Undergraduate / Page 271 of my autobiography "This bus ride is about remembering" [8]

This is a little rough because it's a first draft and also because it was challenging for me to put my emotions into English, but if you guys could help me with the grammar and conventions or just tell me your opinion of it, I'd be enormously grateful. :)

The prompt was: "You have just completed your 300-page autobiography. Please submit page 217."

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"This bus ride is about remembering," Ru Qing reminded as she noticed that my eyelids were scrunched shut. I could feel the road becoming rougher and the shadows cast upon my face by the trees that were beginning to grow denser, and it was all becoming too much for me. I scrunched my eyelids tighter together because my heart was beating out of my chest and the sweaty bodies crowded all around me were beginning to suffocate me. Ten years; it had been ten years since I had last seen the dingy little sub-village that had been more than kind to me after my father suddenly left us in hopes of reaching America; ten years since I had immigrated to America myself.

I gripped her hand tighter as I finally mustered up the courage to open my eyes, and my childhood came into view. The dirt paths, the small crumbling brick and cement buildings; the dingy pots and pans hanging off every nook and cranny; tears welled up in my eyes as I took in a world that had not changed in my ten years of absence. But the noodle maker was no longer stretching rice dough outside of his hut, and my grandpa was no longer at the top of the hill awaiting for my return from school, the corner of his eyes crinkling as he smiled at me. The tears fell onto my lap, the sound of me crying could barely be distinguished from the roar of the bus engine and the chatter around me. Without thinking, I reached my shaking hand towards the spot I had last seen and spoken to my deceased grandfather, but the thump of fingers meeting glass brought me back to reality. The abandoned village faded back into trees as the streaked window panes of the bus reminded me that I was now only an outsider looking in.

Tens seconds on a bus ride; that's what it took to put my life back into perspective. For the last five years of my life, I had been traveling one hundred miles per hour down an endless road, thinking of nothing else but reaching my destination, but in the process, I had gotten incredibly lost in the world. My gas tank had run low, and my car had broken down. Before I knew it, I no longer remembered exactly where I was going, and I couldn't remember why I had started driving and how to get home.

Ye Ru Qing squeezed my hand reassuringly. "Do you remember?" she asked. Yes, I remembered. I remembered a seven year old me wanting to make the people of my small village, my makeshift family of aunts and uncles, proud. I remembered promising my grandfather that I would one day build him a giant house in America and buy him a tub of pigs feet every day for the rest of his life. I remembered him laughing heartily as I fell asleep on his back, my head filled with dreams of a brighter future for both the figures of my past and the children of my posterity.

Sometimes, the best thing to do is to shut off the car engine and just remember.