A Nonjudgmental Safe Spot

Safety is not something that is tangible. For me, safety is a feeling you get when you know deep in your heart that everything is going to be okay. I have a spot where I go to when I need that feeling of safety, and it never fails me. My car is my safe spot. In my car I can scream along with Steve Perry and be comforted by the fact that I know he won’t judge me. We sing and laugh and cry together, and no one has to know, because it’s my safe spot.

I drive a 2000 Hyundai Elantra, my dad’s old car. To this day I remember my sisters and I sneaking into the back seat and hiding there until he came in from work each day. I remember the clean smelling grey floor that we pressed our faces against, trying to be as small as possible. When my older sister turned 16 the dear friend was passed on to her, and the dear front seat was passed on to me. Now in the front I could memorize all the gadgets, and mess with the radio. I only retreated to the back on the days when I couldn’t bear the upchucked fruit salad smell fuming from the air fresheners supposedly making the car “smell better”.  But I don’t have to live with that smell anymore, because it’s not her car. As I get back into my car the grey floor doesn’t have that clean smell any more. It smells like burning hair which is just as bad as the upchucked fruit salad but I can’t expect much more out of a car that has lasted over a decade.

The front of my car stays relatively clear; partially because I don’t like clutter and partially because my driving instructor told me I get distracted by the details, and after failing the first time I decided to listen to him and get rid of all the details in my car. This might have not been the details he was referring to but the clean car passed me so that must be something. Right under the gear shifter is my collection of sunglasses in any color and personality imaginable, each lens turning me into something different; a rocker, a movie star, an FBI agent. In one fluid motion I shift and grab at anyone of these personalities. My thumbs press against the red paint marks smearing my steering wheel. One day when I was learning how to parallel park my mom, seeing neon red road markers— which unbeknownst to us had just been painted – sticking out of the frozen ground, thought of a brilliant plan and told me to pull over. She took four markers and rearranged them into a perfect rectangle that I was somehow supposed to guide my car into. Getting back into the car and telling me to just “go with my gut” she soon realized that wasn’t the best choice of words and frantically grabbed at the wheel, which scared me to death. We laughed for hours when she let go and we noticed the neon red paint marks in the shape of gripping hands. The marks make me happy like my multiple colorful CDs do. Collecting dust during the day they anxiously wait, when other cars are around, for the sweet serenity of night when they can blast my ear drums out but stopping immediately once we see those headlights beaming through me and into the jungle of my back seat.

The jungle of my back seat, unlike other jungles, is one that you don’t want to explore and I can hardly remember anyone who has had to. This, of course, is a very good thing because my back seat is so full of junk and baggage that one would suffocate. Anything that is even the slightest bit unappealing or stressful gets thrown in the back because I don’t want to deal with it. The once clean carpet smell is replaced with the smell of receipt paper and fast food bags. I desperately try to forget the existence of the horrific back but the mirrors have a different plan in mind, flashing images at me throughout my journeys. My Olympic weight training tool otherwise known as my backpack used to be their favorite one to show me. I hated it. Unfortunately, my mirrors didn’t care forcing me to put it in the same hidden spot every day. A deep cavity lies in that hidden spot— 3^rd cushion all the way to the left— where I prop it almost as if my car is taking in some of the load with me telling me that it cares. Sometimes the mirrors catch me off guard and I get trapped looking at them letting memories that I want to forget come back as the sad lonely spot of wetness blatantly stares back at me.  With my face pressed against the seat— not for reason of fun filled surprise though— I released my pain on that first day of supposedly a “better life”. Each tear fall just led me to a sadder state. I was sad and alone and all I could do was breathe in the dirt filled cushion and cry. I want to forget all the emotion that caused those tears to come but I can’t because the evidence is there staring at me every time I get into my car. I remember crawling into the back just being hopeless and crying into the seat wishing it could do something for me. Only now do I realize how much it did for me that day, it gave me a replacement for the shoulders I lacked to cry on.

My car is my safe spot because I can be the person I need to be at the moment there. That person might be Steve Perry’s duet partner or just a girl who needs to cry because they had a bad day. Unlike the world it doesn’t judge me. It lets me sing as loud as I want and cry as hard as I please always being constant and isn’t that what a safe spot is? A place that is constant where you can be yourself? That’s what my car is for me and was for my sister and dad. Unlike them though, I accept for who it is— a smelly, old, loving car— because it accepts me for who I am—  an emotional, loud, loving girl— and embraces me in its safety. 

Creating Worlds

So I have never been a reader. Don't get me wrong I still enjoy books but books have never consumed my life. My friends always get into these deep conversations about books and how they create worlds in their heads and how the characters are there best friends and I've always felt a little guilty that I have never been part of this world creating club. Yes some characters are funny and some scenes are heart wrenching or intense, but at the end of the day I can put that book down and never think of it again. I could lock it away and never have a yearning to visit Hogwarts, or Forks, or the little country home that Scout lives in. To this day I've always been kinda hesitant to admit that. To admit that I, Abby, am not a reader, because let's be honest with ourselves people who don't read are looked down upon. It doesn't matter if too lazy to read, you don't know how to read, or you just don't enjoy it. Reading makes you more intelligent so if you don't read start because you can't possibly be intelligent unless you enjoy reading. That's just simply how it is. In a library there is a section where you can check out CDs, and when I go to the library that's the first section I go to. This is not because I think music is superior to books or that books take too much time, but because music is how my worlds are created and just like my friends I love the feeling of stepping into my own world.

My sister came home from a church camp in 2009 and she came back with a cd filled with music. I still remember listening to this song for the first time. I was in the car with her and I distinctly remember crying, because that what the music did to me. I must of listen to that song 20 times just that day. It wasn't just a song it was a new feeling that I couldn't describe. When I listen to this song I can close my eyes and imagine a new place that I've never been to before. I imagine a dancer and I can see so clearly every little move that she make. This isn't just a song it's a portal to a new world. Music does that to me. I'm not into books I'm into sounds, I'm not best friends with characters I'm best friends with chords and I don't' yearn to go to fictional places I yearn to go to my piano bench or guitar stand. I am in love with music and I don't know what I would do with out it.

There are things in everyone's life that they don't know what they would do with out. Maybe your thing is a book, but if it's not you shouldn't feel bad or a lesser person. Don't do what I have done for so many years and pretend to be into books when your not. Don't pretend that they have that amazing capability to transport you into a different world if they don't. There is nothing wrong with having that key to a new door be a type of dance, a certain lens frame, a hammer and nails,a piece paper and cardboard, a ball and some sneakers, or even some silly little chords on a old piano. There are amazing worlds in each of our minds and it doesn't matter how we open them only that we do.

And sometimes you make chocolate eggs

Some may call this a "nailed it" moment. I call it delicious! The task was simple. I mean only 3 ingredients what could POSSIBLY go wrong... everything. Everything could go wrong. So first what you have to realize is that I was serious about these pancakes. I went to bed early just to make sure I got the adequate sleep for the pancakes. I watched that video like 5 times. I woke up in the morning and realized we didn't have bananas so did I just shake my head and go back to sleep HELL NO. I drove to the store. Got out of my car and bought the bananas because I knew TODAY was the DAY, NOW was the TIME. So banana and eggs in my hand and a dream of a perfect pancake in my heart I began to mix. It didn't take me too long for me to realize that this pancake dream of mine was not going to come true. So I made the quick choice of creating my own little take on the banana pancake. I added chocolate and started to scramble them. AND BEHOLD the chocolate egg was born.

Sometimes in life things work out just the way you want them to. Sometimes you make the PERFECT pancake, and sometimes you make chocolate eggs. You can plan and prep and get the adequate sleep and still life has a tendency to do it their way and not the way that you want. I've been here only 17 years and that is something I have known for at least a decade. Something I have learned a little more recently though is that you have the power to turn those bad situations into better ones, not perfect but better. You have the power to turn failed banana pancakes that looks like questionable taco meat into chocolate eggs.

And of course sometimes you might wish that you could just have your perfect pancake and call it a day but remember every little trial, every little tear, every little mess up happens for a reason. Maybe that reason is to discover even though chocolate eggs might not look so good they taste sooooooo goooood, or maybe that reason is just so you our more grateful for those times where you do make that perfect pancake. Mistakes, trials, and hard times don't all have to be bad you have the power to make the best out of them.  

  This power is not on automatic mode though, you have to make it happen. It's easy to give up when life gets hard. It's easy to blame others. And it's so easy to not even try in the first place. DON'T! Put yourself out there even if you know that it might not work. Try out for the team. Ask out the girl. Take the interview. Get on the stage. Just go and try. If it doesn't work out chalk it all up to experience. When I die I know I won't look back and say to myself "Wow I really wish I didn't try out for that because when I didn't make it that was awful" what I'll be saying is " I wish I would've...". I really hope I don't have a lot of those statements. What I do hope I have though, is a lot of memories of chocolate eggs.