Author Information
Subtle dreams of a new beginning
The Long Way Out
I grew up in a trailer park where the trailers leaned a little and the people leaned a lot.
We didn't have much.
Food stamps helped.
The neighbor kids stole from us whenever they could. Toys, money, whatever wasn't nailed
down. If it could disappear, it disappeared. You learned not to leave anything outside. You
learned to count your things. You learned that some people could look you straight in the
eye while taking something that belonged to you.
I was a kid.
I thought this was normal.
Maybe it was.
My family eventually found a way out through the military. Reagan was president and
America was selling the idea that if you worked hard enough, kept your head down and
took your chances, you could become somebody else.
So we took our chances.
That was the first time I understood something important:
Nobody was coming to save you.
You had to find the door yourself.
And if the door wasn't there, you had to build one.
Don't ever sell yourself short.
That's the thing I carried with me.
Years later I found myself selling magazines door to door, crossing the country one cheap
town at a time.
It wasn't exactly the American dream.
It was more like the American dream after three days without sleep.I'd get up in some motel room where the carpet smelled like cigarettes and somebody
else's bad decisions. I'd swallow a couple of gas-station energy pills, wash them down with
whatever was cold, and stare at myself in the bathroom mirror.
Then I'd go sell.
Door after door.
Some people slammed them.
Some people cursed.
Some people pretended they weren't home while standing three feet behind the curtain.
Every once in a while somebody bought something.
That was enough to keep the machine running.
You learn strange things knocking on doors.
You learn that people don't like being interrupted.
You learn that everybody has a story.
You learn that the guy who tells you he has no money might be wearing a watch worth
more than your car.
You learn that rejection isn't personal until you make it personal.
So you keep walking.
The towns blurred together.
Gas stations.
Highways.
Cheap motels.
Diners with coffee that tasted like burned rope.
Parking lots at two in the morning.
A different bed every night.
Sometimes I didn't know what town I was in when I woke up.
I'd lie there for a minute listening to the air conditioner rattle and wonder what the hell I
was doing.Then I'd get dressed.
Back on the road.
Back to the doors.
Back to the people.
Back to myself.
There were nights I wondered if I was getting somewhere or just getting farther away.
That was the trick of the road.
You could always go another hundred miles.
Another town.
Another motel.
Another morning.
Movement could look a lot like progress if you weren't paying attention.
I wanted out.
Out of poverty.
Out of the life I'd started in.
Out of whatever system had decided what a person like me was supposed to become.
But nobody tells you what happens after you escape.
You still have to figure out who you are.
You still wake up.
You still have bills.
You still get lonely.
You still wonder whether you've made the right choice.
There were nights I wondered if I'd ever make it back home.
Not just geographically.
I mean home.
Whatever the hell that was.Maybe home was the trailer park.
Maybe it was the family that got out.
Maybe it was some future version of myself I hadn't met yet.
I kept driving because stopping felt worse.
That's about all I knew.
Keep moving.
Don't sell yourself short.
Take whatever honest door opens.
And if none opens, keep looking.
The world doesn't owe you a way out.
But that doesn't mean there isn't one.
Sometimes you have to cross half the country to find it.
Sometimes you have to sleep in a motel where you don't trust the towels.
Sometimes you have to knock on five hundred doors to get one person to say yes.
And sometimes you have to wake up the next morning, look at the ceiling, and decide that
you're not finished yet.
so you get up,
you take the pills,
you start the car,
and you go find the girl next door.
