Estimated Time of Arrival
words by Aliza Susatijo, art by Tori Ochave
What do you think of when you’re on a road trip?
0 hours, 58 minutes:
When hours have passed, and you’ve played every game that involves pointing at the directional signs that line the road. When everyone around you is asleep except for the driver, but even they can’t hear their own thoughts over the heavy metal blasting from the stereo. Gazing out the window at the blur of trees and cars that never seem to end. Looking beyond the faint silhouette of yourself, with its familiar face staring back at you. Maybe you close your eyes and try to get some rest. Retreat into yourself. No one is watching you at this moment. A memory that only you will hold.
2 hours, 13 minutes:
Your body is stationary, but your mind begins to drift. Wandering from one thought to the next. Though the car is careening forwards at 60 mph, there is no need to rush through each thought, no tasks to complete or goals to meet before the next deadline. Mulling over everything you had pushed to the back of your mind, simply because you have the time. The conversation with your professor on Tuesday, the compliment from the cute barista as they gave you your coffee, the way you spilled that coffee on your sweater. Thoughts that occur in passing, just as fleeting as the trees outside your window. Yet eventually, there’s a bump in the road, and you stumble across a thought that makes you pause.
3 hours, 44 minutes:
Perhaps this thought begins as the smallest trickles of rain hit the roof of your car. As it grows, the increasing pitter-patter of each droplet hitting the window is the soundtrack to your ever racing thoughts. It begins as a question, in the way that all things do.
Where am I going?
You know there is an endpoint that you are bound to reach, though the path is a long and indecipherable one. The rain picks up, now a constant pour accompanied by thunder and lightning, almost obscuring your view of the road ahead. You are hurtling onward in a car that you are not driving. You are in the heaviest part of the storm and for a brief second, the car hydroplanes. It was only for a moment, but the feeling of gliding uncontrollably forward was a startling reminder. For this trip, you have no control over the path taken. A reflection of the life you had left three hours and forty-four minutes ago.
5 hours, 27 minutes:
The rain lightens up after a flood that threatened to wash away your ark. There will be no more breaks at the gas station, no more moments to catch your breath. One more length of the journey. A length in which you ponder your revelation and struggle to overcome the sense of aimlessness that threatens to crash into you like a tsunami. In the end, however, you are not walking to your destination on foot. You are protected by the car, with the assurance that it will carry you to the finish line and your family squished in next to you. Your final realization is one of resignation. But it is a peaceful resignation that signifies acceptance of the inner working that moves everyone's life. Your decisions and actions will stroke the oar that moves your boat closer to its goal, and the waves will propel you forward. You trust that you will be guided towards your destination, though you do not know the journey.
7 hours, 36 minutes:
Every thought you’ve had in the past seven hours and thirty-six minutes will end as the car veers off onto a road marked by an exit sign. You will pull into a parking lot and your family will scramble to unstuff themselves from the tightly packed car. When you emerge, bones sore and aching, you will be a different person in a different place. An understanding that there is more to experience in the world than worrying over every breath that you’ve taken or conversation you’ve had. Then, you walk into a place unknown.
