The Black Seems Less Vast This Time

I am writing this on a bus. It’s a Megabus that you order tickets from online and the sooner you get them, the cheaper they are, prices starting at $1.  Megabuses attract foreign people and college kids like myself; much different from Greyhound buses that are twice as expensive but more popular, and attract old people and business people. I’m travelling from Philly to Pittsburgh, and then getting a ride back to campus from a friend. 

I have an Asian girl sitting next to me. She’s quiet and is content with staring straight in front of her. 

I remember the last time I rode this bus.  I wasn’t able to sleep, so I stared out the window at the complete blackness.  313 miles of the world passed before my eyes, but it was just the abyss to them.  The road stretched on forever as I was cooped up in a bus for six hours, and I wondered how long it took the tired men to pave it. 

You’d think that since I can’t see anything, I’d feel like there is less matter surrounding me, but the black makes the entire world bigger as I feel smaller.  The thought of travelling never scares me since my life is lived in a suitcase, but I took a mental step out of my life to look at it in third person.  There I was, an eighteen year old child, travelling to another city by herself.  She was leaving a campus filled with hundreds of peers but she didn’t feel as if she were in a community.  More lost in a crowd of other faces not looking to make new friends.  I was leaving a dorm where I lived, with a hometown with no home.  I felt extremely alone right then…but I don’t remember feeling lonely at school…maybe since I was surrounded by people at school, I felt especially alone doing something by myself for the first time in a while.

Less lonely and more afraid.  Like imagining all of the universe’s planets, suns, black holes, and meteors that could strike at any moment; and here is our tiny Earth, seemingly huge to us, just suspended in midair-there is no air in space-mid-nothing, only orbiting the sun.  The rotation around the sun…the very foundation of normalcy that connects us all, but isn’t completely reliable.  Does this frighten anyone else?  It does for me, which is why I hate astronomy.

Now imagine you, a tiny person floating around Earth’s surface, with only your money and connections suspending you in normalcy and recognition as a person, which essentially makes you who you are; your relatives, where you’re from, where you live, who you know, what your job is if you have one.  Am I right?

I realized what little I have of that.  I realized how much my fate relies on chance and who knows me and is willing to not take advantage of me or give me a break. 

“God is everywhere,” said that Sunday school teacher.  She was so sure of herself, but I felt as if humanity is alone on this Earth and God only touches us from where He is in His otherworld haven.  Why would he want to dwell here more than how long He made Jesus live here already?

Because He is in me.  The Holy Spirit tells me what place I should travel to next, what I should do with this life and its gifts, and sometimes gives me the perfect things to say. 

God is in me, and I’m here.  God is here, and I’m never alone.

The sun takes its time setting, leaving the sky a violet that’s more colorful than what’s below it.  Then it disappears completely.

The black seems less vast this time around.