Louder Than Words ✨ Guns N' Roses

01.

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***

I was fucking excited.

More than excited really. What's a better word? Um... exhilarated, or I guess... elated. But also scared shitless, I'll never forget that part.

How else are you supposed to feel, stepping off of a Greyhound Bus, thousands of miles from the place you call home, not one familiar face in the entire city? Or so I thought at the time, but we can get into that in a second.

I'm resisting the urge to cringe as I write this, imagining how much of a dork I must've seemed like as I exited the lonely old bus, filled with sad eyes and empty hearts. I wasn't gonna be one of them, I thought, standing at the bus stop with my hands on my hips. Los Angeles would not kill my dreams like it does to literally everyone else. I was just cool like that.

"Hey, Shirley Temple! Get your bags! You're standing in the way of the bus!"

The driver sounded like Donald Duck, only with severe emphysema.

"Wait, wha-"

My bags came crashing down the steps of the bus, slamming into my legs and knocking me to the ground. The bus sped away, leaving me in a heap on the ground, coughing from the exhaust.

Cheeks burning red, I stood quickly and resumed my confident stance. Hands on my hips, I looked up with forced triumph at the beautiful... starry... filled with smog sky.

Mama always said I was meant for more than Lafayette.

I gathered my bags up, awkwardly fumbling with them as I walked down the dark, shady streets. Where the hell was I gonna stay? I was barely 18, naive, and hadn't really thought that far ahead.

"Watch it, sis!" A group of women dressed in fishnets hissed at me as I struggled past. I accidently hit one of their saggy asses with my suitcase, I guess.

They puffed their cigarettes at me. I mumbled a muffled apology, resolving to keep my head down until I found a motel for the night.

I'm not gonna lie, the one I found was completely disgusting- homeless people lying around out front, and several letters in the neon sign had long been dead- but I was desperate.

The lobby smelled like mold, and the man behind the front desk looked even moldier. He did a double take at me as I yanked my luggage in, a Rolling Stone magazine clutched in his hands.

I grinned when I saw that.

"You like Rolling Stone, huh?" I asked breathlessly. "You know, I'm gonna be a writer there, I already got a job. Well, the internship, but it's with the editor of the whole-"

"You need a room or not princess?" He interrupted rudely.

I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. "Um, yes," I told him quietly, accepting a rust-eaten metal key from his outstretched hand.

It was only 20 dollars a night, but once I saw what passed off for a nice room there, I wished I'd swallowed my pride and took that internship in Denver instead.

As I lay in bed that night, I felt like crying. The sheets felt like cardboard and somehow damp at the same time, and I'm pretty sure that weird squeaking in the walls came from mice. The carpet came up in places, and there was a network of cracked tile constellations in the ceiling.

Most of all, the sound of cars an chaos outside were nothing like the genle breezes of home.

I sat up straight, wide awake, and fully aware that I'd never get any sleep in this dump.