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You Can Take the Girl Out of the City...

You Can Take the Girl Out of the City...

The very first time I realized that I might have perhaps been living a lifetime with deep seeded city life trauma was when I went to visit my parents during a Thanksgiving break after they'd moved to a small town in North Carolina. The place was mind numbingly peaceful. You could actually hear birds chirping each morning as opposed to the constant barrage of people yelling, the constant motoring of machines and cars, music blaring, dogs barking, and sirens which didn't stop be it day or night.

I found myself struggling to sleep at night. I was used to that cacophony of sound and without it, my all natural cityscape white noise machine was gone. I also found it difficult to deal with the fact that things closed down or that there was only one shop for each thing. One coffee shop. One gas station. One dry cleaners. And actually the dry cleaners became an issue because I needed to attend an event and my mom had forgotten to drop off my dress and of course the one dry cleaners was closed...for the weekend. Who closes the one and only shop on a weekend?

You Can Take the Girl Out of the City...

I also found myself struggling with the level of politeness. I was used to people keeping their heads down and scurrying past you at every second, but in this sort of suburban Whoville, people looked you directly in the eyes and like a dog, I saw that almost as a sign of an impending threat. Lucky for me, their direct gazes were accompanied by thick smiles and bright eyes and rosy cheeked hap...ha...happ (I can't even get the word out)...happy people...replete with a "hi how are you doing today? Do you need help? I can get that for you. Oh, we've got one you can borrow and don't worry about bringing it back. You need some help finding something, I'd be glad to be of service? Come over for dinner, it's no trouble at all." I literally might as well have been in a foreign country because what language was this?

Then there was the saddest realization of all that I came to on this first trip. It was that I was incredibly used to living with a level of heightened awareness and fear. In the city, there are always murders and violence and thefts and rapes every time you turn on the news. Of course it tends to be an over-exaggeration that helps sensationalize the news, but nonetheless, you learn to watch your own back.

You Can Take the Girl Out of the City...

You make sure your apartment is locked up tight, always before you go and when you arrive you check the windows are secure and no one is lurking about. You look over your shoulder to make sure you're not being followed. You don't leave valuables out in the open, and you go out in groups at night because everyone either has been a victim of some type of crime or knew someone personally that was.

But there in NC, there seemed to be none of that constant lingering of criminal activity. My dad actually forgot and left his wallet on the trunk of his car and four long hours later, it was still there in broad daylight. I couldn't believe it. I also couldn't believe their neighbor let their 15 year old baby sitter walk home at night alone and it wasn't even a big deal. Also not a big deal was the frequency in the afternoons of the doors and windows being open even into the dark hours, and nothing would happen aside from a friendly neighbor stopping by to chat.

But the crazy thing was, even though I'd seen this side of life and experienced what a peaceful relatively safe quiet polite life could be, I couldn't stay there if that was even in the plans. Even knowing that I was going back to the city crime, the pollution, the crazies, and the constant barrage of noise, I still wanted to go back to that place, to live with the fear all over again, and to know that no one that bumped into me on the street would ever be so kind as to apologize.

I basically learned that over the years, I'd developed city living Stockholm Syndrome.

You Can Take the Girl Out of the City...
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