maybe part of my hang-ups with the suburbs come from all the time i wasted doing nothing. maybe i never felt suburbia because i never tried to. i never knew what there was to do, never knew enough people to get me out of the house, never had enough motivation to actually try to do things.
all i ever did was stare. i stared out the bus window on the way home from school and watched kids in their cars with their after-school plans. i stared from my bedroom window at the dirty asphalt as new houses were being built across the street. i started at my phone as i scrolled through instagram, seeing everyone i know with their friends having fun and wondering why i couldn’t have that.
i wasted more time than i can count looking at people i know and wondering why they got to be happy and i didn’t.
all i wanted was to be somewhere that could let me feel like they did, to be someone who was actually capable of feeling like they did.
i say the suburbs isolated me, but maybe i isolated myself. maybe the nights i spent sitting on my bed staring at popcorn ceilings instead of chasing sunsets with giggly friends are why suburbia never seeped into my bones. i never allowed myself to actually live in the suburbs.
i always blame myself for these kinds of things. the isolation is my fault, the lack of friends is my fault, the desire to be anywhere but where i am is my fault. i could have at least tried to go out. i could have at least tried to feel suburbia.
but i didn’t. and now it’s too late to go try to chase sunsets with friends after school. if i’d known that the absence of suburbia was my fault, maybe i would’ve done something about it. maybe i’d be a different person than i am now. maybe i wouldn’t even be sitting here writing this. maybe i’d be sitting in a hernando high school classroom, laughing with friends behind the teacher’s back as she spoke. maybe i’d actually be participating in homecoming this week; i think today was disney day.
i’d love to be someone who actually fit in, someone who could actually grow in the soil she was planted in.
maybe i just wasn’t made to grow.
