now to calm me
this time won’t you please drive faster
roll the win­dow down
this cool night air is curi­ous
let the whole world look in
who cares who sees any­thing
I’m your pas­sen­ger
I’m your passenger

—Deftones, Passenger

A few months ago I took the night bus home. I arrived around mid­night, and received some ter­ri­ble news. I called up John, one-thirty in the morn­ing, and asked if he wanted to do some­thing. John, being the per­spi­ca­cious genius that he is, could sense that there was some­thing wrong. He took me for a drive, no ques­tions asked and let me take my time in express­ing myself in what I wanted. We cruised the high­ways for hours, the orange glow of the city cre­at­ing an arti­fi­cial sun­set around us while fleet­ing white lines joined together in lan­guid blur­ri­ness. By the end I was much calmer, even though the sit­u­a­tion had yet to be resolved.

I’ll never for­get that night, and how good it felt to be dri­ven some­where, any­where. That there was no pur­pose to the trip, that there was no place to be or time to be there.

I took another bus ride yes­ter­day and it all felt the same. I could catch any bus I wanted, didn’t mat­ter where it was going. I wasn’t wor­ried about being late, about hav­ing to meet some­one, or even about how I was get­ting back. I could just get on a bus, claim my favourite seat, and sit down. Someone drove me some­where while I looked out the win­dow, at sub­ur­bia, at pedes­tri­ans, at rela­tion­ships, at build­ings, at fields, at grass, at poles, at cars, at clouds, at life. I was a pas­sen­ger. People would get on and off the bus and join me, adven­tur­ers on a trip to the undetermined.

It was only on this bus ride, not any other bus ride, that I was able to resolve my sit­u­a­tion. Being dis­tracted by any­thing going on around me helped me take my time in think­ing things through.

I had come to the real­iza­tion that the only per­son who could help me was myself.

That I was smart enough to avoid this, but not strong enough.

By the time I got home, after trans­fer­ring three buses, my mind was much clearer. I felt rather stu­pid, being a per­son who should have known bet­ter, ashamed, being a per­son too weak to help myself. I had been in this sit­u­a­tion before, but still I lost my cere­bral­ity. I made a child­ish, inex­pe­ri­enced mis­take, and paid for it, deserved it even. The only thing to com­fort me in this is know­ing that I’ve learned a great deal, even if it was the hard way, and that I’ll prob­a­bly never make the same mis­take again.

There’s some­thing cathar­tic about being a pas­sen­ger. It’s almost as if the dri­ver is there for you, to take you away, to lis­ten if you need an ear, to be quiet if you need to think.

For some­times one does not need more than this.