I’m lost. Swept up by huge, modern buildings my heels scrape against the ground.

When I was little I always imagined moments like this as sophisticated and grown-up, but I’m lost in this city and I don’t know where to go. I jingle change in my pocket, pulling out coins to give the bus driver. He eyes my outfit. I try to stare back but it doesn’t work.

Every corner looks the same yet I constantly look for differences, things that will pull apart my surroundings to make them unique. Strings of lights join everything together. One big mess. Each street is decorated with identical houses and Starbucks coffee shops. The people inside type on their MacBooks pretending to be writers, artists and hippies. I wonder if they’ll change the world the way they suggest.

Anyone who says that every city is like the rest should really get out of their house more often. I watch from the window of the bus, my back sticking against the blue leather seat. I occasionally gaze at my phone, feeling like I should pretend to be busy in this bustling environment. People march down each sidewalk. They’re all encapsulated by their identities. There’s the Goth girl, the hipster guy, the sociopaths, the girl doing the walk of shame. I wonder if I’d fit in right between any of them.

The excitement of solitude surprises me, just knowing I could go anywhere I wanted and no one would know where I am.

I came here to be original but I’m pretty sure I ended up looking like the rest. Most people move places because opportunity calls. Others crave the extended vacation feel that relocating can give you; the fresh start that you get when you wake up in the morning realizing you don’t know a single person. But like other places, this one is full of working clones. Who wouldn’t get lost here?

Even in a place where there’s always some sort of cultural revolution it’s easy to feel as though it’s the same as the last. It’s especially hard to feel these people are fighting in a dignified manner when there is civil unrest in other places. There are people lighting themselves on fire. But my friends are fighting over a boy in a bar.

It disturbs me that I could take a different bus route everyday but I might be taking the same bus. After all, what’s the point of doing something differently if you can’t do it all the way?