Messy Minded Momma

It’s been 11 months since we moved from a city of approximately 500,000 people to a small town with a population of 25,000.

When I lived in the city, my commute to work was about 17 minutes each way. It was all city driving, filled with constant movement: stop-and-go traffic, pedestrians crossing the street, buses merging into my lane, and the occasional driver deserving of a well-timed honk.

There was always something happening.

Now, my commute is 45 minutes each way, and most of it is farm fields.

I spend much of the drive completely zoned out as trees swallow the single-lane roads whole. When I look out my windows, everything feels eerily still: cornfields, barns, train tracks, the same school bus picking up the same children, and the same handful of houses.

The smell of cow manure drifts through my vents as tractors and pickup trucks pass in the opposite direction.

The scenery rarely changes. Some days, it feels like I’m trapped in a time loop. It isn’t until I’m about 12 minutes from the office that I finally reach the city. For the first 11 months, driving home was boring. Painfully boring.

As a neurodivergent person, I think my brain struggled with the lack of stimulation. There wasn’t enough movement, enough variety, or enough novelty to keep me engaged. My mind would drift off so completely that I’d occasionally arrive home wondering how I got from Point A to Point B.

Then the animals arrived.

Now, I drive with my heart pounding, both hands gripping the steering wheel, and my foot hovering over the brake pedal. Country driving has become a full-body sensory experience. My vehicle has either encountered, narrowly missed, or been startled by birds, mice, chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, foxes, deer, cows, and horses.

Instead of zoning out, I’m now constantly scanning my surroundings. My head is on a swivel, wondering what might launch itself into the road next. I’ve run over small animals, which completely traumatized me. I’ve had cows move suddenly and horses run toward my vehicle out of my peripheral vision, sending me straight into panic mode.

The same roads that once left me under-stimulated now have me operating at full alert. Apparently, my brain doesn’t want calm. It wants just enough chaos to keep things interesting, but preferably without the deer.

The image above shows my commute from home, to my son’s school and then to work. The first half hour is almost entirely country roads, with only a few stop signs and speed limits of 90 km/h and above.

The image is not to scale.