#12.

No matter where you are when you wake up, it always feels the same. There is that fleeting moment of disorientation. You panic. Trying to remember who you are, what you're doing and where the fuck you are.
Usually this disorientation is only temporary. A tiny, anxious bubble that bursts almost as soon as you notice it.

Waking up on an emptying bus at dusk is different. It takes longer to remember. The bubble is less willing to comply. I take a few seconds longer. Shake my head as if it could clear the cobwebs of my confusion. I am on a bus. A quiet, empty bus.
The motor has stopped running and the last of the passengers are disappearing down the sticky flight of stairs and out into the fading day. The bus driver stands. She stretches and as she does this she looks down at me and offers a warm smile.

"Come on love, we've made it. Time to get going!"

I scramble into action, wiping the sleep spittle from my cheek and picking my bag up off the floor in one smooth action. The luggage has already been unloaded and by the time I make my own way down the sticky stairs and leave the superficial cool of the bus, most of the passengers have flitted away- off to lead their own exciting lives in this city.

And then I realise. The city. City. As in not home. As in the big, vibrating, buzzing, moving, colourful metropolis that has no idea who I am. I am reborn. I am seeing the world for the first time. I can shed my skin, my name, myself. I can be wiped away, like sleep spittle. This thought is scary and uplifitng at once.
I am awake. I like how this feels.

"That one yours then?" The bus driver asks, incling her head towards my suitcase. I nod, because I am feeling too many things to actually form coherent words. I take up the fraying handle, and it feels different. It no longer feels heavy- like it's holding my entire life together. It feels light. A companion, taking my hand and urging me on, into the breathless city beyond this artificially lit bus depot.

"Exit is that-a-way" Nameless bus driver smiles again. We are caught in a game of déjà vu. All I can do is nod.

Suitcase and I make our way towards the opaque glass doors. They twinkle with the life that is just behind them, outside them. Beyond them. All of a sudden it seems important to know the bus drivers name. I need to know and I need her to know mine. Despite being able to- My name is not something I will abandon. So I stop just short of my future and turn back.

"Uhm excuse me. My name's Bethany. What's yours?"
"I'm Brenda. Nice to meet you Beth."

Brenda. Okay.

"Hey Brenda? Thanks. For everything."

And just like magic, the doors slide apart for me.