Thoughts on Driving

-Skye Simpson

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I’m twenty-five, and I’ve been thinking about everything lately. I can’t believe it’s May and I can’t believe I can drive a car. Every morning, I wake up with a sick, aching feeling in my stomach as I realise I have to do things. I lie in bed until the last minute I can when my alarm has finished ringing for the sixth time. Then I get up. I walk into the kitchen and start making myself and my roommate coffee. I unscrew the Bialetti and empty out the old coffee grounds from the day before, wash it, boil the water, pour the water into the base, scoop the grounds into the basket, and twist on the top. Then I put it on the stove and wait for the hot liquid to bubble out and spit at me until I take it off the heat.

I can’t believe I can drive a car. I think this to myself each morning as I unlock it with the key that has my neon green office tag hanging off the end. I put my backpack in the boot and slide myself into the driver’s seat. It’s not so much that I can’t believe I can drive a car so much as I can’t believe that cars are real. I can’t believe it. I don’t know if it’s something I’ve made up but it feels like I shouldn’t be going that fast around Hospital Bend, and I don’t like that it’s called Hospital Bend. Of course, I don’t need to drive anywhere near Hospital Bend on my way to work but rather down the road past the stadium and the McDonald’s and around the circle which is probably called a roundabout in the UK. I am not religious. And I don’t particularly believe in God but I do speak to God every morning and every evening when I pass around that circle and say “oh God please may my journey around this circle be a simple and easy and safe one”. I don’t say amen because I think that is reserved for the Believers.

Sometimes I do need to drive along Hospital Bend. How strange it is to think that only three months ago I didn’t know that it was exit seven I needed to take. Exit seven to the left and then to the right and then up the hill to look for parking that doesn’t exist and then up, up, up the stairs on foot and then to the left and then up the stairs again, to the left up a step, down a step and into the room. It’s the best part of my week; the things that follow after all the steps and the lefts and the rights. It’s the time I can mute my emails, ignore my messages and say I have an excuse.

I’ve been thinking about other good times in my week and I can’t find many, except the coffee in the morning. I didn’t start drinking coffee until three years ago when an ex-boyfriend started bringing me coffee in the mornings in a thin, ceramic cup made by his godfather who was a potter. I was more attracted to the cup than the coffee but with enough sugar and milk, I quickly became addicted even though I shouldn’t drink coffee because I’m already so anxious about things like cars.

Still, I think I should be adding more good things to my week so I’m thinking of joining a walking group. I sound like my mother because she is in a walking group. They are a group of ladies who started walking during lockdown, when we were allowed to walk again, even though it was very cold in the mornings because it gets very cold in Vereeniging, where I grew up. My walking group will be different. We will meet on the Mouille Point promenade in the evenings and it will be less cold but probably more windy.

I can’t join a running group because the last time I ran was in October last year. I started running two days after my twenty-fifth birthday because that’s the age you start doing things like that. I couldn’t run to the lighthouse and back but by October I ran the length of the promenade and back and even got a medal for it, but if I tried to run now I would probably not make it to the lighthouse again. I also can’t join a running group because I don’t want to and as a rule, I never do things I don’t want to do except for all the things I have to do which is most things. This is most unfortunate.

Another thing I don’t want to do is endure another winter. But it looks like that will have to happen. I work in the building where people go to get their visas for the UK and Europe and it seems like everyone will be partaking in European Summer 2024 because the Seattle Coffee downstairs has been overrun with nervous people clutching plastic folders containing important documents. I think my passport will be expiring at the end of this year but I haven’t checked because I don’t think I’m going anywhere anyway and will have to spend another winter wrapped in my beige dressing gown which is the only way to truly keep warm in South Africa.

Sometimes I see people I went to college with in the visa office. They sip on their lattes as they wait for their time slot to be called so that they can get their stamp of approval that says yes you can enter this or that country. I am wildly jealous of these people as I ride the lift upstairs and back to my desk. I wish that the biggest stressor in my life was a plastic folder filled with important documents that would determine whether I could drink Aperol Spritzes in Italy or if I’d have to settle for drinking them in my mansion in Camps Bay.

This city makes me stressed. This goddamn city. I love it so much it hurts but lately it’s been, quite frankly, freaking me out. Maybe it’s because, every day, I have to park down the road from work in the car I love but don’t like driving and walk past the spot where I got mugged last year. Maybe it’s just because I’m scared of driving. I’ve started taking the bus where I can. It’s unreliable and makes me even angrier at the city. I defiantly waited for thirty minutes for the bus to arrive on Saturday to take me a distance I could easily have walked in that time. I like the bus, despite this. It reminds me of being a student when I would plug in my earphones which in those days had wires attached to them and listen to the same three songs I downloaded illegally onto my Samsung with the sparkly cover.

I walk a lot on the weekends and I haven’t even joined the walking group yet. I walked thirteen kilometres on Sunday. First, I woke up at 10 am because I’d had a late and disappointing night out which resulted in me getting home way past my bedtime which is usually around 9. I walked along the promenade and cut past the lighthouse to the park where I sat reading my Kindle by the labyrinth. Three adults walked past me and began walking in circles. Then, four boys, around the age when kids are most interested in dinosaurs or magic, tore past and stepped over the low hedge to get to the middle of the labyrinth without trying. A smaller boy blamed his brother when he fell and scraped his knee. His father repeating “It’s not his fault, it’s not his fault,” as he wailed like little kids do. Overall, not the best place to read.

Then I walked home, and heated some spaghetti from the night before. Ate it, and walked back to the park where I met up with a friend for an ice cream and to do some extra work which I didn’t want to do in the first place. The ice cream was a bribe to myself. My third trip to the park that day was to meet another friend for a walk.The park is close, and I don’t have to drive there. Driving scares me. I made cinnamon buns to stop thinking about all the things that scare me. Cinnamon buns don’t scare me. They’re just cinnamon buns.

I took some time off from work and woke up on the first day of my leave with a sore throat. The universe has played many cruel tricks on me over the years but this one just felt cynical. I hadn’t taken any time off since December and work was starting to wear me down. I struggle to get up in the mornings and I get angry when I have fun at work. I don’t want to have fun at work because that’s what the shareholders want. They want us to bond and become a family and have office banter that keeps us stuck there for the fear of losing our friends. I keep myself in a permanently-miserable state to avoid getting sucked into this, although this keeps me permanently miserable.

I have to be medicated to get through work. I wonder if I would need the medication if I had a different job. But I’ve had four different jobs and I needed to be medicated for those too. I kept changing jobs in the hopes that it was just this company or that person or the parking situation but I’m starting to think it’s just me. I want to do something interesting. I want to be stimulated and engaged and not have to ever write an Instagram caption for a cheese brand ever again in my life but it doesn’t look like that’s changing anytime soon.

So, for now. I will continue to be sick on my precious leave days and lie in bed and knit and read, and when my leave is over I will get in my car and go back to my job and I will write Instagram captions about cheese and that’s how things are. But like I said, I’m twenty-five and I’ve been thinking about everything lately.