Drive to Survive

January is a ghost I keep trying to bury alive; but it shows up anyway—in dreams, in my tired body, in the dull ache that sinks into the day around 3 p.m. when the sun disappears behind everything. There’s no elegant way to say this: I was in a hospital bed, half-human, half-specter, watching the ceiling fan spin like a slow roulette wheel that might decide if I got to keep my mind.

I remember the man next to me coughing like his body was trying to break free of itself; and some woman—his daughter or his wife—talking until 3 a.m. like the walls were made of soundproof glass. My dad, the only one who showed up, wiped me after I went to the bathroom. That’s a sentence I never wanted to write. There’s no poetry in humiliation. Only truth. And still, it wasn’t as humiliating as waking up in the middle of the night screaming because I didn’t know where I was and needing lorazepam to find my way back to the body.

Later, in the rehab hospital, when things were a little better, I asked for my Kindle. My mom wanted to know if I had anything fun on it. “This is fun,” I told her, holding the Bible. I wasn’t lying. I needed to read something that believed in something. The first memory I have from this time isn’t the pain; it’s feeling God. Not religion, not ritual—just Him. I felt Him like you feel warmth through a closed window in winter. And He told me to create. To help. To build a business that matters. So here I am, trying.

Windsor was quieter. My dad and I walked by the riverside, and I saw a man yelling at an old woman. But I didn’t want to label him “crazy.” I wanted to hug him. Listen. Something in me had changed. My soul grew ears, maybe; or a heart with more room.

But with all that softness came the other side: I realized I didn’t have anyone to lean on. My dad was there, sure, but his love is filled with his own fears; his own shape of love. And the one person who used to feel like home? She was gone. And even if she had texted me from Miami, even if she’d come to visit, it would have felt like guilt—not love. I would’ve felt confused, not comforted. Not in a romantic or platonic sense; but in the sense of being pitied. And pity is a poor substitute for intimacy.

I’ve thought a lot about strength. About loving without attachment. About living without expecting anyone to be there to catch you. And still, I want to be held. I want someone to be proud that I’m still here. I want someone to say, “You did it. You lived.” But the truth is, the world doesn’t hand out gold stars for survival. So I write. And I try to build something. I try to make meaning out of pain.

January split me in half. But maybe the real story is that I’m still here; writing this with one hand while the other tries to put myself back together.

There are no palm trees where I live. But I see them in my dreams; blurry silhouettes in the rearview. I carved our initials into one on a humid night in Miami, believing the tree would outlive us. Maybe it will. But I don’t chase that memory anymore. I just adjust the mirror and keep driving.