Adrenaline

39 | i have my best nights without you

Staring up at the house I grew up in, was raised in, and became the Stevie standing on a stage in front of the entire world as I do now—it's a surreal experience that resembles time travel. If I blink slowly enough and dream hard enough, I can envision a time when my dad still walks along these creaky steps, tells me stories of old Hawaii, and whispers I love you into the winds so it'll travel across our islands.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" Brendon asks, the low hum of the car engine buzzing beneath us.

I nod once but the shakiness of my breath and unsteady rise and fall of my chest betrays my true feelings.

"Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Tell me the truth. Please."

"I'm kind of scared of what I'll find in there." Using the sun as an excuse to pull the visor down is a smart plan in my head. Reduce the possibility of my mom looking out of the window and seeing me sitting here. "It's been years. I don't know what it'll look like."

"That's a valid response but I also think you're a little scared of what you'll look like when you're in there."

More proof of how much he knows me, and how close time is ticking until I'll have no choice but to freefall into my unknown. "Can I ask you a question? I know your answer won't solve all of my problems but just entertain me."

"Sure."

"If your dad ever owned up to all of his wrongs and vowed to make amends in whatever way you needed him to, would you forgive him? your mother? Is there a world where there's enough of an apology to make up for all of the bad?"

Brendon looks out at the view in front of him. Foreign but familiar through knowing me. It causes me to think about how influential our surroundings are to who we become as people. Not just where we find ourselves but who we surround ourselves with. I remember the friendliness of the bar in Melbourne where his family's friend Hudson works, and how much it reminded me of being at a party at home. Just a good time with good company.

I think of the excitement of Brendon growing up on the track. Finding solace in the smell of burnt rubber and fuel. Being part of a team of people from different corners of the map. Visiting various cities across the world and being immersed in a new culture every other week. The gnawing intensity of an unfolding season and not quite knowing how much of an impact one single race can have on his career. Imagining how scary it is knowing one wrong turn can make all the lights go out forever. The toll that an intense competition must have on a person so young, still trying to figure out who he is as a person without all of the race stuff.

I imagine what it must be like to be thrust into this world and not have a father show his love for him, and a mother that enables the toxic relationship. What that must do to this man and how it has molded him into who he is today. Despite the neglect over the years, instead of succumbing to it and becoming a carbon copy of his father, he forged himself into someone kind and thoughtful. Someone that defies the odds and forces himself to the front of the pack because it's not going to be handed to him.

So, what does that make me?

A woman born on an island who dreamed of making it out in the big, bad world. Constantly questioning if she is worthy of the heritage from which she is forged—she imagines like a wave forming and curling and crashing against a shore, only to pull back once more and try again. The terror that overrode every nerve-ending of confidence she thought she had about herself as soon as she got on the plane to Los Angeles for the first time and the subsequent terror that's been instilled in her ever since, wondering if this dream she's living is something she's about to violently torn away from her at any moment. (Wake up, Stevie, it's all it's ever been, just a dream!) A jumbled mess of the constant struggle that comes with the territory of existing in such an industry, even while knowing she has her friends by her side and worrying she might somehow be the reason for their downfall. Trying to reconcile what it means to leave home and represent a people who have been excluded from the spaces she occupies now and wondering if the fulfillment of being her authentic self outweighs the risk it causes because people like her aren't made to feel welcome.