Many stories take place in the northeast. So many. The world doesn’t need another story in the bustling epicenter of performative liberalism.
And yet, while I’d like to spin you a yarn about the turbulent Midwest or the muggy South, I don’t know how. I don’t know what they’re like. I don’t know what it’s like to live in a city like New York City or Boston. I’ll never know the experience of growing up in a suburb. So for the sake of both of us, I’ll tell the truth. The truth that happens to be rural Maine.
Small town Maine is like a pocket universe, though a far far less interesting version than the regular one. These small hometowns are empty plots of land until you stand in their center. And that’s all they are: hometowns. No one moves here. No one wants to live in a nowhere place. The buildings look like props and the wooded hills and cloudy skies seem like backdrops. Everything you do here doesn’t really count.
And that’s only because you follow the rules. Driving in feels like falling asleep and awakening to a dream where your decisions feel miles away. It’s only once you leave that you feel a surge of autonomy and declare to yourself that you’ll act differently next time. You’ll put your foot down. You can’t, though, when the ground isn’t really there.
It’s a hard thing, to stand out in a place you’ve always been ignored. I suppose the easiest solution is to create a crack in the pavement and act annoyed like the rest. Leave a problem, let it consume everyone else, so your action is more famous than you are anonymous.
By this point your probably thinking, wow, this narrator is unbelievably dramatic, and I’ll one-hundred-percent agree with you. It’s characteristic of these boring places to want something more serious and compelling. Sitting in the living room, nothing happening besides birdsong outside, my ever present dramatics are the only thing keeping my brain from fading to a dull gray.
I have a couple friends. Thank you, thank you, but applause isn’t necessary. I’m planning a little graduation party, a celebration for surviving the mess that is high school, and I’m inviting all of them.
I’m hoping they get along. I’m truly crossing my fingers. We’re teenage girls, after all. Always conniving, always reactionary. Acting out of fear or a desperate need to be reckless. They’re the only two ways a girl can cope with all the high school- young adult- small town nonsense rules.
Thus, I’m hoping my friends can put aside some social disparity, step in front of the four years of pure hell, and have a good time.