The Rubble of Memory
I was driving, tired, on my way back after a long day. The car lights on the highway all looked the same, today’s cars all cookie-cutter, as if they were all just slight variations of the same model.
Suddenly, though, something caught my attention. Almost like a lightning strike. A car I recognized instantly had just overtaken me. That had been my car! Unbelievable, after all these years, at a distance like this! Twenty years from the moment I sold it, and there it was, reappearing in good shape, right beside me. I only saw it for a fleeting moment, but the license plate seemed to match, and at the wheel was a young man who looked like me at his age. Incredible! Another coincidence! A jump back in time, as if it were a scene from twenty years ago.
And I began to think, to remember.
The first image that came to mind was the satisfaction of finally having it after so many sacrifices, only to then, through the dishonesty of others, watch the dream fade. But by persevering and insisting, I managed to move forward and get it, despite all the difficulties that, in hindsight, I should have listened to. Because when things get too complicated, it sometimes means you need to change your approach. But I was too young to understand it. Immediately after, I remember the first trip with it, the first experiences.
The good ones, but mostly, and in greater number, the bad ones.
Like the time I was left waiting for hours, waiting to feel better even though I wasn't getting better. Because the body recovers more quickly than the soul. Or the times I had to race like a madman, chasing a utopia. Believing that changing my surroundings, my car, and my habits would be enough to solve problems that, instead, required more drastic solutions. Back when I was still naive, yet already too mature, but trapped by something totally out of my control, yet something that completely conditioned my life. And not just mine. And then the many trips in a short time, in which it proved far less reliable than its make and model suggested. Yet the person who had it after me never complained - but in ten years, they drove less than I did in a single year. And the goodbye, with the resigned bitterness of someone who knows it's the right choice, though painful for all the dreams that goodbye definitively closed off - dreams that, looking back, were dreams and nothing more.
Towards something different, towards something unknown. A different car - without a doubt - and a different life. But that, in that moment, I didn't know yet.
I return to the present, distracted in the silent monotony of the night road. Suddenly, I see the car again in the distance and I get closer, progressively less happy to see it, but I observe anyway, to grasp some other detail and... no, it wasn't my car. And looking closer, the young man at the wheel looks nothing like me.
Because at night, the mind can blur things and show us what isn't there, a hue that time may have tried to fade but which, with the right objectivity, returns to memory in its original, strong, and disturbing colors. Besides, thinking about it, I know my car was probably scrapped. Or maybe not.
Whatever the case, it's good that all the memories have remained with it, buried, at least, among the rubble of memory, abandoned and set aside in a hidden corner of the mind, for all these years. Where they returned immediately after, amidst a thousand identical LED headlights.