New Year's Exit.

A couple years ago we had freezing rain on new years. I had gone to an old friends cabin in NH with my roommate, and just past midnight I decided we should go home because she was sucking on her inhaler like a candy cane. Unfinished cabin.

So we get in the car and start driving, and just past the Vermont border the road turned to black ice. We were going down a hill and the car just started spinning, and we were crashing into guardrails. After we came to a stop we stayed there for awhile, until a sand truck came by wit chained wheels. Then I started driving again.

And I was tired, and a little buzzed, and my glasses had fallen off somewhere I couldn't find, and we had to go forward because there was no where safe to go back to. And my roommate was still sucking an inhaler and couldn't get too cold because her lungs were closing iota by iota so we couldn't stop for rest lest the car go cold, and the car couldn't keep running while we slept because we only had enough gas to get to Montpelier and the off-ramps were iced over so we couldn't get a room or more gas.

So all there was to do was to drive. crawling 3mph across Vermont in ice rain for seven hours. And you knew there were long edge of your seat hours to go, and your nerves were blown, but you still had to drive and drive and drive as slow as you could because that's the only thing to do.

I've got a year. A year at 3mph, and I can see the misery on the calender to be crawled over, day by day, week by week, till I'm done with a monotonous yet worthlessly stressful job. A year is my estimate, where home will lie. May even be longer.

At least on New Years I knew where my exit was.