i spent seven years of my life in the suburbs. in a town where everyone knew everyone’s name and your classmate’s mom was probably your first grade teacher. but i didn’t know everyone’s names, and my teachers were never my friends’ moms.
i grew up in the suburbs, but i didn’t grow up in suburbia.
to me, suburbia is a feeling. something you have to grow up in to actually feel. in my town, suburbia is the kids who have memberships to the country club. they’re the kids who actually throw parties when their parents aren’t home. they’re the kids who will wake up at ungodly hours of the morning to go hunting on weekends. they’re the kids who ride their bikes around town and get milkshakes at velvet cream on friday nights.
these are the kids who lived next door to each other all their lives. these are the kids who knew each other all their lives, grew up together like family.
but i didn’t know anybody. i never had the pool parties or the friends to bike around town with or to go to velvet cream with. i didn’t even learn how to ride a bike until i moved to the suburbs because the gentrified small-town pavements were finally safer than the cracked concrete of my old town.
one time in my old house in my old town, my brother and i made friends with some kids who lived in the apartments behind our house. my parents built a fence and we never saw them again.
but even in this new town where i thought i could finally be a kid, i couldn’t walk around my neighborhood unless my brother went with me, which he never wanted to do. i didn’t know anyone to play outside with, and i didn’t know how to find them. i always wanted to find a home in the suburbs. i wanted the pool parties and the bike rides and the familiarity of people who felt like family, but i didn’t have that feeling everyone else grew up with.
there was one girl in this new neighborhood that was my age; she was the first friend i made in this new town. in fourth and fifth grade, i would go over to her house after school, and we would ride our bikes around the neighborhood. with her, i thought i was finally starting to feel suburbia seeping into my bones.
one day, she stopped answering the door. i haven’t ridden a bicycle since.
I understand the feeling of being an outsider and not relating at all to the expectations of what you should be. I really liked this.
I’m obsessed with the story this tells, especially how it sets up perfectly in the first paragraph. I like the change in tone in the fifth paragraph as well. The last two paragraphs gave me chills. I can feel your emotions through your writing, and I’m sure everyone else who read this can too. It made me strangely nostalgic, though I lived in the middle of nowhere as a kid, I felt the bike rides and ice cream truck trips and playing in the woods with my sister, exploring and having adventures. I loved the atmosphere that your piece surrounds itself with. I really enjoy your writing, Madison 🙂
As someone who’s closest neighbor has always been a mile or two away I thought it might be hard to understand what this post might try to convey, but with your writing i was automatically sucked in and i immediately related to a story i’ve never been a part of. Great job!
I feel like this experience in your life still defines who you are today, even though you are out of the suburbs and the nonexistent feeling of suburbia. The impact “suburbia” had on your childhood cultivated you, and gave you this very yearning writer’s voice, so, it might not have been that bad of an experience after all. Great post.
“Suburbia” sounds like the theme in many of the wattpad books i’ve read and you sound like the girl who stands out, but will one day be on top. The loss of a friend, especially a first or very dear one, is extremely hard. I can’t wait for part 2!
I absolutely love the last bit of this post! It gave me chills and a sense of relation, because I can relate a lot.