The Bus


Always in car. So convenient, so comfortable. I can’t remember when was the last time I took the bus.

Took the bus today.

The first time since I arrived to Canada, the first time in a past several years.

November 2013, Austin, Texas… I’m 21 and I just arrived to Austin for internship. Alone, scared and cold. $300 cash in my pocket, one small suitcase and huge round eyes. I’m in survival mode.

What a flashback…. the feelings are not so intense but they are present. Why am I feeling so lost again…? I felt the way I was feeling back then, 6 years ago. The thoughts I had, the outlook on life and world… they’re all back. It’s not the pretty place. The smell of cheap fast food is just like then, so vivid. Stop it, it’s just a dream.

Did I take the wrong bus? Its a time travel bus.

It brought me back to the place I’ve started from. The place I don’t want to return, the ugly place I was trying to get out from sooo bad.

All of a sudden I’m back in Ukraine. At the bus station on a cold evening. I am a student, going back from school after a long day at university. I’m waiting for my jam packed yellow box that will take me back to another box – my tiny apartment room. The weather is exactly the same. Light rain in my face, cold and windy.

Tired and hopeless, I am miserable in my own eyes. Watching passing cars, feeling lesser than people in those cars. I am not worth, I am not enough. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to live like this. Like this? Sasha, you have everything. So many things to be grateful for… so many reasons to be happy. But you are not. You was not happy then and you are not happy now… Memories are sucking me back into the past.

No! I don’t want to go back! This is not my bus! Stop it! Let me out!… I need to walk.

I need to get these out of my head… I need to write them out.

Look in the mirror. Is it what I look like now? Why the picture of myself in my mind is so much different from what I see? Who lies? If it’s a dream, what is reality?