1
The rapping noise on the window of my Toyota Corolla's driver's side window woke me up. I didn't even know what time it was, just that it was dark outside of the car that contained everything I owned.
As I hastily rolled down the window, I saw a police officer, probably wondering what the hell someone with a license place from New Mexico was doing sleeping along the side of this random neighborhood road in Michigan. At least, it was random to me.
The neighborhood was a hybrid between rural and suburb—there weren't any sidewalks, and an acre or two of partially forested land sat between each house, one of which I'd been inside for a couple group meditation sessions; however, I was now too ashamed (or afraid?) to ask the group members for help or a place to stay. I barely knew them, to be honest. So I sat along the roadside in my car like a bum.
I glanced at my cat, Jodi, in the passenger seat. Somehow, she was sleeping through this. Or maybe she got bored and went back to sleep. The half Maine Coon had traveled with me from New Mexico all the way up to Michigan, and was adapting amazingly well to “car life,” if it could be called that. God, how pathetic this situation was. As I spoke with the officer, I kept my voice quiet for her. Sorry Jodi; just another day or two, while I figure out how to get us back down to the Southwest. Yet, the more I tried to grasp at solutions for how to get back home, the more those ideas seemed to slip through my fingers. At least it was summer time by now, and not freezing, anymore.
The police officer standing outside my Toyota explained to me that people weren't allowed to park their cars along this particular road at night time. I felt my heart sink, as it wasn't the first time I was told to leave, or told to move out, or told that I wasn't welcomed in a particular house.
However, the officer was surprisingly nice, advising me to drive up the hill to a small motel. “You can sleep there,” he said. The idea was appealing to me because maybe I could find a way to snatch up some of the continental breakfast in the morning, by pretending to be a motel guest. I agreed and was privately thankful that he did not ask about the forged date sticker on the New Mexico license plate (because screw “The Man” and all his fees, right? ...Yeah. Don't try it; the idea didn't last).
When I turned the car around and drove towards the exit of the one-way street, I paused at the stop sign. I glanced in my rear view mirror. The officer had not followed me yet, and would likely be filling out paperwork. The motel would have been a turn to the left, but I spontaneously made a turn to the right as I pulled out onto the main street. I knew the sticker I'd made with the next year's expiration date (FINALLY that one class in Adobe Photoshop came in handy!) was covering up the truth about the plate actually being expired several months ago. It was entirely possible the officer might catch up with me later at the motel and haul my ass off to jail, or whatever they did with people who had expired plates. Maybe just tow the car, but I didn't want to find out, because they wouldn't be taking my car—they'd be taking my whole damn home.
I kept driving away from the motel until I passed a sign for a change in the county lines. Every few moments I would look in the rear view mirror to see if his police car was following me. The glow of distant headlights would make it easy to tell if a car was there, but it would be impossible to tell if it was a cop or not. But no one was out at 2:46 AM in the rural suburbs.
I’m out of his jurisdiction, I assumed. He won’t drive this far into the neighboring town.
Still, I kept looking, but another nervous glance into the mirror was futile—I couldn’t see shit because of my teary-eyed, blurred vision. I was stressed, exhausted and crying despite all my attempts to contain my emotions. The road was a black hole and my cat next to me was a pile of sleeping fluff. I briefly wondered what she thought of spending so much time in the car; I’d rudely torn her away from her cozy apartment, took her on a road trip with me to the Midwest, landing in “Craigslist-guy's” house that ended up being short-lived, and now Jodi was no longer free to explore the forest in the back yard of that house. Whatever. It hadn’t been my house anyway. Plus, the owner was an asshole, and that was the reason we'd left—certainly not because he wanted me to pay for an obnoxiously high electricity bill due to the obnoxiously freezing weather in Michigan!
Turn left, whispered my intuition as I drove in the darkness, the suburban streets turning more rural. At a time when I didn't know what the hell to do and it seemed like every option I was coming up with somehow ended up failing, it was cool to think for a moment that I had the super-awesome gift of knowing stuff via intuition. So I turned left.
I'd be out of his jurisdiction here, right? This area would be safe? All I needed was to sleep. Just to sleep. That was all my focus—sleeping in a safe place. In my car. With my cat. And all my junk, which must not have been much, as I could still see out all of the windows, with a litter box on the floor of the passenger side; I certainly didn't have any furniture like a mattress, sofa, desk, or even a chair. At “Craigslist guy's” house, I was sleeping on a hard-wood floor on a pile of clothes, wrapped in a winter jacket I happened to still have from my early 20s before moving to New Mexico.
As I wiped the tears from my eyes and continued to drive, I briefly thought about how I'd tried to partner up with a different guy (Craigslist Guy #2) to help pay for the journey back to the Southwest. This kid in his 20s assured me he could get money for gas, but I soon discovered that his method of getting money was begging for it at gas stations. Not only did that seem humiliating as hell, but it also didn't seem reliable, and I had started to get weird feelings about the guy, so I quickly ended that and we parted ways. Poor guy—he'd even told all his friends and family that he was leaving for the Southwest once and for all, and seemed excited about it. I only knew him for a day or two, but from seeing the reactions of his friends, I could tell they didn't believe him. Should I have continued to partner up with him for the journey home? Was I too hasty in getting away from him? Would we have been half way to New Mexico, by now?
So many “What ifs.” What I did know for sure was that I had spent my last bit of money on food, and I was now officially stuck in the Midwest. It was time to look for a job or something more reliable, to save up money for the return home.
But first, sleep.
Turn right, my intuition whispered again, bringing me back to the present moment. Amazing I could even hear it, as stressed as I was.
That inner voice led me to another residential street. This one had huge homes, with huge yards—many of which had nice little forests on the properties. This was upscale-rural.
My headlights made out a “For Sale” sign in the darkness of a driveway that led back into the woods, and I turned there, to check it out. At the end of the driveway, atop a small hill surrounded by trees, was a house that almost seemed like a mansion to me because it had THREE garage doors—I'd only grown up with one garage door in my childhood home. The place also had a nice-sized barn at the edge of the forest, next to some overgrown farmland, and that's where I parked my car.
Sleep never felt so good.