• 635 words
• 2 min 32 sec reading time

I sank into my seat on the bus, breathing so loudly I could hear every muscle popping in my chest. I promised myself yesterday, and come to think of it, the day before that and every day since last Wednesday, that I wouldn’t run for the bus any more. My bus running days were over, registering time, clocking in, minutes that ticked by all too fast, followed by ones so intensely slow, time almost stood still.

Last Wednesday week, I ran for the bus. Arrived at work. The time card registered 8:50. I had to be in ten minutes before the shop opened, and I always was. Dependable, punctual, and ever-present. I clocked in, clocked out, ate on time, slept on time, paid bills on time, insipid, regulated, well watered, well nourished and beating to the same societal drumbeat. Underneath my shiny veneer of reality, sameness, and connectedness, I was a fucking mess.

I borrowed too much, a little at first, holidays, clothes, €400 for a pair of shoes worn once, I couldn’t walk in them, but they looked good in my wardrobe. Next came the credit cards, the car, the nights out and the house.

Finally, the buckaroo point. I should have paid closer attention to the game as a child. It was simple, one Mule, lots and lots of stuff. The aim, get as much stuff onto the Mule without it bucking. But it always bucked. Never once did I get everything on, but that was the point.

I was about to buck.

It was simple. I’d been collecting the life-size version of stuff for over a decade. I wasn’t extravagant, nor extreme, a bit stretched, maybe? Everything depended on a continuous sameness, a simple illusion. I am; therefore, I buy, and consequently, I grow.

I grew, my bills grew, my hours at work grew, my money grew, what I owed grew…

Somewhere between the bills and breathing loudly, my life exploded, not gently or slowly, but like a nuclear reactor secretly hidden in my stuff had picked a random point to fucking meltdown thoroughly, irreversibly, insatiably sucking my life dry of any meaning.

It happened last Wednesday at 9:00 am. I received two weeks’ notice after twelve years of an extra ten minutes every single day. Fifty minutes a week, two thousand four hundred minutes, minus four weeks holidays a year, twenty-eight thousand eight hundred minutes of my life over twelve years, gone. Twenty days of my life were given away because of a request to be ten minutes early. An even larger reactor imploded, and I was doomed to melt from the core.

I hadn’t noticed till that day I could never really breathe. I had always been running. Then the sound of my chest muscles popping started, the tightening of a doomed life.

Week two, eight days since last Wednesday’s popping chest. I sat on the bus as it made its rounds, people getting on and off, school, work, town. Then my stop. I didn’t move. I sat paralysed; the bus driver ignored me and continued his route. I was late. I would not be clocking in or getting off the bus.

Silently, I remained stuck in my seat. Moving forward in my small town but on a different route. I suddenly had an urge to take my shoes off. I did. Standing up, I could feel the hard metal of the bus below my feet. I pressed the bell. The bus stopped. I could feel the cold pavement. I touched the concrete wall. I felt heavy. I left my bag down. Through a small gate, I could see a garden, no grass, only soil. Walking through the gate, I buried my feet into the dark brown clay, irregular-sized stones twisting between my toes. Finally, I stopped and took a deep breath.