Jillian Donadio

Transit is the best stage of traveling because I am free from distractions and close with my thoughts. My body stays still while my mind is in motion. While driving I listen to podcasts, absorbing information which I relate to my own life. While on a bus or train, I read books of fantasy, projecting a reel in my mind far away from the confines of my seat. Fear creeps into my throat when the bus stops, the plane lands, the train brakes, or the car parks. My mind is aware that my body has reached its destination.

Thus, during a fateful job interview in October 2013 when asked “are you sure you are willing to make that long of a commute every day?” I didn’t hesitate in responding “yes.” The solitude travelling provides eclipsed any reservations about commuting forty miles each direction every weekday. I had been unemployed for five months, and the prospect of working as an administrative assistant for a global law firm was too enticing to consider any drawbacks.

The first week I dutifully rose from bed upon hearing the five forty-five a.m. alarm and when the computer dashboard read five p.m. I rose from my desk to venture home. In the following months, I established a pattern of traversing up and down the Garden State Parkway five days a week. I still relied on my thoughts to accompany me during the commute. To my dismay, the thoughts I usually reveled in were disrupted by overworked, angry, and rushed Tri-State commuters. One car accident caused a ten-mile traffic jam. A half-mile patch of roadwork caused half-hour tardiness.

Snow complicated the journey during the winter months. I fell into a constant state of distress, beginning with wiping off the last snowy remnants from my car’s roof and ending with the equally snowy parking lot at work. Without warning, my front-wheel drive car lost traction in its rear tires. I struggled to regain control, jerking the wheel while the car fishtailed beside droves of fellow cars in makeshift lanes delineated by white-matted tire tracks instead of white-painted lines. “Do I have enough wiper fluid?” I frequently thought while struggling to see through the salt-streaked windshield. I dreaded seeing the three dots of animated snow upon opening the weather app on my phone.

The imaginative and pensive bubble I existed in during solitary travel had burst. Popped by the blare of horns, the debris flying off the back of construction trucks, and EZ Pass signs malfunctioning at toll booths. The attendant at the Shell station knew me on a first name basis; the mechanic at the car dealership shared pictures of his new grandchild during check-in at every service visit; the same early morning jogger ran around the office parking lot as I parked my car.

As of my one-year work anniversary, I rose from bed not-so-dutifully and rose from my desk when I saw four-fifty instead of five. I yearned for the days when I lived in Boston with no car; although I was constricted to the city walls, I relied on public transportation to guide me to my destinations. Pressing my face against the back of a stranger’s suit to maintain my precarious balance standing on the shaky subway was bliss compared to the Garden State Parkway limbo. 

Over six more years, I continued in the same pattern. I had no time to socialize or engage in fun activities. No Jersey Shore barhopping on a Friday night with friends from high school; no playing tennis in the warm afternoon sun; no dating app dates with potential boyfriends. My life outside of work dissolved to the three daily hours spent driving between Atlantic Highlands and Short Hills. My colleagues, most of whom resided within twenty miles of the office, invited me to after-work drinks at local restaurants and to weekend parties at their homes. I wanted to accept, but the daunting task of additional driving thwarted me from fully embracing my coworkers in friendship. My life felt fractured; a professional self who wandered around North Jersey without a place to land, and the genuine self who treasured her room and weekend walks along the shoreline. Two lives working in tandem with neither flourishing.

March 2020 brought a dreadful virus but also a beacon of hope: working remotely. I relished the sanctity of my one-bedroom apartment. I woke up at eight a.m. and boiled eggs and blended smoothies in my own kitchen, a welcome departure from the protein bar and banana I would shove in a cooler along with my equally drab frozen microwavable lunches. The onslaught of cars and their noise and the mounting pressure to arrive to the office on time to punch-in was replaced by walks. Walks through the steep hills of my neighborhood, during which I would admire the Victorian style architecture of the homes. The professional and genuine self gradually blended back together. I regained the quiet solitude of transit, but this time it was with my own feet moving me.

I never needed a vessel to surround me in movement; I was the vessel all along.