So I get off the metro around 3 AM, and start walking up the street to my apartment. Not for the first time, but for the strongest in a while, I ask myself, “wow… what the fuck are you doing walking through downtown in a major city at 3 AM? you’re a redneck from nowhere. they look at you funny here.”
But then… I don’t really care how they look at me. Just wish more of the cute ones would touch me.
I’ve had serious urges to go back to my home town or some small place and live. Aside from the whole “things to do vs. isolation” argument*, I wonder why I’m where I am. Certainly on my last trip home, it occurred to me that while DC may be infinitely more complex and dangerous, it’s the devil I know. Confronted with a questionably dangerous situation in my home town, I was lost as to how to react. While I’m by no means “citified”, I haven’t lived in a truly small town since 1993. I think in my hometown, it’s more of that whole lord-of-the-flies, go-with-your-gut, redneck, survival-of-the-fittest thing. And I have no illusions as to where I stand under those conditions. Whereas most things in a city, even the bad things, usually involve a whole line of decisions. And when you over-think things as much as I do…
Ideally, I want to reside somewhere under “live and let live” conditions. But it doesn’t seem like those kind of places exist any more.
*New thought for me: Do you think maybe people marry younger in small towns simply because they’re bored? Or put less offensively… because to move on to the “next set of stuff” you do in small towns means being part of a family?
sphinxku!
OK.. I didn’t know what got into me last night, but I was thinking about this:
Back in upstate dating moved in quite a pace. Calling, rendez-vous or excuses to get together happened like 1,2,3. In 2 weeks one could easily declared they were “officially” in dating.
Now here I am in Gotham city.
I’m somehow stuck in the middle of nowhere where an advisor told me to not be in a rush or needy or whatever you wanna call it. My thought here: it wasn’t about the “rush”. I’m not joining any sorority! But I want to see “progress” = it’s a yes or no answer, hence time to move on. Adding on top of the dilemma is how busy we get in the city. But does that mean we no longer think about our personal life?
Is this somehow related?
Patrick
In college there were so many people hooking up and dating, that you kind of rushed through thhe early stages of getting to know someone, because if you waited too long, they would be on to someone else.
But we get older and slow down. It becomes less about everybody having to have someone right away. And in the city, we’re much less concerned about being alone. Even if 10 people you know get married, there’s 20 more who aren’t. That lack of pressure means less decisions being made.