Bus Ride Daydreams

chapter 2: this ones longer ur welcome

To say I'm a happy person wouldn't be true. I don't try to be sad, it's not something I like to be. It's not something that makes me special or something. I think that being sad to try and set yourself apart from others is shitty and degrades the meaning of being sad.

I do try and be happy. I go see a counselor every week, I try to sleep, I drink water (and a lot more tea). But it isn't easy. When you feel alone so much it can be hard to not feel sad. I always notice how lonely I am when I get on the bus.

In the mornings I wait at the stop, standing a good ten feet from every other person at the stop. Just so you know, I'm not a good person and I won't try and trick you into thinking I am. But the reason I stand so far away is because I hate being around them.

These people are some of the most annoying people I've had the displeasure of meeting and I would prefer to keep my distance as much as possible. But even in my active avoidance of these people I still see them laugh and talk to each other, and it hurts to not have that anymore. I used to have friends on the bus. Now it's just me.

Alone.

It's worse on the ride home though. On the ride home my isolation is highlighted. At least in the morning I don't have to fight for a seat. After school is over I have to spend my bus ride looking for someone who will tolerate my awkwardness as I try to ignore the world around me.

Another half hour of my life spent in another world while I try to not exist.

"Hello?" The voice snaps me back into the world like a rubber band.

"What? I'm sorry I wasn't listening," I say to the person sitting next to me. Instead of saying anything they just point outside, it was my stop and we were moving away from it.

"f**k! s**t sorry," I say as I hastily pull my bags up and run to the driver who thankfully hadn't pulled very far from the stop.

"Stop cussing," she says. Her brow is arched, and her eyes are daggers in my chest.

"Sorry," I mutter as I make my way off and start my ascent up the hill to my grandparent's house.

This is another part of my day that I do not look forward to. The walk is fine, a mile uphill with a fifty pound backpack isn't that bad really. But then I have to spend time with my grandpa and grandma.

Just to preface, I'm not an incredibly political person. I'll take sides sometimes if I feel like it's important enough, but I try to not get in the way of it all. But my grandpa is the opposite of me. He will make anything political if he has the chance. And the worst part is he's very dumb. I used to think he was smart, but I eventually realized that being old and being smart were different things, and he certainly wasn't smart. He once said to me that there are classes in college about having "anal sex." Now I might've believed him if he had ever went to college. He didn't, he spent his 20's as a coked out racist who marched against civil rights.

Being respectful is a challenge.

It was especially hard when he told my mom that depression is a side effect of narcissism. Keep in mind that my mother and myself are both clinically depressed. It's hard to be kind to someone who insults you for having a chemical imbalance.

But if there was an Olympic competition for not losing it and ranting to you're evil conservative christian grandparents I would be the undisputed world champion and be heralded as a god in my own right.

Today was going to be harder than I wanted.

Today my grandpa was in the mood to rant. I just wanted a goddamn corndog. He went on and on about how we were losing our morals as a society. How we needed to fear God again, how we needed prayer in schools, how these things would save the country from hell's fires.

I'm not very religious, I prefer a more spiritual approach. So hearing this is always hard. It never gets easier to fake my respect for him. I'll tell him he sounds informed, sounds like an educated person. He doesn't but he just wants to feel like he's right. And I don't have the courage to fight against him.

I don't have the patience to deal with this. That's why everyday I thank my lord and savior Steve Jobs for my headphones. With them I can escape his world filled with misguided hate and FOX news and go to one of casual imagination.

In another world I was able to stand up to his foolishness. In another I wasn't a coward.