the suburbs (pt. 2)

ready to start // arcade fire

i always wanted to leave the suburbs.

or at least, i wanted to feel something more.

sure, i love the town i grew up in. i love the friends i made and the person it helped me become. i love knowing every nook and cranny of its streets. i love being able to walk into la siesta and have every waiter know exactly what my family is ordering the moment we sit down.

but i was outgrowing the suburbs.

i was outgrowing the friends who never felt quite like family. i was outgrowing the nooks and crannies like an old t-shirt that just didn’t fit right anymore. i wanted something more substantial than living in the same town with the same people and never going anywhere.

people say, “grow where you’re planted,” but i didn’t want to stick my roots in the same place forever. i wanted to blossom, i wanted to send seeds across city limits and state lines. i wanted to bloom past what i’d always known and grow somewhere else.

i wanted to crack concrete and move houses from their foundations and unsettle all the settlement that everyone else had let overcome them.

but i was the kudzu that consumes our state. i was foreign, sullying everything in my path with invasive green. it covered trees that had grown for generations and sucked the life from their roots.

but my green wasn’t tree green, it was new green. it was the green of fresh faces in new places. it was entering a community that had locked the gates to interwoven groves of family trees long before i could even fathom breaking the chains.

i knew my vines were cutting of the life of trees that had grown where ancestors planted them when it was still called jefferson, before hernando desoto found a river and changed its namesake forever. my vines were suffocating a community i never truly belonged in, so i withdrew my sprouting entanglement with this new home and potted myself, confined to my own clay solitude in the suburbs.

i wanted so badly to finally plant myself and grow, but my roots never truly found purchase.

so i spent my life in the suburbs waiting. i waited for someone to come along and see me outgrowing that clay pot and shatter it. i waited for someone to see that i was ready to grow past the town and take over the world.

Author: Madison Cox

madison: known for being very loud and very short and also a little sad. finally embraced her inner hipster. typically can be found listening to music or writing something. very fond of sweaters, hugs, and chucks. thinks capital letters are overrated. enjoys typing like a child but speaking like an adult. really wants to write books one day. View all posts by Madison Cox