Long Road Home

I'm driving down this small road in the middle of a beautiful forest not knowing where I'm going, but not really caring anyway. All I know is I'm going somewhere and whatever happens I'm having fun.

But then My phone pings. The Google Map app floods the screen.

"I see that the route you're on now is slow," Google Map says. "But I have found a much better and more efficient route for you to take. Would you like to continue?"

Faster is better, right? I start to wonder if I should try something bigger than my little road. Diving in the woods had been fine for so long, I wonder what this new path will be like.

"Sure," I say, excitedly pressing "continue". 

The directions veer me off my path. There's no turning back now. 

The road takes me to a wide speedy highway where I get bumped along by car after car, each clearly going big places. And there are so many places to go now, exits right and left. 

Which one is my exit? Did I miss it? Where is everyone else going? Exit ramp 23 is pretty popular. Everyone else's cars are shiny and official, I start to feel silly driving my old farm truck. 

What am I even doing here!? I didn't belong, and couldn't keep up. All the cars are speeding up now, I press the gas harder. my truck rattles, the engine mutters angrily. Here we are, I'm almost going as fast as the convertible next to me. The woman diving waves. Finally! I'm here on the highway and things are working! But something doesn't feel right, my truck is making that funny "chug cough" sound. I turn the radio up louder, pretending nothing's wrong. The woman with the convertible changes lanes and gets ready to exit. Could this be it? This road could be the one I have been waiting for. Was I ready? Only one way to find out.

I follow the convertible to exit 45. My heart pounds, my hands sweat. My grip on the string wheel slips, I swerve-

and my car is in a ditch.

I watch helplessly as car after car goes by, getting where they're going without a problem and have fun where they do it. Where has all the fun gone? Here I am stuck in a ditch after falling off the best and most efficient road. Where had I gone wrong?

I get my car toed out of the ditch. Now What? That was the only way and I blew it.

I  leave the highway behind me and drive around for awhile, not really going anywhere and not really caring. I see a car on the side of the road.

"You okay?" I ask the man who is changing a tire on the side.

"Yes! Thanks for asking, my tire popped right in the middle of the road!" The man laughs.

"Why are you not on the highway?" I ask, confused. This man was clearly going somewhere.

"The highway may take me where I want to go fast, but sometimes it's more about the way you get somewhere than how speedily," he says simply.

The man finished changing the tire and hopped in his car.

"Hope you get where you're going!" he says before driving off.

I sit in my car, thinking.

"Are you ready to continue your directions?" Google Maps asks.

"No," I answer after a moment. "That's okay."

If that man wasn't taking the highway, that meant there was another way!

I dug around in my glove apartment and pulled out a map. Maybe the highway wasn't going to work, but there had to be a path I could take. Maybe I will never find my old path again, but maybe that is okay. Maybe I'm about to find something better.

-Whimsical Writer