Written by Sarah Selim
The mud was the first sign. It was freezing outside, and I couldn’t find my gloves, so I tried to push the
ice away from my car with my bare hands. They were numb, but it felt good. I was told my car would
have trouble because of the ice, but it was the mud that kept swallowing it back into the ditch. I think that
sums up maturing pretty well because what people tell you will be a problem almost never is. The
‘virtues’ of life come in as Trojan horses, and I naively let them in with an open heart and a blank mind.
My mind was blank then, too, when I was pressing the gas as hard as I could, and instead of moving, I
was treated with the fine smell of gas and burnt rubber. They told me to get rid of the mud so I could get
out, but I couldn’t get rid of the mud unless the car got out. I was met with the same paradox that my
therapist had presented me with: to become happy, you must practice the things you love, but I could only
practice the things I loved once I was happy.
Eventually, the mud settled into dirt, and I was free to go nowhere I wanted to be again.
It’s ironic to think about how little people care for the things they work so hard for. I’d tried for hours to get out,
only to realize that I didn’t have anywhere to be. Sometimes, I think I don’t even have anything to say.
I’m the car, fighting to be released from a problem no one predicted, only to want to sit motionless where
I started. And I’m not as stuck as I could be, not nearly as stuck as the cars frozen into the ditch. But the
thought of being trapped again holds me hostage, holds me down enough to make me park until the sun
rises and the mud dries. I hate being asked what I’m afraid of; I hate being asked anything at all. I hate
overcoming everything for nothing, and I hate losing to the mud once I’ve beaten the ice.
I bought boots specifically for the days I thought it would snow, but I forgot to wear them when it did. On
the day that I remembered to, I slipped anyway. I can’t explain to anybody why I haven’t been able to
write, drive, or do anything that I’m not forced to do. All I can tell them is I bought useless boots and a
car just to stay exactly where I am.
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Sarah Selim is an Egyptian-American writer, artist, and photographer. Her work has been published in Written Tales, Wellspringwords, Dumbo Press, and more. You can find her work at https://scouttree.blogspot.com/.