There's an urgency in my chest I've never been able to explain, but it's always been there. It brings my entire body to a position that is not defensive, but neither is it offensive. Just searching for comfort in the most uncomfortable places imaginable. At the same time, my lungs beg me to take a breath they decided, at that moment, that they can't take for themselves. But I wouldn't trust myself to even do that.

"It drives you forward," my dad once said, one night I made he mistake of not looking into his eyes as if I had been lying to him when I opened up about this. He knew I wasn't lying, but he only thought I was bringing it up for guidance in setting myself in the right direction: Forward. "Think about it, Jay, if there's nothing urgent, no pressure, then you have no purpose and nothing to do at all with what you have. Be grateful for it." I hate nights. All of them, always have. Seeing the stars and the moon and feeling the cold and the dark only makes me think that there is always something to be done for the next day, even after I've taken care of everything. It's just time passing over me, slipping like sand through my fingers at the beach and, just like at the beach, I make no attempt to pick up or keep it in my hands. Because it's useless.

I didn't wanted my dad to guide me that night. I wanted him to rip this pressure and fear right out of me and take it somewhere else. Somewhere, maybe like the trashcan outside.

A loud ring makes me jump where I'm sitting and it takes me just under a second to find out where I am after my mind slipped: Hard plastic chair with a metal headrest, a constant vibration under my feet... I try that "box technique" everyone says it's supposed to reboot my nervous system:

Inhale for four seconds, hold four seconds, exhale four seconds, hold four seconds, repeat.

Another ring, someone screaming at the bus driver to stop at once; their voice is registered by my ears, but the constant ringing from them pushing the stop button settles on top of my chest for some reason. Under my shirt, below my collarbone but not inside my rib-cage; it's like the ringing failed to push through my skin and got stuck. And why the hell do I feel more out of breath now? Can I just breath properly for a minute? I simply feel the air feeling my gut, like sitting right above my diaphragm but not actually getting anywhere. Like a moron, I'm digesting oxygen instead of breathing it.

Was I talking to someone? No, I don't know who this guy sitting beside me is. I haven't even looked at their face properly,

But I was supposed to do something, I know that. Just think and remember what it was. Think, think!

I feel the pressure for a reason, I know I do! Somewhere deep in my brain, somewhere I can't reach, I know that something needs to be done before I get home, must be done right here at the bus, must be done before I wake up tomorrow but always, day after day after day, I leave unfinished because I don't know what it is or what do I even have to do it for!

Was it just fake? I fell asleep on the bus, I think, maybe a dream. But if it just was that, why is my chest still empty no matter how much air I take in and keep there?

There... There is a piece missing, but where? The hums of the engines and the speakers of the radio and the screams of someone else (another one with urgency) fill my ears but not my mind. My insides are silent. How do I even figure this out if my thoughts are blank, white noise like static? My chest tightens again and I try to breath, but every effort to focus only leaves my lungs more empty and my body more empty and my mind more empty and my soul... completely hollow.

Purpose... No, that's not it dad, you're wrong.

Purpose shouldn't feel this useless. I'm going somewhere, that's why I got in the bus, that's why I walked from school to the station on my own two legs.

And I need to do something... but why?