today i got to thinking... can you ever really escape "small town" life? physically, sure. it's quite possible to pack up, pick up and move. and i'm no stranger to the pack it up and move it along- i left town for college as all who live in a small town must do if they wish to attend and live at school given that there are no colleges in this here small town. and after that, i stayed for a while, mostly because i didn't have anywhere to live out where i was working so i commuted back and forth, wasting gas and putting miles on my (at the time) brand new car. and then i packed up. i moved out to eastern mass. a land where prior to, i had only been to go to fenway. i bearly even ventured out there in college to do "21 year-old things" with the exception of when i went out "that way" to visit college friends. but i did it. i moved to "eastern mass". i embraced boston. in fact, i embraced boston so heavily that i ended up with a pure-bred bostonian. thick-ass boston accent and all. okay so i'm straying from my initial topic... small town life. so after moving to "boston" and doing "eastern mass" things, i made it back to western mass. and i dragged my pure-bred back here with me (as a side note: he went to college in western mass and loved it so it's not like i had to pull TOO hard...) so i'm back. and i don't live where i grew up but i'm still around enough to know that things in this small town haven't really changed. i have a number of friends who still live here, and i have a number of friends who have left for other adventures and who have found SO much happiness in those adventures. they have found new jobs, new homes, and most importantly, new and strong loving relationships. and that's not to say that they didn't have those things here but just that in moving on to different places, have found the things that we all wish for our friends. but i know that small town hasn't escaped them. i know that although they are waking up to fame in hollyweird and to government in our nation's capital that there is always the thought of this small town and everything they learned from it. and because i know these people so very well, i know that they have been shaped by the things they learned here and the things that they took from it- the good, the bad, the ugly. you can never escape it. and anyone who says you can is a liar. it is ALWAYS a part of who we are. i get that there is drama in a small town but in reality, there is drama in a big city too. you just don't necessarily see the drama because there are more people for it to be hid behind or based upon. but take from it this... that drama will not haunt you for the rest of your life. in fact, if you play your cards right, any and probably most of that drama will teach you a very valuable lesson. it will teach you about who matters. it will teach you about who is going to be there, no matter how far away you go or how many times you come back. it will teach you about yourself- if you let it or it will bite you in the ass... IF you let it. when you wake up every morning and real ize you're in that same small town and that the same drama is going to make its way in and out of your ears at school or after school or wherever... remember this... in a few years, you are going to wake up and miss that. you are going to wish to have it back and to do it over again and once you know then- what you don't know now, you will want it to be exactly the same because from it, you have become the best you that you can be. and in all honesty, even if you do decide to move away, to leave "small town" life forever... ultimately, it will always be with you. you will always find yourself saying things like "well in my hometown" or "when i was in high school..." and comparativly speaking, your experiences are going to be just as great, if not better, than your new friends from the big city. hell... some of them never had a snow day where they could actually spend it sledding or if they could, had no hills to sled down. (okay so as of late, that might be a bit different but...) some of them have never spent their nights kicking back coldies at a bon fire in someone's back yard (this is where some of the best memories are made-btw). and some have never been able to say that they have never utilized public transportation. (it's true, not everyone rides a bus to school. some people take the T... really!). it is these things that make you who you are today and will help to shape who you will become. so embrace it. don't let anyone tell you that "small town living" isn't really living...
The big reason why folks leave a small town, he used to say, is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out. He meant that no one is happy, anywhere. -Chuch Palahniuk, Rant
2 comments:
I grew up in a small town and I wanted to get out. I do NOT want to go back and even driving through it gives me the skeevies. What it taught me is what I don't want. I'm not in a big city - but I'm nowhere near "those people" that inspired me to get out. However, not everyone was one of "those people". There were a few gems - they have coincidentally ALSO left. Just saying.
what i love about what you just said is that it totally confirms- it helped to shape who you are! you learned what you do and don't want. you learned who you are and who you want to be and how you want to raise your child to be too... there is NOTHING wrong with wanting to get out. i don't disagree with that. but it shaped you... right?
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