I am sitting in the cab of a Peterbilt that smells like stale coffee and old cigarettes and I can’t stop shaking. It’s 2 AM. I’m at a rest stop outside of Des Moines and the rain is just hammering the roof. Hammering it. Every single drop sounds like a clock ticking down. I’m twenty years old. Twenty. And I’m looking at the dashboard and I realize I don’t even know how I got here. I mean, I know how I got here—I drove—but I don’t know why this is my life. It’s like I just woke up and I’m already at the end of the road. My grandfather drove for forty years. My dad drove until his heart gave out in a parking lot in Reno. It was always "the family trade." It was always what was expected. When I graduated, there wasn't a talk about college or what I wanted to do. It was just... here are the keys. Here is the rig. Go to work. And I did it because it was easy. It was the path of least resistance. It was right there in front of me. I didn't have to think. I didn't have to choose. I just let the current pull me in and now I'm drowning in it. I'm absolutely drowning. And it’s not just the truck. It’s the house. It’s my mom. I’m the one who has to handle everything. Every single thing. She calls me three times a day crying because the sink is leaking or she can’t find her pills or she just misses my dad. And I’m five hundred miles away trying not to fall asleep at the wheel and I have to be the man of the house. I have to be the provider. I’m twenty years old and I’m paying for a roof I never get to sleep under. I’m paying for a life I don’t even get to live. It’s all on me. All of it. Every day. I remember when I was sixteen and I told my dad I liked drawing. I liked architecture. I wanted to maybe look at schools. He didn't even get mad. He just laughed. He laughed like I’d told a joke. "Trucking is in your blood," he said. "You’ll see." Well, I see it now. I see it every time I look in the side mirror and see my own exhausted face. I see it in the way my hands are always cramped into the shape of a steering wheel. It’s not in my blood. It’s a fucking cage. It’s a cage and the door is wide open but I can’t leave because if I do, the whole house falls down. Mom loses the house. The bills don't get paid. Everything stops. I am so sick of being the strong one. I am so sick of it. Everyone talks about how "dependable" I am. "Oh, you can always count on him." Yeah, because I don't have a choice! I don't have a choice! I have to be here. I have to drive through the snow and the rain and the dark so I can send money back to a town I hate. I’m missing out on everything. My friends are at school, they're meeting people, they're figuring out who they are. I already know who I am. I’m a mule. I’m a goddamn pack animal for a family that’s been doing this for three generations too long. The engine is cooling down and it’s making that clicking sound. Click. Click. Click. It sounds like my life just wasting away. I’m sitting here in the dark and I realized tonight that I don’t think I ever actually made a decision for myself. Not one. Not a single one. I picked my lunch today. That’s it. That’s the extent of my freedom. A ham sandwich from a Pilot station. Everything else was decided for me before I was even born. I’m just playing a part in a movie I didn’t even audition for. I want to just start the engine and keep driving. Not to the delivery point. Not back home. Just... away. I want to drive until the gas runs out and then I want to get out and walk until I find a place where nobody knows my last name. Where nobody expects me to fix the water heater or pay the insurance or carry the weight of a dead man’s legacy. But I won't. I know I won't. I’ll sit here until my timer resets and then I’ll put it in gear and I’ll do it all again. Every single day. Every day. My hands are still shaking. I can’t even hold my phone straight. I’m just so angry. I’m so incredibly angry and I have nowhere to put it. There’s nobody to tell. If I tell Mom, she’ll just cry and tell me how much I’m like my father. Like that’s a compliment. Like I want to be a man who worked himself into a grave by fifty. I don’t want to be him. I don’t want to be any of them. But I’m already halfway there and I’m not even old enough to buy a drink in half the states I drive through. It’s pathetic. I’m pathetic. I just want someone to ask me what I want. Just once. I want someone to look at me and see a person, not a resource. Not a bank account. Not a driver. But that’s never going to happen. As long as I keep saying yes, as long as I keep showing up, they’ll just keep taking. They’ll take every year I have until I’m just as empty as this trailer. I’m so tired. I’m just so fucking tired of being the one who has to hold it all together.