Where Are You?
I walked out of the bar and into the night without a single thought as to where I would go or what I would do. I didn’t even know if I’d remember, when the sun came up, why I walked out.
But I knew that I wasn’t happy with Larry or Florida. I believed that the secret to my happiness was to find the right person and the right place to literally make me happy.
Since this situation wasn’t going to do it, I just wanted out.
It was the middle of the night and I was wandering completely lost with only the clothes on my back, the now painful boots on my feet, and a few dollars in my pocket. I didn’t want to go back to Larry’s house, and I had absolutely no attachment to the state in which I lived.
I continued to walk until I ended up at a gas station that was open. Compared to the dark neighborhoods through which I’d come, the gas station was so glaringly bright that I put on my pitch-black biker shades as I approached.
This was me, incognito.
The walk sobered me enough to realize that I would need to find somewhere to sleep eventually, but I had no idea where I would go. I thought about sleeping on the beach, but I didn’t know how to find one. I considered finding a guy to take me home, but picking up a guy at a gas station is what got me into this mess.
When I briefly considered Disney World, and knew immediately that it was not a solution, I realized I needed to get out of Florida. But how? Maybe I could hitch a ride on a tractor trailer – although I didn’t see one anywhere, and the gas station was virtually deserted. It was, after all, the middle of the night.
I thought about what I really, really wanted – and I realized that what I wanted, for the first time in a very long time, was not cocaine or beer or a man.
What I wanted was to crawl into a big bed and sleep somewhere warm, comfortable and safe. And I only knew one place like that.
I picked up the pay phone in the gas station parking lot and called my parents, collect.
“Hello?” said the most familiar voice in the world.
“Mum?”
“Kirsten?”
“Mum I’ve gotta get out of here!”
She’d been asleep but was wide awake now. “Out of where? What do you mean? Where are you?”
“I’ve got to get out of here! I can’t be here anymore!”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at a gas station,” I said, trying to discern more exactly where I was. “I’m still in Florida!”
“Hold on,” she said. I could hear her whispering something to my dad who was, in all likelihood, also wide awake now.
For emphasis I wailed, “I can’t live here anymore!” But I’m not sure anyone was listening. There was a lot of rustling about on the other end of the phone.
I lit another cigarette, checked for coins in the change dispenser. Nothing.
Finally my mom came back on the line. “Where exactly are you?”
“At a gas station,” I repeated.
“Can you get me the address of the gas station?”
I looked around. “I guess,” I said. “Hold on.” I went inside and asked someone to write down the address, then I went back to the phone, hanging there, and read the address to my mom.
“Stay there,” my mom said. “We’ll come and get you.”