This is my entry from January 25th. I only had a short time to write so here is a random story.

"You still don't have any friends yet?"

Ben was a classmate in my Spanish class. I’ve never talked to him after the beginning of the school year. Probably due to his delinquent behaviors and misogynistic comments.

Just one day, Ben grabbed a seat in front of me to chat with a group of other classmates. I made no objection because I enjoy overhearing people’s conversations and secretly judging their profane languages and sexual jokes to firm my belief of how messed up the world is.

Towards the end of the class, I spaced out and waited for dismissal. Suddenly, he turned back to me. We held eye contact for maybe one second, and he asked,

“So, you still don’t have any friends yet?”

His question pierced me and brought a sentimental confusion. I hesitated, and replied with an awkward laugh, “I do have friends.”

“Of course, you have all the friends in the world,” he said and turned to the front.

I did not expect such an introspecting question with from a near stranger. As I walked out of the class, my mind descended back to earth from my endless black hole of internal struggle and I actually took notice of the people around me. How many friends can a single person possibly have? According to Instagram, an average person’s birthday is celebrated by like a hundred or more of their friends. You can basically call anyone a "friend" if they sit within six feet from you and have exchanged five lines with you.

Though I have admitted to myself that I am a loner, I might start considering Ben as a friend.

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This is my entry from January 24th. A long and immature ramble from an easily irritable teenager.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-xV5jNv_afoNwoSMCtNMyrZtD0VMxj55/view?usp=sharing

Bus Pass

I understand the series of responsibilities it comes with being a high school freshman. Your parents no longer bother to wake you up in the morning, you have to actually study for exams instead of miraculously getting a passing grade with whatever knowledge that you were born with, and—you have to figure out everything about your own school bus.

I walked out of my math class at the end of school, my mind boggled with logarithms and exponential functions, grumbling over the text message that I received from my stepdad during class— “Try to find out which bus is yours for on the way home today, because you’re gonna have to start taking it starting Wednesday /insert zany face emoji”. I stopped taking the bus back in October, two months into the school year, because my bus stop became one of the few in town that is no longer provided with the traditional school buses. Instead, our school district left us to the city’s public transport system, and during the first few days of the change, everyone at the bus stop looked just as pissed off as I was, waiting in the dark for over thirty minutes, with cold breezes sweeping in and out of the thin fabric of our clothes, at 6 AM. It was even more confusing when the bus arrived, now that we have to use an electronic buss pass on our phones in order to be granted a tiny seat on the cramped vehicle that held only ten people. The ones who failed to win a seat, had to wait another half an hour for the next bus to arrive. In a word, the new bus system sucked.

Luckily, I did not have to endure the inconvenience of this change because my stepdad was able to give me a ride to and back from school everyday. This, however, changed today when I received the message. My stepdad can no longer provide me the luxury of personal rides because he has found a job, after months of being laid off due to the pandemic.

I walked down to the bus stop after school, but was not able to get on the bus because they did not have my name on their list. I checked the student transportation website about ten times, arriving at the same result of “There is no transportation information for the selected student at this time” with every attempt. The helper at the bus stop suggested me to download the city transportation app and check my pass. Turns out that my last pass expired in November and was never renewed after that, even though the district promised that they will be “renewed every month through the end of May 2022.” At this point, one bus had already left, and so did my patience. “You can try to book the earliest ride on this other app,” the helper said. But however many times I tried to register an account on that app, it simply did not work. The stream of people walking down the bus lanes became sparse, and I was standing in the hot, scorching sun of Las Vegas’ winter season, on the verge of loosing my nuts. I decided to call my stepdad for help,

“Hey, can you pick me up?”

“Yeah, I’m parking here around the corner. Why can’t you get on the bus?”

After explaining the confusion to him, he replied,

“Well, you’d better tell them to put your name back on there.”

I hung up. It was not a surprise that such impractical advice would come out of his mouth; however, I expected something at least just a little bit above that level in a situation like this.

My screen lit up, showing a message from him saying, “You better tell them to put it back on there.” To which I replied, with politeness to the very best of my effort without spitting my usual sarcasm, “That’s not a practical advice.”

Seconds later, he texted again, “You better tell them to put it back on there.”

I ignored it, took a few deep breaths to resolve my impulse of wanting to punch someone in the face (despite knowing that unresolved every-day frustrations like such could accumulate to another episode of me contemplating suicide in the bathtub), and restored my stoicism.

There came several more texts from him, “Well who do you speak to about getting your name put back on there? Who took it off?” “Where are you at?” “Well I hope you’re in the office getting it put back on the list.” With each message I became more vexed, so I ended his ramble with an immature line, “Like that’s gonna help anyone.”

The second bus had left, and anxiety overwhelmed me as I made more futile attempts to figure out the problem with my bus pass. I prevented further frustration by declining every call from my stepdad in the next five minutes. A grain of guilt arose in me for keeping the helper under the same carcinogenic UV rays as I suffered from for what seemed like an eternity.

Finally, I gave up. “Never mind,” I told her, “Thank you for your help.”

“They’re supposed to issue you a pass. You just need to book the ride so that we know where to take you.”

“Yeah...Thank you though,” I turned to leave.

“Did you try signing in with the same email you used before?” She held me for a bit longer.

“Yeah. I used my school email, but it didn’t work.” I tried to remove myself from the conversation as soon as possible, driven by my social anxiety.

“That’s weird...You—”

I interrupted before she began her next sentence, “Yeah, it’s alright. Thank you for your help. Have a nice day,” and left with a swift pace.

My stepdad tried many solutions this afternoon to get my bus pass, though all useless at the end. I appreciate his effort. However, the problem remains unsolved.

Lesson learned: Parent yourself.

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This is my entry from January 23rd.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-vrv6L53QM-bDYfYNCMqyCTK_6Om4QAE/view?usp=sharing