always with the buses....

Everything began on a bus. My life changed after I saw this girl on the bus. Always, always, a girl is what changes my life.

As far back as I can remember, I have liked girls. I can't say the same for them in regards to me, however. The relationships with women in my life have always been some of the more brutal experiences I have endured. The girl from the bus is the first volume in an ever-growing chronicle of loves in my life. The first volume was what really set me up for a sequel. The first volume is full of longing, love, and an abusive relationship. Also inside are those feeling of failure and regret, disappointment and hopelessness. The first volume considered the lack of a relationship, to be precise.

Brittany, she is a top notch beauty queen with no awards. Only an abusive relationship with nowhere to turn. She is the first volume. I met her in my freshmen American government course. My teacher moved me to right next to the door, and subsequently I was placed next to Brittany. Before the bus. Before all the tales of woe to come after, there was Brittany. She was amazing. The day I was moved to sit right next to her, we became friends. We talked about the little things. Every little thing. I found out a lot about her, and she began to confide things in me. Small stuff, nothing deep and dark. After a couple months, I had grown to really like this girl. We talked on the phone, we hung out a few times. The bond was growing stronger every day. But of course, my luck dictates that this cannot last.

Every phone call began to get me in trouble. Seeing as how I was a rebellious teenager, I did not care. Besides, I was doing it for her. I was sacrificing myself to be with the girl I was falling for. Again, my luck could not hold up. I knew she was a playful and flirtatious girl, but I thought to myself I was different to her; I was something special. But the truth came to me in a visual in those traffic-clogged, inescapable, and often violent passing periods at my high school. I typically went to meet her at her locker to say hello. But I could tell that that day was different in some way. I just couldn't pick up on what exactly it was. It was a nagging, bothering sort of feeling that I got from not being able to figure out what exactly it was. When I was close to her locker, I saw her holding hands with a guy I had never seen. I turned around before I got there, for I was jealous beyond belief. Beyond words. I was green with envy past the brink of insanity.

I must say that there was a little luck on my side, because it was only a few days until summer break. I had in essence stopped all contact with her. I did feel bad, but I still think she deserved it for not even telling me about him. After all the conversations we had had, it should have come up that she liked this guy more than me. In fact, this guy, Marcus, was to appear later on in the first volume. And as an antagonist again, at that.

Well, needless to say, she was not exactly enthralled with me after that. Communication was thrown into a standstill. It was as if a rift had fractured between us. When school began for our sophomore year, it seemed like there were only two paths our 'relationship' could follow: a fight, or ignoring the other party in an effort to try and overwrite the past. With unbridled coldness, I began an all out campaign of ignorance and seemingly angered incarnations towards her.

This long and treacherous path that I had begun to follow was leading me into the circles of regret and disappointment. I remember going to sleep every night and thinking of how I could fix what I had done, how I could hammer the loose nail back into place. But in dreams, all things are precise. I could only go through the motions of what I could do in my dreams, and never actually do such in the waking hours. When I did wake up, I almost always felt a pang of regret in my chest and my heart skipped a beat. The bus rides, to and from school, were pretty intimidating, because she got off at my bus stop and walked up my street. And we had always sat next to each other before. This path I had chosen was becoming far too intense for me and I wanted to go back to the fork and start over or find a way back to where I knew it was safe.

This lasted the entire sophomore year, without us talking once. Actually, we did. But just once. And it was during yearbook signing. That is, in all reality, the moment that brought us closer together again. All the scenarios I had dreamt, all of the possible outcomes I had visualized; this was none of them. It was much more simple. It began with a hello. She had forgiven me. But she had not forgotten.

As we signed yearbooks, I could see a smile slip across her face, followed fast by a frown. The frown turned into a smirk, and the smirk into a laugh, for as we signed, I slipped right back into my old ways with her of joking, laughter, and happiness. The bus ride home that day is one of the best I have ever had. It definitely ranks among the top five of my life. We talked, and I found out she was having problems with Marcus. I also learned she had become less flirtatious, making her more attractive.

I didn't know that she lived only a few houses up from me, only that she had always walked up my street in order to get to her house. That day, the day of the yearbook, she asked if I wanted to hang out with her. Me being who I am, I said sure.

We began to walk up to my house, and as I turned in to my driveway, she kept walking. I asked her something along the lines of 'didn't you want to hang out?'. She said yes, and kept walking up the hill. I decided to follow her, but I was confused. We had always met at my house and decided what to do or where to go from there. Today was different, however. I guessed we were going to go to her house, for the first time.

It was not far from my house, just up the hill and four houses to the left. I wondered why she had never said anything to me before about living so close. That didn't even matter. I don't even remember what we did, but I remember that I was happy yet regretful. I wished I had done this sooner. But at the same time, I questioned if her and Marcus were still together. The answer I was about to hear was the answer I feared. The best guess was the answer of yes, that is what I did not want to hear. I decided to get past it. After all, we had signed yearbooks, that is like a high-school binding ritual. So I became her friend again.

School let out, and the summer was one of supreme intensity. I hung out with her quite a few times, but I was heavy into my band I was in at the time. I went over to jam almost every day, and that was my life. Brittany was only a side project I had going.

At the end of the summer, I was kicked out of that band. I took it as a huge personal blow. I fell back hard onto spending more time with Brittany. Marcus began to dislike me with greater and greater passion, with the will of a vicious wounded animal. But I did not care. I had fallen for her again.

With the school session already a couple months in, we started hanging out every day. It was like before, but this time she knew that I cared. She knew how much I cared. Or if she didn't, she showed what someone would show if they thought someone cared that much for them. I did respect, with utmost grudge, her and Marcus's relationship. Said relationship was growing more feeble and abusive as time went on. He was also unfaithful and she knew it. She cried quite a bit, but she loved him and wanted to make him happy. She offered herself fully to him anytime he wanted. He took advantage of her need to satisfy him without question.

She cried many times a day now. I was there for her, being her best friend. I would come over, even without her asking, just to be with her and to help her get through things. I got to know her mom and brother quite well. To cheer her up, we would watch “The Wedding Singer” when she started crying, and I would cuddle with her to keep her safe from what the picture showed her about real life. That became 'our' movie. I began to view myself as Robbie Hart, the main character, who falls in love with Julia. But the problem was that Glenn was going to marry her. He was not a great guy. It seemed to be a Hollywood interpretation of my situation, almost precisely. I took it upon myself to learn how to play and sing the song from the end of it, for future use possibly.

The bus rides were something I looked forward to every day. But Marcus had gotten a car for his birthday, so he started to give her rides. The bus was no longer a means of 'us' time. At least we still had my afterschool visits where I could get my hopes up. As the weather started to cool off, so did my patience. I had witnessed so many times the fights and breakups between them; I had witnessed the getting-back-together phone calls. I had seen it all. My thoughts and dreams of being with her with Marcus out of the picture were beginning to fade into blackness. I also started writing poetry pretty heavily, and fell into a deeper state of depression.

Frustration and depression began to take hold of me. The love I had for her was so strong in my heart that I had no idea what I would do if I never got to be with her. The last time I was at her house, I brought my guitar in a last attempt to win her to my side. I had brought it before, but only to show her how to play a few things, so she didn't think much of it. I told her that I love her, which she already knew, and I know I will probably never be with her, but I have to try anyway, because she deserves better than the abusive relationship she has. So I told her to sit down, while I played her a song. The first chord struck her ears and tears welled in her eyes.

“I wanna make you smile whenever you're sad

Carry you around when your arthritis is bad

All I wanna do is grow old with you

Ill get your medicine when your tummy aches

Build you a fire if the furnace breaks

Oh it could be so nice, growing old with you

Ill miss you

Ill kiss you

Give you my coat when you are cold

Ill need you

Ill feed you

Even let you hold the remote control

So let me do the dishes in our kitchen sink

Put you to bed if you've had too much to drink

I could be the man who grows old with you

I wanna grow old with you”

-Adam Sandler

At the end, she was sobbing uncontrollably. I knew what was to come next. She told me she loved me very much, but Marcus still had her heart. She apologized more times than there are grains of sand on a beach that day. Marcus came over later and, as usual, abused her. I was done with it. She knew I wouldn't do that kind of thing to her ever, because I respect her too much. I told her I will always be here for you, as a friend or anything else. We have drifted apart ever since that, to the point of communication maybe once a month. We never hang out anymore; also she moved. To this day, I wait for the day when she talks to me again, wanting me back as her best friend or better yet: her boyfriend. Now I write poetry with inspiration I hadn't known before, about the situations I have been in. And it always comes back to the bus. The next semester, I met a girl on the bus I fell in love with. But that is another whole story in itself.