Each day this week, I have sat on the bus with my bag on my lap, legs pressed together to take up as little space as possible, my head in a book, only occasionally coming up to examine the sheer number of passengers. The school year has restarted and so students are flooding onboard as I sit there mesmerised at how I haven’t been one of them for over three years and yet I feel like I have re-lived this same morning over, and over again.
Sitting there I felt transported into my seventeen-year-old body, boarding the bus to college then to my retail job at the weekends and then later on to my first office job at eighteen and it made me think of The 1975 song ‘I Always want to die sometimes’. Matty Healy so plainly sings in the first line ``I bet you thought your life would change, but you’re sat on a train again” except I’m not on a train, I’m on a bus, and it's going the same route that I have taken for the last five years.
When you're in your early twenties - well, the entirety of your twenties - you find yourself at such a crossroads with new jobs, new relationships, some friends are traveling the world whilst I sit at my desk. Some friends are buying their second car whilst I don’t even have my license yet. Some friends haven’t lived at home for three years whereas I never left. Some friends are going on dates and I’m with the same boy I’ve loved since I was sixteen. It doesn’t mean I’m not grateful for the way things have aligned themselves in my life, but on days like this - which feels like every day at the moment - I can’t help but feel stagnant. It's as though I’m on a bus that isn’t moving.
There have been moments where I think ‘Ok, I’m an adult, this is adulting, I’m making steps’ like when I got my first paid writing job or when I got my first credit card but then I’m sat on the bus and must remind myself that these students aren’t my age. I am faced with the tragic reality that I’m closer to being twenty-five than I am sixteen. I’m not immortal- who knew. When you’re surrounded by people who all seem to be doing life at maximum speed and your feed is full to the brim of success stories, it can feel like you’re the only one stuck on the bus. It's then that you must ask yourself: ‘When was the last time I shared my failures?’ When did I last post a makeup-free photo? ‘Who did you tell about failing your driving test?’ Nothing is as seamless as it looks. Everybody is winging it.
One day, when I’m walking through a city that feels bigger than me, feeling like a fish out of whatever, I will crave the familiarity of the chaotic morning commute from home into town - because my home won’t be mine anymore and my town will become an overwhelming, bustling city of new possibilities.