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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/ChickenJeff on 2024-09-04 02:39:06+00:00.
It was just after a particularly awful day at work and I was taking the bus home. It was the last bus of the night, around midnight.
Now… I’m what you’d call a big fella. I am a big, tall, lumbering man. At the time I had very long hair as well. I’m also far from fashionable. I’m a comfort-first dresser, and it's very cold where I live so I am LAYERED up. I got a hood on. Gloves. Scarf. Miscellaneous sweaters and jackets in varying states of distress because I can’t bring myself to throw anything away.
Basically what I’m saying is I looked like hobo Michael Myers from Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2. Combine that with how tired I was from work, I look dead on the inside too. Like, totally vacant. My brain is mush at this point, I am for all intents and purposes, a zombie.
I have a favourite spot on the bus. Because I’m weird like that. So if that spot is open, I will sit there. Tonight, it was open, so I sat down. I did not take in my surroundings because I was far too tired and out of it – I just needed to sit down as soon as possible. I happened to be sitting directly behind a young woman but I didn’t think too much of it at first. I was using all of my energy to simply not pass out.
But… About two minutes later my brain clicked on and my heart sank. I realized that this woman I was sat behind was the ONLY other person on the bus. Instantly I knew I fucked up. The WHOLE bus is empty and I, this giant hobo of a man, hobble on and sit RIGHT behind this young woman who’s all alone in the middle of the night. What must she be thinking? She must think I’m a fucking creep.
So I thought, shit, what do I do? Do I move to another seat? No, that seems even more suspicious. That calls attention to it. Plus, I had already been sitting here for two full minutes, it’s too weird to switch now. I at least shifted to the adjacent seat so i'm somewhat diagonally behind her instead of RIGHT behind her. But that's not enough. Do I say something? Do I be like “Sorry I sat behind you, I’m not a creep I promise”? That’s such a red flag too!
I was trying so hard to find a correct sequence of words or actions that would effectively reassure this poor woman and make her feel safe but I could not crack the code. I KNOW how sketchy I looked. There was no recourse. I eventually figured it would be okay, it's probably not THAT big of a deal. I'm just a worrier. As long as nothing else happens, I probably just mildly sketched her out and it's fine.
Then I realized that while all of this was swirling around my head like a vortex, I’ve just been staring wide-eyed directly at the back of her head. For like a full minute. I was entirely in my head and I didn’t even know it was happening. As soon as I came to that realization, I also saw her subtly glancing AT ME from her periphery. She was watching me staring at her, but trying not to be obvious... I was mortified. I immediately averted my gaze. I turned my head SO fast to look at anything else… but like… that’s ALSO a red flag. It’s like I was “caught.” Which I… was? But it wasn’t intentional! Too many things were in my brain, I wasn't paying attention to what my eyes were doing! I'm neurodivergent if that wasn't clear by now.
Another minute passed and I was too petrified to do anything at this point. There were no good ideas for how to fix this. I just felt so bad. Then I saw her subtly turn to glance back at me again and LIKE AN IDIOT I looked back at her. Because when someone looks at you, you look at them! It’s instinct! Because you’re expecting an interaction or something! So you meet their gaze! But in this scenario, that’s the opposite of what I should be doing! Plus, she had to subtly turn her head to glance at me, I only had to shift my eyes. My eyes obviously moved faster. So I was looking at her BEFORE she could see me. So from her perspective she looked back and saw me staring at her AGAIN.
And… God damn it, I could tell she was very nervous. She was on edge. And I wanted more than anything to be able to make this right but I had dug a hole and every potential path of action I could only see making me look like more of a creep. I was just praying we did not get off at the same stop.
If I saw that she was getting off at my stop, I decided I would just not get off. I’d stay and get off somewhere else and figure it out. I could not have this woman think I was following her in addition to everything else.
Fortunately, she got off a few minutes later at a different stop to mine… She kind of hurried off… I saw her look back as she was leaving, presumably to make sure I wasn’t following. That broke my damn heart. I definitely made this poor woman think she was about to get murdered and I'm so sorry.
TL:DR I absent mindedly sat directly behind a young woman on an otherwise empty bus and then made it worse