This is me on the train.
“I am my own person, being there, being exactly like everyone else.”
I am sitting alone on the train going to meet a friend. It’s my first time on the train, and it’s nearly 5PM but I am going towards the city and against traffic, so I am on a bench alone. There is a man sitting across from me, and he looks as if he hasn’t slept in a long time. An older lady sits on the bench to the other side of mine. I only have three stops until my own, which is good because the plastic chairs hurt a little bit. But at the same time, there’s something nice about sitting there with nothing to do but look around. It is in that moment that it dawns on me that I have done it, that I am in Puerto Rico, alone and I am not afraid and I look just like everyone else. And I am my own person, being there, being exactly like everyone else. We all see the same map on the wall of the train. The metal bars shine the same for me and the girl who smiles as me when she sits down.
When I look at the time, it is 4:44PM, and I mark it because 4 is my favorite number. And the moment, sitting on the train with my hands in my lap– watching the flash of heavy limb trees, cracked-up-the-side houses, rain soaked clouds– feels like the most perfect moments I could have stumbled upon. The orange of the seats is vibrant where it hasn’t been worn away in the centers or the corners. The floor is deliciously scuffed with dirt from the rainy afternoon. The woman’s voice on the speaker, occasionally dropping in to announce the next station, sounds informed and clear. When we go underground, the little flecks of rain stick to the window. They bring little bits of the clouds to the florescent lights of the station beneath the streets. I wonder if we all hate the underground part of the train the same way, where it’s dark and sometimes feels like because the station doesn’t see the sunshine, you will never see the sunshine again either. Of course, I know that I will. But I can’t help feeling it. Something about public transit always makes me feel this way. So wonderfully in-tune with myself. So peacefully alone surrounded by so many other people who are also so alone. (This is partially why I think maybe I will never get married– maybe I find too much solace in being alone.) All that we need to have in common, all of us on the train in that moment, is to be going to the same place.
I have the horrible habit of not being able to sit in a beautiful moment while it’s happening. I can’t have the beautiful moment without acknowledging that the moment is beautiful, and then I have the awful understanding that the moment will soon go away and I panic, I try to cling to that feeling but in that recognition the feeling begins to dissipate. As if by acknowledging the magic, I have ruined it. My best moments are the ones that I don’t ruin by realizing that they are great moments- but then it feels as though I had wasted it. As though, because I didn’t reckon the moment as it was happening, it didn’t realize its full potential. You can see, I’m sure, the problem here. But that moment of realization on the train happens just as we pulled up to the stop. So I don’t have to dwell on it for too long, how the moment might have be ruined, because the moment ended on its own and I had a friend to go meet.
