A Small Town South of the Big Metropolitan City

Let me tell you a story about a young boy who grew up in a small town.

For those of you who haven’t been to a small town, imagine a place that is war-torn, reclusive and conservative. This is of course not entirely true of all small towns, like most loose, inaccurate generalizations about a place that people have not visited. But this boy, having been born and raised so far away from the big city, had felt that some undertones of these misconceptions happen to be true for some facets of his life.

As a kid, this boy, like all the other boys who had been shielded by their parents from the savage reality of adult life, had innocent dreams about becoming more than who he was back then. Catholic-raised, volunteerism-influenced and surrounded by the fantasy that all was good in the world and that he wouldn’t be harmed unless he sought it.

Growing up, he had come to realize that he had not achieved this dream of “more” and that there was much too little to find in a small town flung far away from the treacherously thrilling life in an urban sprawl. His story was naturally rooted in his environment that over the years he had come to despise, much like everything he had grown too familiar with: the same narrow streets, the same short buildings, the same provincial people.

He had, for most of his life, felt limited. Too few options, too short distances, too little ambition for a town that never really wanted more than what it already has—too settled, too submissive, too resigned.

He had dreamed of these buildings that shoot far into the clouds, much taller than all the small buildings in his small town stacked together. He knew that living in an urban jungle wouldn’t solve all his problems but it solved one thing that was much too important for all the other things to be fixed: freedom.

And ultimately, after so long, he moved to the big city, not because it was the big city he was after, but it was the small town that he had to leave. He arrived there with all of his inhibitions released, his future opening up like a massive crack in the sky. He breathed in just a little of this new air then he let everything out, including the oxygen from his past. Catharsis.

Of course, now that this boy had become a man—or at least he thought he was or was somewhere between ignorance and wisdom of what adulthood really means—these dreams about “more” had barely been fulfilled, restrained only by the fact that people who want more never get enough of it and continue to seek what they do not have. But he had his options and he had his freedom, which at the end of the day were enough for him to sleep peacefully and drown out his demons.

One day, the man—after consistent resistance against it and despite every attempt to prevent the inevitable from happening—was thrown back in to the small town, south of the metropolitan city. Not his choice, not his decision, not his desire. This was, at the time, the only remaining solution to being stuck between a rock and a hard place, sometimes something he regretted being forced into.

What he felt as he stood there and breathed the air he used to breathe so many lifetimes ago was like being shoved back in to his childhood prison—small, isolated, finite. He was faced with war flashbacks, panic attacks and an unforgiving storm of emotion. And all those years of growing up, running away and finding a sliver of freedom someplace else other than here, the boy who had grown into a man had become a boy once more and was suddenly afraid again to lose his self.

And so he decided, with final resolve, that despite whatever reason he was here, he was determined—even if a little unprepared—to let everything go just to return to the big city. But more important, he was to leave behind the small town which he had known all his life he was never meant to be in.