We Are No One

The horizon runs by with blazing colors. Red, green, orange, brown, black. Everything is so bright from the view from the back of a 2007 Toyota Sierra mini-van. The world went by fast, everything blurred in colors. It was hard to make out what was what, but whatever I was looking at was beautiful. Even the highway seems magical underneath the barely noticeable stars and the bright burning lampposts that waste energy by being on all day and night. I learned that in 6th grade science, when we studied all about the earth and how we have to use resources wisely, that the sun is a big ball of burning gas, or as we call it, a star, and that rocks get changed by other things, unlike us that have the power to change ourselves. You know, as a kid, we learned all that fun environmental stuff that no one ever thinks about.
As we rode down that highway, I thought about the rocks, about how they don’t have any say in their thousands of years of life just sitting there, being controlled. They were broken down by outsiders, pulled apart by wind and cracked and chipped to pieces by water. That’s what I felt like, a rock. I was free but couldn’t do anything, I didn’t have a say. I was being used, controlled, and changed by others. I was just longing to forget my flaws and be myself, but in the world I was a rock, too shy to change myself. It seems there was always someone, always someone too shy to speak up, too shy to be anything but that little girl. That little girl who sits in silence looking out the window and talking to her in silence, you always saw her but never heard a voice. I was always her and nothing more, a living doll if you would.
The mini-van was silent as we hit a few bumps in the road. The roads were full of careless flaws, just as people are. They always have little mistakes drawn in them that no one feels like erasing. The car shook as the back wheel came off the bump with a sudden but expected clang. I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt, which apparently was breaking some law. I know it was for safety, but honestly, I wasn’t going to think about everything that could, would, or should go wrong.
When we lived in the country with Dad included, no one had to wear seatbelts in his little red pickup truck. I remember last summer, riding across fields of diamond dew grass in the very early morning with just dirt roads to follow, and watching all the geese that flew out of the grass, all the butterflies you never would have guessed were there fluttered off flowers that matched the patterns on their wings. It was still pretty dark in the mornings, and the fireflies illuminated the little dirt road, not ever glowing lampposts. I remember trying to count the stars still left in the sky as we drove, trying to connect them with my finger and make pictures like they had in planetariums.
I wish I could see the stars tonight. They were barely noticeable; it’s all because of light pollution. Cities create the most light pollution, that’s why you never notice the stars there, even though they are always there but go unnoticed. I never found cities appealing; I never found the suburban area much like home. My heart belonged somewhere I would never go again, ever. I longed for the country, where people talked with funny accents and talked about politics from a completely republican view. I miss the horses, everything I chose to leave because I said I hated it. I hated it all. I might have lied just a little, but I knew it was time to move on. You can’t linger on the past; you can’t obsess over everything that you can’t change in your personal history. You have to take up a new style.
As we changed routes I began to nod off, long car rides always made me drowsy. I don’t really know what it was about it. Maybe it was the motion; it was like being rocked to sleep like I was when I was just a baby. The radio blared out one Taylor Swift's songs. I hated her. Pop and country were too things that honestly shouldn’t be mixed. I was probably the only girl raised in farmland that didn’t appreciate country singers. Before I finally gave up and let myself fall asleep, I checked again outside. The highway began turning into a town, into a city, into another town. You could see a few stars, but nothing like I remember. The stars all faded to a shade of deep navy and disappeared as the sun prepared to awaken from what seemed like an everlasting sleep. As we headed on to another highway, I looked at the rabbits that sat on the little patch of grass on the right side of the road. Three small grey rabbits sat in front of a bush surrounding the decaying furry body of what looked like a larger rabbit, possibly the father. I wasn’t religious, but I prayed for those bunnies, because I knew exactly what they were going through.