Wednesday, June 27, 2007

So...Why Don't I Just Move?

Let me take a minute to describe this awful city that I live in. Upon first glance, it is charming and full of history. School children wait all year for their big trip to my front door--almost literally as I live within a few blocks of a large mall where tour buses park to let their riders terrorize my neighborhood and eat at the food court. Families plan vacations here. Foreigners make this their first stop.

However, despite being a gaudy lure for vacationers, the city I live in has very little to offer her inhabitants beyond high prices and traffic jams. The people here are very transient. This is a town full of ambitious yuppies looking to get in a few good working years and then move back to their real homes to make piles of money. The demographic is decidedly young, which being young myself, should be a good thing, but it is not. There are very few families. Even fewer children. When I go back to my cornfield I am shocked, amazed, and ridiculously annoyed by teenagers and their bad driving and rude behavior, and completely turned off by bratty 10 years olds pushing around their younger siblings in the popular chain restaurants. We don't get that here. This is mainly a city of adults. Snooty adults.

The people here are on a mission, and can't be bothered. Working a 12 hour day is the norm, and most lives consist of very little other than work, eat and sleep. Thus, people are exceedingly unfriendly. No one is interested in making friends, and even if they were, there wouldn't be time to do so. Or at least no one would admit to having time to do so, as free time is a sign of weakness, as ridiculous as that sounds. People here take a sick pride in how stressed out and haggard they are. The fewer hours of sleep they get, the more important they think they are. Everyone is looking out for themselves and their interests only. People don't smile when they pass you. They don't say hello in the hallway. No one asks about your personal life because no one really has one to speak of. This is a very lonely and isolated city.

I have noticed a distinct change in me since moving out here. I used to be funny and outgoing, willing to bring up small talk in line at the grocery store, or hold the door open for a line of strangers. Now I am withdrawn and introverted. I have lost my sense of humor even to the point where my boss has to tell me to lighten up. I don't smile much and I laugh even less. I can count on one finger how many friends I have. I would need several extra hands to count the number of people I know who are in the exact same miserable position, but have forgotten how to fix it. My passion for life has been sucked away and replaced by a drive to....well, I want to say "survive" but that's just a little to rhymey for my tastes.

I'll close this up with an example from today of the sheer unfriendliness and unwillingness to engage another person that is so common in this city. For the record, I have seen this happen more than is natural, and I myself have done it as well.

The scene: two people are on a narrow sidewalk lined on either side by bushes. It's a beautiful day and neither person appears to be rushed. The two approach each other. Both have their heads up, backs straight and noses held firmly in the air. They can see that there won't be room for both to pass at the same time. Instead of one person politely smiling and stepping aside with (heaven forbid!) a smile and a hello, both people speed up and literally run themselves into the bushes, scattering pine needles and mulch instead of being courteous. The whole time neither party makes eye contact, as that would be like admitting you have seen the other person and are willing to acknowledge their existence. Neither can be bothered to be friendly.

And that is what it is like here. We would rather rub elbows with the landscaping than try to be real human beings.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

A Pathetic Introduction

I am bored. I live in a city far away from my family. I left home over two years ago after college. I thought I didn't want to stay in a cornfield. I thought I wanted to see the world. I thought I wanted to make it on my own. And I was right. For a minute.

I've lived in this town for going on three years. The first year was fun. I had a handful of friends, a job that barely paid the rent, and I learned to be a grown up. I did all the things that I previously wondered how my parents managed to do. I paid my taxes. I found a doctor. I set up my utilities and bought furniture. Ok, fine, I didn't actually buy furniture. I'm still using the stuff I had in college. But everything else really did happen. Any day now I'll have real furniture.

Last night I had what some might consider an anxiety attack coupled with PMS and a plague of sadness. This is the first time (ok, second time, but whose counting...) that this has happened, and I'm worried it may lead to depression, despite my attempts to tell myself that it is a healthy expression of bottled up emotions. The scene looked something like this: me, rocking back and forth on my couch, hair a mess, mascara running, choking out to God that I want to go home. And then there was the crying. I happen to catch my reflection for a second while the cry was occurring and it temporarily cracked me up. It was hideous. I had the bulbous red nose, pale face, shiny streaks of black running down my cheeks to meet up with the streams of snot moistening my upper lip. I'm an ugly crier. Which was, in the midst of my temporarily insane laughter, the thought that brought me back to tears. No one loves the ugly crier. I am, obviously, despite all the evidence to the contrary, at this particular moment, irrevocably unlovable.

Keep in mind here, I was suffering from PMS. Drama akin to that of an angst-filled confused goth teen is to be expected. Don't judge.

A few hours later, after several long and passionate, gut churning talks with absolutely no one, I calmed down and fell asleep. Today I feel fine, if still a little lonely.

I don't know what came over me last night. Raise your hand if you know this is a lie. When I moved from the cornfields to the new big city, I left behind my family. At the time, I thought this was a GREAT idea. Granted, I loved my family, but I was the child that was destined for something else. I remember my mom even casually mentioning one day at dinner that I would be the child that would skip town as soon as I had my degree in my hands and never look back. At the time I couldn't fathom believing her, but her prophesy was right. I moved away exactly one week after graduation.

It turns out that the people I left are the people I need. I have never loved my family so much as I love them now, at this very minute. Each day I spend being on my own makes me wish I had them here to smother me and drive me crazy and annoy the hell out of me. I'm jealous that my sister has to go on double dates with my parents. I'm raked with sadness when I call my mom and she is out with "the family." I don't remind her that I'm part of the family too. My dad lays out at the pool with my little sister and her boyfriend. I want that to be me, and honestly, what sane 20-something wants to have a pool party with their dad?

My family members are the best people ever. My sisters and I can laugh for hours. And not just a polite chuckle. When we get together we laugh from the gut. We laugh so hard that sounds don't come out. People outside my family don't understand it. Most think we are weird. This would be true.

So in conclusion, I'm sad because I am still living in this expensive, lonely, cold and anonymous city and I LONG for home. I long for the cornfields and the laughter and the built-in-friends that still live there and for native English speaking fast food employees. I have nine months left on my awful lease here in this city. In nine months and one day I will be back where I belong.