For Now

I'm trying to write this as quickly as possible before the feeling fades again. It's fleeting, that feeling of freedom. Joan Jett half singing half screaming through the speakers, the wicked smile twisting my mouth as I tear out of the parking lot past the beer-league hockey players loitering around minivan tailgates. Waiting for the light to change and release me from my icy prison, zipping down a deserted road, nothing behind me but the past, everything else before me, there for the taking. Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone, according to John Cougar Mellencamp, and I laugh at his foolishness. Turning the stereo up to be heard over the rush of air as the on-ramp disappears behind me and I get up to speed. The thoughts from my quiet, brightly lit prison fading slowly, their highlights still marking moments. Space, mountains, tropical islands, pictures and words from the bright glossy pages reminding me how much there is left to see. Grinning as a little red sports car overtakes me on the left, in contrast with the daytime frustrations of the person in too big a hurry the night finds kindred spirits, someone who can push their limits just a little more than me tonight, and I wish them well for it. The damp, cool air which only hours before had made the day unbearably muggy after midnight blasting through the windows, the four-by-sixty doing its glorious work even though really it's a little more like four-by-one hundred twenty, (shh don't tell anyone). The artificial wind whipping around my head, tugging and teasing my hair out of the severe ponytail reserved for those days when I can't quite be bothered to wash my hair, even though it's looking a little stringy. My left foot tapping out rhythms with the music, my right motionless on the gas pedal. No time for brakes tonight.
I have spent a lot of time sad lately. It has been a long time since I did not want to live, but even recently, the wanting to live was for later, for sometime in the future, after the responsibilities are sorted out, after there's more money, after I'm independent, after, after, after. Tonight, though, it's for right now. It's for the gas gauge dipping towards empty, for the ponytail my hair is sliding out of, for Joan Jett and to prove Mellencamp wrong, for the fall I can already taste on the air, for the stars I can hardly see any of because of the cloud cover. It's for me. For now.