Bus Crash

There's this bus crash in my head. It's a sick symphony of crashing and rolling with metal jutting out, crunching, bending. I'm not exactly sure what causes the crash. I just know that the bus begins rolling down a steep hill one sickening hit at a time. When the bus stops rolling the metal groans and moans as broken glass sprinkles to the ground. There's not one person in the bus. Not one. But I'm sitting there. In my bus seat watching the walls cave and glass break around me.
This symphony of catastrophe resides in my head, putting a visual to every awful thing that has ever occured in my life. This intertwining of all that is awful replays in my mind every so often. Sometimes as the bus crashes I can smell the scent of airbag dust from my car crash. Other times in the windows I see desperate phone calls or hear the pleading the voices around me.
My bus crashing isn't nearly as catastrophic as it could be. That's because most of these awful things come to an end. The bus stops rolling. The metal ceases moaning. I emerged from the bus crash, not unscathed. That would be too much to ask, but with a knowledge and a power that I can get through it.
Sometimes if you're lucky and let the right people in, when your bus is crashing, they allow you to sleep safely through it. So that you can emerge with a numbed sense of what occured. It doesn't change that it happened. It just means that you felt safe enough with them to share in the pain; let them see exactly which windows broke, which metal beams bent. Sometimes the bus crash leads to this. So that makes the crashing worth while.
Everyone has a bus crash in their heads. Everyone watches it happen at different frequencies. I could see mine this week and not again for several months or years. For some the bus crash is almost and everyday reality. There are those who never talk about it. You see the crash behind their eyes and you want to reach out and help them. You can't help if exhausting all you have on them crashes your bus though. Some things are bigger than we are. We learn as we go, and maybe someday that bus makes it all the way up that hill without crashing down to the bottom, and instead of a sick symphony Metallica blasts out of the windows. That's happiness.