Highway 46 cuts across central California like the line between redwood rocky cliff revolution and concrete. I was born in the southernmost desert of this state, but my soul has always floated north. On the road that divides them, there is wide open space… and produce. Somehow, the in-between space has always made made me feel like I have to hold my breath.

Yesterday, we were driving back from a week up in Monterey, and the whole time we drove down Highway 1 along the coast of Big Sur I was able to live exactly in that present moment. It was the first time in a long time that I didn’t feel haunted by the past, or consumed with anxiety over our future. It could have been the cliffs with their rivers cascading into crashing ocean waves, or it could have been the fact that I had never been there before so there were no memories there to push their way in. But once we hit highway 46 and the waves faded away the past came crashing back, because northern California did not always represent this life and this love. It used to be about another one.

The last time I drove through there, I was on my way back from visiting this girl in San Fransisco, where we stayed during gay pride week in an 8×8 square hostel room that was more of a closet than a room. She was straight back then and so was I. Funny, how we stayed in a closet during gay pride week, bought matching pink sweatshirts, hugged tightly on the streets, and were offended when people assumed we were together. The irony of all of this was lost on us until much, much later.

We were Christian, and we were straight and that was the end of the story.

I don’t think this image cracked for her until much, much later. But it started to crack for me on the drive back home. As I passed row after row of almond trees and corn fields, I kept coming back to the memory of how that little room hadn’t been able to contain the static electricity that seemed to flow between us. While the city bustled around us preparing for the morning’s parade, we  lay there just barely touching, talking much too quickly about boys we had dated or almost dated as if that would erase what was happening between us. We fought the next morning, although I can’t remember over what. I think that somehow seemed easier than saying goodbye, or facing what was coming next. But I do remember making up over the phone, talking for hours while I made my winding way back down the state. And I remember her saying something about how we had only fought because we loved each other too much. This might have been the greatest moment of clarity we had that entire year.

We talked the whole way down until I lost reception on highway 46, and that entire time I could not shake the feeling that everything I knew was suddenly floating away from me. It would be at least another year before I could articulate what had happened, and several more before she could, but my body knew even then. My hands started shaking, and it was as though I was losing contact with the earth and everything I had ever known. The next thing I knew I was pulling over in front of a produce stand and buying a bag of sweet red cherries, still warm from the sun. Their earthiness somehow pulled me back in again, at least for a little while, and I tore hungrily through them as though the hard, slippery  pits at their center might contain some firm bit of truth that I could hold onto.

The next image I have is of cherry pits spilled everywhere in my car. Did I swerve to avoid hitting something? Was I nearly in an accident? I don’t remember, but I think so. I still have bruises anyway, from the months that followed.

I found those pits hidden in the crevices of my car for years to come, and they always reminded me of that sensation of falling off the edge of something terrifying in those last moments before the closet broke and could no longer contain me.

I am out now, and so is she, and we are both partnered to two beautiful women who we are in love with. We are all friends who double date and go out for drinks and dinner and sometimes poetry or music like grown up, well adjusted couples might. But sometimes when I’m around her I still feel like that old self, trapped in that little San Fransisco closet suspended somewhere between self discovery and absolute terror.

Driving down that stretch of road yesterday, I was overcome with the sudden urge to buy a bag of cherries. I think somehow I needed to pay tribute to that terrifying sensation I so intently ignored several years ago which had been trying to tell me that I was in love with a woman, and that it could maybe even be ok. I think I wanted to hold those slippery cherry pits and not spill them. To share their rich, sweet flesh with my lover and marvel at how far I have come from that scared, closeted self I was three years ago when my hands were trembling and I was first starting to forget how to breathe.

But the cherry stand wasn’t there anymore, or at least, it wasn’t where I remembered it being. So I stopped instead at this little roadside farmhouse with plywood for walls and a family who sat out front and sold me a basket full of peaches, apricots and nectarines. The fruit had holes where the birds had tasted it first and given it their seal of approval, and in broken English the farmer proudly told me that this was because their fruit was pesticide free. I couldn’t argue with that, so I told them that was exactly how I liked it and then carried a basket back to my partner who was waiting in the car and handed her a nectarine, holes and all, because they are her favorite.

We drove on, and half an hour later after I spotted a sign for a cherry stand, exited the freeway, and pulled up in front of it only to discover that it has closed just three minutes ago. I was disappointed at first, but as I thought some more it seemed somehow appropriate. As if the universe was telling me that that chapter of my life had already closed, and I could finally lay it to rest because I had made it though alright and so much more is unfolding on the road before me. I am not that girl anymore, that one who could not even hold the truth of herself let alone imagine sharing it with anyone else. And so I got back in the car and drove on. My lover pulled out two ripe apricots and we brushed the dirt from their sticky orange flesh and bit into them. They were sweet, firm and delicious, and they tasted like the truth I’d been searching for all those years ago.