August Writing Competition Winner: The Taxi Driver Decided – LM Bolton

Each month, SAIAA members are encouraged to partake in our Short Story Competition. August’s winner is LM Bolton with her short story, The Taxi Driver Decided. If writing short stories and connecting with other writers sounds like something you’d love to do, but you’re not a member of SAIAA, consider joining one of our Writing Room Chapters. It’s a space for all kinds of writers, whether you’re a poet, a journaler or simply someone who enjoys putting words on the page, this space is for you. It’s free to join!

I didn’t choose this.

I was taught to walk without directions to where I was meant to go. I never realized just how vast the world was in my younger years. Back then you took a lot for granted, never considering the consequences. ‘Regret always comes too late’ aren’t just words. It’s a damnation carved so deep in our lives, so much so that it truly is something we always go back to.

I didn’t choose this.

Yeah right! Of course not. That’s just something we tell ourselves when we’re too chicken to own up to our own mistakes. Not the ones that happened to us. No. The ones we made. We lie to ourselves when we can’t deal with the consequences and maybe we’re right. Maybe it was someone else’s fault. But why did it have to happen? That’s the question right? Does it ever get an answer when you ask it? I’d love to know, because all I get is silence. Honestly, I’d prefer silence above ‘figure it out yourself’. It’s less frustrating.

That’s never where I saw myself.

I sit in this taxi, just another passenger in my own life as I watch my memories flit by. The driver doesn’t speed past them but keeps at a leisure pace. Slow enough for me to see every choice, every mistake, every regret. I say, “I don’t want to see anymore. Take me to the other side. To the perfect place where mistakes don’t exist.”

The driver meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. She had my eyes, but it’s life I’m staring at. The corner of her mouth tilts up, wisdom flashing across her face with just a fraction of sympathy. “There is no perfect place. This,” she motioned to the memories. “This is all you get.”

I never chose this.

The consequences still haunt me, the regret makes me wish I could go back and decide differently. But I can’t. It already happened. The path was carved into stone too ancient to break and enduring enough to remain. I grab the doorhandle and try to get out. I have to try, don’t I? My hands grab and fumble at nothing. There are no handles in the door, no way for me to get out. I’m a prisoner in the back seat, forced to watch where life takes me.

The taxi driver keeps driving, unbothered by my frantic state. It turns down a different route, going into the direction my choices led to, the other paths dark and hidden behind a veil of thick mists. Great, I’m not even allowed to see what my life really would have looked like if I had chosen differently. There’s no changing the past. It became clear then. I was not in control of where I wanted to go. Life was deciding my destination.

The direction life takes me are my choices but also not. It’s where my choices led to, but not what I wanted. If only I realized my mistakes sooner. Then there’s the other truth…

Things happen for a reason, whether we like it or not. We don’t always see or understand them. Sometimes we get a glimpse of what they meant, other times we never know. Some choices, some mistakes, were meant to be made. Some teach us a lesson we might need now, or later in life. The rest we don’t get to decide.

In those cases, all we can do is sit back and wait. Eventually we’ll see what route life decided for us. And we’ll just have to accept the destination. Because there’s no changing what has been decided. We can try to fix our mistakes, but they were already made to begin with. There’s no unmaking them. We could amend and choose differently next time, but the stone had already been carved. There’s no changing what has been decided, only moving forward and hoping the next route isn’t too bumpy.

Some choices I regret not making. They would have mistakes, yes, but it would also have been challenges I faced. Chances I took. It would have taught me different things that might have made me a different person. Stronger perhaps? A life lived even? Regret goes both ways it seems.

If we decide to put on the mantle of truth and face our demons, then we’ll realize…we did choose this.

I might not always have wise. And some choices led to mistakes I will always regret, will always wish I could take back. Some choices will always haunt me and others…I will make again in a heartbeat. The road they led me on might not have been easy, but it had been honest.

The truth is, those choices, those mistakes, they are mine. I wasn’t forced to make them. Not really. I had the freedom to decide and I decided. Was I influenced. Sometimes maybe, but I still had the freedom to choose.

We choose the direction life takes us. Life, however, chooses the destination we end up in.