating, and especially so “wholly me”: that’s how I would really like to be, to look, if I could. 

Then, traffic jam through Las Vegas… okay, survival mode while I try not to think how hungry I am and that I have to pee… But afterwards, refreshed by a pit-stop and snack, I finally started on the last leg of today’s trip, a little over an hour long — and the most beautiful of these past two days. 

Here I am, over six hours on the road, heading into the evening, with Meredith Brooks’s album “Deconstruction” blasting in my car to keep me going. And suddenly the barren Nevada desert specked with horrible urban conglomerates gives way to a rocky canyon turning more and more beautiful as the road winds its way through it. We’re nearing sunset, the sky is turning yellow, orange, pink, tinting the few clouds violet, but the best is yet to come: there, all of a sudden, the canyon wall right ahead of me bursts into red-golden flames. 

I get into the right lane of I-15 N so I can drive a little slower and just soak it all in. 

Meredith Brooks’s song “Sin city” is playing now, one of my favorites, and perfect for this moment — on “repeat”. I don’t know if it’s adrenaline, endorphins, or dopamine flooding my system, but I’m feeling high like on some of my best “runner’s highs” — flooded by real synesthesia: I’m feeling colors, seeing sounds, soaring through the sky. The canyon gets more and more beautiful at every turn as dusk flushes everything in pastel hues spotted with flames. And then, at last, as the canyon opens up to wider land, I turn my head North-West and see them: the snow-capped mountains. WOW.

The whole of me — body, mind, and soul — was flooded with a sense of awe so engulfing that all I could do was look and think, “This is so beautiful”! 

And I’m still feeling it now, more than two hours later and close to bedtime: the awe, the joy, the lightness (or “unburdenedness”), the freedom, the empowerment, the power and hope and potential of having a new road ahead of me — literally as well as figuratively — open, open, open.

Wide open.