hbfm

Before joining up, I'd been lurking the boards and journals, when I saw Morgan's post about stark terror and assholes. A few months ago, when I was newer to the new place I'm living, I got on the wrong bus, and missed the last stop. I had realized it was the right bus but going in the wrong direction, and figured it was going to turn around and be the last one going the way I wanted to go. This little error left me out at the bus depot, alone, not sure where I was or where to go to get home, in the dark, in the cold. The kindly bus driver did give me decent directions back to the subway, and I managed to follow them until I came to an intersection that looked like it lead to a freeway on ramp.

The only sign of people was an open-late liquor store that looked closed or empty. In the distance, I thought I saw the parking garage for the station, but it was past the bridge I thought was part of the freeway. Figuring that my stupid, stubborn refusal to ask for directions hadn't got me killed yet, I decided to try following the road I thought was an on ramp. It was dark, and the approach to the highway was eerie. Going under it was the darkest I've ever seen a part of a city get outside of my bedroom, and more quiet than I've ever heard.

It was like a sensory deprivation chamber. All that there was to see was a patch of road at the other end of this overpass, which was lit only by ambient light pollution; the ONLY sound was my breath and my footsteps; all I could feel was some minor frostbite and the padding of my clothes. In that time under the bridge, I realised that no one knew where I was, and I was in a new city with no friends. It is probably more accurate to call that my most helpless, rather than humble moment, except that after I rounded the bend at the other end of the bridge, the sodium vapor lamps of the oceanic New Carrolton lot where blazing away, and everything worked out OK.