At 15, I started stealing cars.

Think less grand theft auto by hot-wiring strangers' cars late at night and more waiting until a member of my family was sleeping or away overnight to “borrow” their vehicle for joy rides. And joy rides they were. I never did anything particularly dangerous that would harm the car or myself, and most of the time, I didn’t have a destination or an accomplice/passenger as a literal partner in crime.** My CD case was my passenger, a massive square weapon of a case six inches thick that I meticulously organized and reorganized alphabetically each time I’d buy new music (my high school job at Best Buy kept me around music snobs who helped me spend every paycheck on ‘underground’ artists). Most nights, I’d just drive, windows down, music up, alone and free. These were the formative nights during my most formative years that gave me an unquenchable thirst for feeling free, for, as Carmen Radley calls it, the “paradox of sad songs making you feel so good.” Above all, these nights showed me the power and vital importance of being alone.

I eventually got busted by my mom who, in her infinite wisdom, called the cops to come over and give me a serious scare. I got lucky as the officer was gentle yet stern, taking the approach of educating me on how the consequences of my choice of underage driving could impact my family if something went wrong. Mom held me back from driver’s ed for six months (the worst possible punishment I could imagine), and eventually, I was legally taking the same joy rides. Alone blasting Counting Crows or The Cure, 16 driving down the streets of my old childhood neighborhood, already longing for youth that felt long gone.

Grown-up and still working technology jobs since the glory days of Best Buy, I choose my jobs as much by the commute as I did the work itself. It began with a 40-minute commute from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City, then a 50-minute commute from Ames to Des Moines, which gave me a 200-mile territory to drive. It escalated quickly once we moved to Oregon, starting with 200 miles a week to 300 miles a week. By 2018, I had a 6-hour, 300-mile commute through the redwood trees, along the Pacific Ocean, past elk herds and cannabis farms, and rocky windy roads along turbulent rivers twice a week. I was in heaven. Time to think, to listen and learn from podcasts, to talk to friends and family for hours, to befriend nature as I observed it all transform as season by season I drove.

Then, the pandemic. The transitory nature of my job meant it wasn’t safe to travel between stores, so all driving stopped. One year later, cancer. Oh, cancer. That one-two-punch of Covid/cancer began a slow stripping away of the things I’d come to know as indispensable, beginning with driving privileges and my sacred alone time. It wasn’t just that I wanted people around to help me. There were and still are days I simply can not feed, bath, clothe, or move without help. There were and still are days that I hover over an emesis bag (now fully stocked in the glove compartment) on the drive to appointments, the only place outside of the house I travel to that week. Some days the feeling of longing for freedom - for the hours alone in the car and the pleasure of travel that cannot be planned with every other day appointments, for expressing myself through fashion as my clothes fall off my body shrunken from chemo, for chosing a curling iron for my long beautiful hair now bald and patchy, for having a chosen family in my life because I want them but not because I need them as caregivers. Stripping. Stripping. Stripping. Who I thought “I” was. What I think freedom is. Wondering, working with the question - how can I still have freedom through this?

Morning solo run on the Humboldt CA coast. Running, a loss now but a carrot I move towards in my dreams.

Today, a first. I drove myself the 40-minutes to Iowa City for my labs and a platelet infusion. Afterward, I got gas and dropped off a package at UPS before turning on a podcast for the way home. Windows down, I stuck my hand out and caught air, making a horizontal wave catching the currents. Hope floods my chest with warmth. Awww, I remember this. I remember who I was, and now it’s mixed with who I’ve become, a woman who appreciates with my whole body and feels with my whole heart and moves effortlessly into awe. This is a freedom I didn’t have access to before, one of being totally immersed in the present moment. Today is my independence day.

In the first few months after diagnosis, I tried to comfort Evan and myself by sharing that we were just setting our lives up on a shelf for a little while and would take them off when this was ‘all done.’ Now I know that is impossible, and I wouldn’t want to even if I could. This becoming, this burning it all down era of cancer has awakened my spirit, expanded my empathy, allowed me to forgive, let go, welcome help from others, reconsider my old programming, to come alive as I never had before. Suffering has gifted me with the power to reframe mistakes (e.g., stealing cars) as not mistakes but rather teachers guiding me along the way. Do I have regrets? Hell yeah! But the suffering I’ve felt resulted from those regrets I wouldn’t wish away. It’s been in this stripping away that I have a fresh foundation to begin again.

May we all love our suffering today and then gift it back a rad soundtrack of sad songs all its own.

NOTES:

** In case it wasn’t clear, I didn’t have a driver’s license, only a permit where I had to have an adult with me at all times.

Independence.

Outdoors: a simulation.

On ghosts.