We all believe we are free. We all believe that in this world we choose our own paths and make our own decisions, how naïve of us. Our parents and bosses and so-called friends make us who we are. The trash in movies and TV and the radio morph our decisions until we are husks of people that used to believe we were free thinking. Nothing is free in this world anymore. How to eat, how to dress, how to be; even our thoughts are manufactured and put into our heads. Once you come to this realization, you feel trapped, suffocated by a world that used to make you feel alive, or feel something at all. This is the thought process that has led me to the Greyhound bus station at 1:00AM on a brisk Tuesday night. Is this a good idea? How mad is mom going to be? Will I be arrested if they find out I’m not 18?  God, if my head could just shut up. I’m going to be fine. This is good for me. This is what I want.

            “Mam’, you buying a ticket or not?” Asked the lady at the front counter who looked to be a middle-aged cat lady based on the copious amount of grey fur on her maroon vest.

              “Y-y-yes. One to Chicago please.” I manage to stutter out.

             “ID please, mam’.” She gives me an eye as if she knows. God, how does she know? Everyone says I look old for my age. Dammit this is it, isn’t it? Now I’m going to stay in this s*** town with these s*** people forever until I inevitably die without any sense of happiness.

            “Um yeah. Here you go.” I say in voice I don’t even recognize. It’s masked in a fake confidence. I carefully slid the money fake ID across the cool metal counter top. God, I hope Corey made this convincing enough.

            Last week at school, I asked this local loser called Corey if he could make me a fake ID. Corey is the kind of kid you would find smoking weed behind a church at noon on a Sunday. His long, greasy brown hair is enough to make you cringe, but the real pièce de résistance is the large tattoo of a dragon on a skateboard that he thought a genius idea to put on his neck.  Corey helped me out and now I’m kind of wishing I would’ve found someone with more of a brain to help me with this.

           “Violet Sanchez, 23 years old?” What a horrible fake name, I think to myself. I wonder if he knows it’s fake. I read the nametag that states the lady as: ROBERTA.

         “That’s me, Roberta. One on the Chicago bus please.” I am trying to hard to sound confident. This is not going to end well for me.  I’m 100% going to jail.

           “Alright, Violet. Here you go. Have a nice night.” Roberta says as she presses a button and to something onto a computer.  A ticket pops out of the counter top and I grab it quickly. She hands me my change and my ID and I walk away quickly, before she changes her mind or realizes that I am 16.

           I rest at a bench placed in the corner of the station. This place must be one of the sketchiest places I have ever been. There is graffiti all over the interior and exterior walls. Four large cement pillars situated in the middle of the room look as if they are the only things keeping the place steady. The smell of what seems to be old milk is flooding into my nose and it’s enough to make me gag. I’m unbelievably thankful when I hear, “Greyhound to Chicago boarding now. Get on or leave, makes no difference to me.” A man who looks about 30 yells from a door in the back as a swift breeze blows through the whole building. He reminds me of my dad: collected, uncaring, receding brown hair, and a desire to be anywhere else. I wonder what my dad is doing right now. Has he already noticed I left the house? Did he hear me leave? Did he not stop me because he understands why I’m leaving? Does he wish he could leave too?

        A woman in the opposite corner holds a baby in one hand and her purse in the other as she quickly rises and rushes to the door. Then it’s just me. I grasp the handle of my suitcase firmly. Is this the right thing? It has to be. I can’t stay here. I don’t know what I’ll do if I stay here. Dammit, Jill, just go. I stand up abruptly and turn confidently to the door. Outside the air is biting and it’s incredibly dark but the single post lamp at the end of the opposite side of the lot seems to add some light to the situation. I see the bus in front of me. I see my future in front of me. I step onto the tall metal stairs and hand the man my ticket. “Alright lady, take your seat, we got us a long ride tonight.”  I walk through the aisles, past the woman and her sleeping baby, to the back of the bus. “Okay, if that’s everyone, next stop, Chicago, Illinois.” The bus driver’s voice yells over an ancient microphone. I have no clue how the sleeping baby stay this way.

     As I take my seat on the red fabric seat that is probably older than I am, I think of my mom. I miss her and I don’t and I’m trying to make myself understand how that’s possible. My mother is an overbearing, controlling monster, but she’s my mother. Maybe I shouldn’t leave. She will be so worried. No, Jill, do this for you. Make your own life.

        I don’t know what will happen next. I am on this bus that will take me to a town. Once I’m in that town, who knows?  I could get a job, an apartment, a boyfriend, I honestly don’t know. However, I think not knowing is the reason I’m leaving Grandview Heights. In this town your life is set up for you the second your born. Everyone knows whom your going to be before you even know yourself. The life my mother had planned for me was never something I wanted.

       I can’t be a doctor. I can’t be a 4.0 student. I can’t be student body president. I can’t breathe anymore. I am moving into this life that I am creating for myself, no one else, just me. It may seem reckless and lonely, but if I stay in this damned town for one more minute then I’m afraid of what I might do. The bus begins to make it s final turn out of the lot and in that moment nothing matters. It doesn’t matter if this is the wrong choice or if my mom is furious. It doesn’t matter if anyone thinks I’m throwing my life away. I turn around to see the single lamppost become a distant memory in the window. I have been freed of Grandview Heights, Ohio.