Eternity on the bus

Looking back at the end of my only real relationship, I see myself more of a transition boyfriend for her than anything else. I remember spending 20 hours in a 30 hour period on the greyhound just to break up with her.

The end itself was a long time coming I think, it started around Thanksgiving 2007. I had plans to get up to see her four hours away, but if anyone remembers the greyhound buses had gone on strike and I couldn't get up there. Well that's not true, maybe I could have done more, rented a car or found a car some way just to drive up and see her.

Yes that was crappy boyfriend move number one. I could have done more to have gone and seen her, but then again I don't remember if I had my drivers licence then. Mine had expired and it too me a couple years to get another one (Blog for another time).

I digress though, following that nothing seemed to be the same anymore because school got in the way and I wouldn't have been able to see her again, until we actually broke up face to face.

That year was one of the worse I had to go through from an emotional stand point, sadly I'm way too emotional for my own good, and it's a reason why I don't do much dating or tying to get romantically involved. When I'm in deep, I'm drowning in feelings but I've gotten better. Better in the way that I now have all kinds of walls to keep people out, more so then before I had a girlfriend.

I would spend a lot of time at my friend Maya's apartment staring at her ceiling wishing that the inevitable wasn't going to happen, and she would spend a lot of her time at her friend Shane's place. Our contact got a lot more sporadic and really wasn't sure what to say to her, most of the time it was something like...

“I'm sorry, I don't even know where I'm screwing up. I just don't want to feel like this anymore. All I want is for everything to go back to how it was in the summer.”

When the holidays rolled around it just got worse and worse, oh we talked on Christmas but there was just nothing there and then came New Years, she said she would call. Midnight struck, and nothing. All night I looked at my phone and morning came, nothing. Some time that day she texted me “sorry, I lost my phone last night.”

Yeah, I know.

Then came the morning after my birthday. We were talking and eventually it came out, “I don't think we should be together anymore”. My heart sank, and I was just empty. Here was someone I had put a year of my life into, and allowed to be my first girlfriend. Of course I shot back with a “well atleast you waited til after my birthday.”

Of course I wasn't having any of that, the breaking up from a distance that is. It took a couple of tries but I finally convinced her to let me come up and finish this the proper way. One thing I don't do is break up, or finish things over the phone, msn or over a distance. I'm the kind of person who needs to do everything face to face, I think everyone deserves that respect.

If you take the time it takes to drive anywhere and double it, that's the minimum time it takes a greyhound bus to get there. This was going to be the longest ride of my life, to this day it still is. How could it not be, you're taking a bus 8 to 10 hours to let a girl officially dump you in person.

The bus left at 5:30 that morning, to avoid an early wake up time I went and crashed at Maya's house for the night since it was just down the street from the greyhound station. I didn't do much crashing, just watching movies until I left.

The bus to Toronto felt like it took no time at all, but once I transferred to the bus heading north it felt like an eternity. We stopped at grocery stores and post offices in small towns I would never see again. I just wanted to get there as fast as I could, but the bus ride just kept getting longer and longer.

Eventually I arrived and made it to a motel just down the street from her house, all I could do was sit there waiting until she stopped by. It was only an hour until she got there and we both went back to her house, where she made me pizza and salad for dinner. It was feeling a lot like being on death row, having my last meal.

The rest of the evening at her house consisted of throwing the TV on, not saying a lot of anything and me just looking around, then back at her. No doubt it was uncomfortable, but I'm an awkward guy and of course the breakup just brought that up another level.

Most of the conversation turn to small chit chat, after establishing we were done. Of course all I wanted to do was ask her was what happened? What did I do? Why don't you feel the same way any more? Of course I just couldn't get the guts to ask anything.

We ended up back at my motel room, us laying on the bed and holding her for the last time, kissing her on her head and just waiting til she had to leave. I've never been so close to someone, and so alone and far away until that moment. The whole time I held her, she just feint sleeping and eventually she left and that was it. Our last night.

I texted Maya, that it was done. I finished my business. Then I slept the longest night of my life away.

Morning came, and my ex was coming back to drive me to the bus station. Before we did that I had a few hours to kill and she drove me around the city showing me everything, like I had shown her back home. I didn't eat anything all that day, I wasn't hungry but starving at the same time. She wanted me to get something to eat, as we walked through the mall. She was no doubt feeling guilty, and even tried to give me the sad puppy face. Of course that didn't work, I think that was the very moment that I stopped falling for that tactic from any girl.

I'm never going to let anyone guilt me into doing something with that expression again.

Everything was coming to an end, as we drove to the bus station. I can remember some of our conversation, though somewhat paraphrased below...

Her: I'm sad.

Me: Why?

Her: You're leaving, and I'm going to miss you.

Me: It's a little different this time.

There we were at the bus station, waiting so I could board. I hugged her goodbye, leaned in and kissed her one last time and jumped on the bus. I took my seat and could only watch her walk away and then drive away in her car.

The bus ride there was long, the bus ride home was an eternity.

You don't know how alone you really are until that moment when you're leaving everything you put your heart and soul into behind. That was the loneliest I've been in my life up to that point. I was going home to nothing.