Shrinking Town

Let me be the first to say that I hate living here. I do not hate this town, but I have known it, and it has known me. I am growing but this town is not, and I am only getting bigger. I have been living in the same house on the same street in the same town for fifteen years, and I am ready to leave. I go to school and learn to sit still, wait my turn, use my inside voice. I learn to dot my I’s and cross my T’s, but I was made to do more than just cross my T’s, I was made to cross oceans. I have a critical case of Small Town Claustrophobia, and the only cure is a one-way ticket to get the hell out of here. Once I am far enough away and I can feel the wind in my hair and the freedom on my lips, only then will I be cured.

When I was small, I liked living here because it had everything I ever wanted. There was a park down the street from my house and an ice cream shop and a school full of other kids to play with. To me, life didn’t exist beyond this town. It is so different when you’re young, you don’t know any better. Squished spiders are just ‘sleeping’ and the Tooth Fairy still visits all the time. But when the spiders don’t wake up and the Tooth Fairy flutters away, you start to realize that leaving home is a small price to pay to discover who you are. That’s why I want to go, so that I can find the rest of myself. There might be a piece of me in Florence, and maybe more in Amsterdam, and perhaps I’ll even find a little bit in Bali. But I’ll never know unless I go.

One day, though, I’ll want to come back to show my kids the rickety swingset I used to play on and the Japanese maple tree I used to climb and the school where I used to learn and the field where I used to play soccer. But when I do come back, just for a little, I want this town to feel small. Small compared to the places I have been and the things I have seen and the people I have met, who are very much different from the people in this town. With every new adventure I embark on, I want this town to shrink. I want it to shrink and shrink and shrink until it is so small that I can pick it up and put it in my pocket and keep it as a memory of what used to be. I’ll keep it on a shelf in my new house on my new street in my new town with all of my other memories, as a reminder of my very first adventure.