A Highway to Ruins

Every night I have the same dream. She’s driving my Jeep down the PCH, speeding around each corner, one hand on the wheel, the other gripping my thigh. Her eyes are anywhere but the road, she drives right off a cliff. As we fly over the edge, my stomach is suspended in that weightless moment before the fall. There’s a split second when I can process what’s happening. We’re fucked. I jolt awake in a cold sweat while she sleeps peacefully next to me, completely unaware that each night, she murders us in my subconscious.

That’s all I can think about as our Jeep climbs elevation on Saline Valley Road in Death Valley, hours after I’d once again narrowly escaped another dream death. We’re hugging the edge of a cliff that’s just tucked out of my sight line, hidden beneath the window frame. All I can see are the jagged rocks below, waiting to catch (and kill) us if we slip.

Gripping the handle above the passenger window, I close my eyes and take deep breaths as tears start streaming down my face. I’m not normally afraid of heights but I’ve developed a crippling phobia throughout this relationship. Whether it was the numerous death-defying hikes she dragged me on or these recurring car-crash nightmares, I can’t be sure. But now even a curb triggers panic attacks.

As we climb closer to the clouds, I realize I’m tired of being scared of the inevitable car accident this relationship has come to represent. I’m exhausted from not being in control, perpetually sobbing in the passenger seat while my partner decides our fate.

She’s blasting Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant crooning about the levee breaking on “When the Levee Breaks.” We don’t have much to say to each other anymore. She’s singing the lyrics at me, not to me, searching my face for a reaction. Our entire relationship has become her mining me for emotional responses. Anger, hurt, excitement, whatever. At this moment she wants me to be impressed that she knows the words, I think? This acute emotional labor is exhausting. For a split second, I think about grabbing the wheel and putting us both out of our misery.

“You hate me,” she says, annoyed and embarrassed that I’m not giving her the standing ovation she was apparently expecting. I don’t correct her.

We finally make it down Saline Valley Road, after passing two trucks with flat tires and a handful of brave souls parked on the cliff’s edge taking selfies. At the bottom of the mountain sit the ruins of an old salt-mining facility, crumbling concrete structures scattered across the desert floor like broken teeth.

“What is that?” I ask, pointing at the ruins.

“I don’t know,” my partner shrugs. “Some ruins.”

“Of what?”

“Maybe a salt mine?”

“You don’t know?”

“No,” they say, completely uninterested in the historical significance of this pile of rocks.

“How old are they?”

“No idea.”

Here I am, shaking and soaked with tears, because we had to drive this terrifying mountain road to see some decaying salt mine from god knows when? For what? I’m filled with a rage I can’t fully explain. My partner knows how much I hate driving on narrow mountain roads unless we absolutely have to. I’m so tired of being dragged on these trips. That’s when it hits me: I’m really fucking miserable. (How didn’t it occur to me before? Great question.)

The nightmares every other night had started to feel normal, but they’re not normal. Being unplugged in the desert the past few days made me realize how much I’d been white-knuckling through life, glued to the passenger seat, afraid to take the wheel. I’d either given her control or she’d wrestled it from me. I honestly can’t remember anymore.

I’d isolated myself from all my friends, every single one of whom my partner claimed to hate. But really, she just hated sharing me. She was constantly terrified that if she left the window cracked, I’d fly out. So our relationship became the cage. I’d been moving so fast through this dysfunction that I never stopped to consider there might be another way to live—a relationship where I could sleep peacefully at night instead of waiting for her to drive us both over the edge.

That night, after grilling steaks over the campfire, we crawled into the back of the Jeep to share a joint and sleep. As we were settling in, we saw the moon through the windshield. It took up the entire sky, glowing so brightly that its rays reflected off every grain of salt around us. It was so massive it looked like a spaceship hovering above us, leaving us both speechless. We were about to turn on the engine and flee when we realized what we were actually seeing was just the moon and we were just too high. We laughed so hard our ribs ached.

Normally, a moment of peace like this would make me forget why I was so miserable. I’d go to bed, wake up in a panic, rinse and repeat. But tonight I can’t sleep. I stare at the Jeep’s ceiling, mind racing.

I’m going to end it. This is the first time I feel like I actually mean it.

“I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore,” I say out loud. But she’s already fast asleep, snoring softly next to me. Still, I’d done it. Saying it while she slept was my dress rehearsal.

The following day, when we’re back home in Los Angeles and back in the real world, I end things. I tell her how unhappy I’ve been. She gets angry, starts screaming and sobbing and throwing what can only be described as a tantrum. She storms out and calls her parents, telling them what I’ve done, what a terrible person I am.

I know by this reaction that I’ve made the best decision of my life.

That night she sleeps in the guest room and I sleep better than I have in years—eight long, beautiful, dreamless hours. No more driving off cliffs. No more passenger seat panic attacks.

Just me, finally back in the driver’s seat.