I Stayed Behind

Thirteen

The A23 | 6.7.20

There was a time when I walked over the A23- I didn't know what the motorway was called back then, but every time I walked over that bridge, the motorway beneath me, I wondered what it would be like to be down there. To fly above the cars, to swim between them. I wondered about the fall, about the landing. I walked the bridge of the A23 and wondered what it would be like to never make it to the other side.

Now when I see it, when I go past on the train or on the bike, I see a motorway with three lanes in either direction. I know that the inner lane is the fast lane and that lorries tend to stay on the outer lane. I know how fast you're allowed to go - which is a trick question because there is no speed limit on German motorways, only a recommended speed of 130 km/h. I know what to do during a traffic jam, I know how to start the manoeuvre to leave at the next exit. When I see the A23 now, I wonder which direction would take me to Berlin, an which direction took me to the East Coast last week. Now I remember the many times I've driven down the it since I got my license, how nervous I was at first. Because the first time I sped up to turn onto the A23, the A23 was still a river I might jump in to. I was still something I sometimes wondered about.

Now when I'm on that motorway I'm a thousand times more confident. I speed up without hesitation, I slip in between the cars on their respective lanes, my heart beating a comfortable rhythm. I no longer flinch when Mr. Porsche decides to push it up to 200 and speed past me like there's no tomorrow.

I'm confident now, calm. I trust myself not to do something stupid, not to drift off into the crash barriers. I don't even think about that kind of stuff anymore. All I have to do is get from A to B and enjoy the music on the radio. Really, there is nothing much more to the A23: It's just a long slab of concrete.

I go over the bridge of the infamous A23 and all it is a big handy road that gets me to pretty places and pretty people a hell-of-a-lot faster than taking the back roads. That's all it is to me now, and the only thing that has changed is now I know what it's like to be down there, to swim between the cars - to reach rock-bottom so to speak - and still make it to the other side.