The clutch "went out" on my Honda. Maybe, you can blame it on the 200 thousand miles it has weathered and disclaim that it is rather old. You might even suggest we ought expect such behavior from a 1999 Honda Accord. We might even plan for it if we were the planning type.
But the what it "going out" means was that I was driving north on the 17 at 5am on a Saturday morning in the dark and cold when the revving in 5th gear wasn't right and I lost power and the missing sound was obnoxious enough that even I, non car-whisperer that I am, could recognize pathology in the sound and behavior. I prayed for non-texting teenagers as I hung out in the desert shoulder.
The tow truck showed. Only 4 dollars per mile plus the $80 per hour. Geez, what a deal!
Anyhow, the clutch.
The clutch's going out, miss firing or whatever clutches do when they fail struck me as strangely appropriate on some sort of grand symbolic level. You see it is the thing that facilitates the changing of gears, the switching of speeds or the redirecting. It is the one transitioning element.
And the clutch going out, might as well speak for my whole damn life at this point.
Because, I struggle with the transitions. Indeed, I feel like my own gears are perpetually missing as I go back and forth between my two opposing worlds--mountains and sun, entrepreneurial work and motherhood, future and past. There never seems quite enough time to feel settled in one locale before I'm on a plane back to the other.
I've never felt more alone.
I've never felt quite so detached--as if caught between worlds--as soon as I begin to more deeply connect, it is as if I'm sucked back up to that other place.
The garage said the flywheel had to be replaced. Apparently, sometimes you can file it down rather than replace it. But this can only happen if it hasn't taken on too much damage. So not this time--too much damage.
Right now, I feel like that flywheel--worn down to the nub. I feel the endlessness of the journey, like my Honda on the side of the 17, I am broken down, exhausted, unable to seamlessly shift between the different worlds I must inhabit in order to survive. I tell myself that slowly and surely all my parts are getting replaced. I am being rebuilt. I am also reminded that this is probably the antithesis of what my ex Narc would choose--pain leading you down a path of growth, change, and transition? No way. And so I remind myself to let the pain guide me toward the transformation that only this pain can build in me. I clutch tightly my beautiful future that will be all the more meaningful having been here.
