falling asleep at the wheel.

I didn’t know where I wanted to go,

So I asked you to take the wheel.

You drove me to places I’d never been,

yet they were nowhere I wanted to be.

You offered me a five-course buffet

when all I wanted was sustenance,

and like anything else that’s overindulged,

it left me feeling hollow the next morning,

starving for more and sick from too much.

This went on for seven, or maybe thirteen, years?

When our daughter was born, I took the wheel

and drove us home, only nothing felt familiar anymore.

What I’d been missing was nowhere to be found,

and so I asked you to take us back to the only place I knew,

even though what I really wanted was to be anywhere else.

It took four more years, some infidelity, and a son

before I realized I was driving again–

and this time, I drove fast and hard, fearing time was running out.

Afraid of where I was headed, you kept grabbing for the wheel,

tried showing me the map.Only you didn’t have a map

to show me where I was going, just where I’d been.

Sometimes things happen like this:

Two people looking out into the distance see very different things.

Sometimes the oasis is real, but the desert is a figment of the imagination,

and while there is water everywhere, I’m dying of thirst.

Now I know, this is what happens when you’re the designated driver

and find out you’ve been asleep at the wheel.