Sometimes I wonder why God doesn’t watch over West Middlesex. In a small town where the only recreational activities are going to Church, eatting pizza or ice cream, high school sports, or high school pregnancies, the higher authority, the being that can ultimately save us from evil, turns his head the other way as this town aggressively destroys itself. It’s a small town that deceivengly looks beautiful in the fall, with houses that have big porches that look out onto yards sprinkled with leaves that blend into Main Street, and a row of small businesses just trying to make it so that the friends of the business owner’s children can always remember the weekend breakfasts in the big kitchens of their friends who had parents with enough money to act loving to everyone. If someone famous had been shot here, Travel Channel would talk of the small town beauty, the industry that once was, the ghosts of the convicts that haunt an abandoned riverside building. But instead, we all kill each other before we have a chance to get famous. The ghosts of former friendships, people who used to be gentle, loving, and friendly before they turned their back on this town haunt the memories of the sentimental ones who chose to stay behind. Industry consists of places that will inevitably be vandalized by the kids who are too fucking cool to show any respect at all, and this town will eventually die while they laugh and spit on the eroding concrete sidewalks.
There is a quiet, lonely evil in this town. It’s the same feeling that one gets as a kid walking from the school campus to the convenience store. The warm sunshine and calm safety that is in the air in your youth evolves to a fear of seeing someone you once were friends with around the corner and an evil that you feel destroying the happiness and optimism of everyone around you. This small down is at war with the cultures around it, and right now it’s a stalemate. Even drugs and gang violence don’t give a shit about this town. We don’t need that. We’re perfectly capable of destroying ourselves.
When I was younger, I had a really great life. The depression, low self-esteem and general displeasure that genetically flowed through my veins kept me from enjoying it to the maximum, but I had a very great life. I had friends that I loved, and friends that loved me. Beautiful girls at least knew what my name was, and I had a few close friendships that had the potential to evolve into something else if I wouldn’t have been so stubborn. Adults and figures of authority gave me a decent amount of flexibility to be myself and push boundaries without the threat of disciplne, and while I didn’t have Brady Bunch parents that forced my sister and I to discuss our day around the family dinner table, they didn’t burn us with cigarettes, spend their money on crack, and force us to wear last year’s style of sneakers either. It was an ignorant bliss, but I was happy, and I smiled. Others I knew smiled.
As I grew older, I kissed girls on their couches, and sat across from them in restaurants and they smiled. I took walks in the park with friends that told me how they had finally found love and wanted so much out of their future, and they smiled. I knew people who went away to college and came back for the homecoming football game and returned for the summers, and when they saw how this area welcomed them with a safe familiarity, they smiled. I really don’t know anyone who smiles anymore.
For so long I beat myself up trying desperately to find a way to make this town a place where the girl of my dreams would be happy. I thought if my business could help other businesses, the economy would grow, the downtown shops would get bigger, and she wouldn’t hate it here anymore. I wanted this town to succeed AND I wanted our relationship to succeed. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have had to choose between the two. In the end, she made the choice for me and left this town with such hate for it and me that she’ll never happily return. Sometimes, if I am strong enough, I’ll take a brief glance at a picture of my ex-girlfriend on the internet. She doesn’t seem to smile the way that she used to smile in pictures with me. I love the girl unconditionally, and while I really don’t believe that the only reasons she ever smiled so much in the past was because of me, I cry myself to sleep praying for her to truly be happy, to eventually forgive me, and to not hate this place she came from forever.
Tonight, at the convenience store, I saw my old friend Julie. She looked at me and I started to say hi, as if we might speak. She half-smiled, I half-spoke. The noise that came out of my mouth sounded like the meow of a cat that had been left in a field for days, so malnourished by the time he reached my back porch that he knew he was going to die but he wanted something to eat, one last time, anyway. She walked past me, I put my head down and walked forward, and her boyfriend walked in the store after. Nothing more happened. We don’t speak anymore. Julie used to be my absolute best friend. For years, I trusted her with every single detail of my life, and she trusted me with the same. We were inseparable. If someone would have told me then that in 2010 we wouldn’t even speak to one another, I probably would still be laughing. That girl was such an important part of my life, so crucial to the development of my mind and heart and emotions, that I owe her more than I could ever possibly repay. I took her for granted and I regret that more than I could ever put into words. We drifted away. Julie was the kindest, most gentle, optimistic, genuinely happy and loving person I ever met. But when she walked into the store on a cold, grey, exhausting night like tonight, she didn’t smile. I just kept my head down, checked out, got into my car and cried all the way home. I haven’t stopped crying since.
I was raised to believe in God, to pray, to believe in a higher power that would keep us all safe. But after tonight, I’m disappointed in the God that I’ve prayed to all my life. I am upset with him for turning his back on a town that had so many beautiful, loving, sweet, innocent, amazing people that had so much to contribute to this world, and who contributed so much to my life. I’m upset that at one point I knew who I wanted to marry, knew who I wanted to be at the wedding, knew who I wanted to be friends with all of my life, and now I have to beg the same God that neglected me just to let the people who were once in my life to speak to me again. From the amazing times we all shared….. to not even speaking. It breaks my heart. I wonder how many other people have been affected by this. I wonder how many people are trying to keep warm in their houses tonight, while the frigid cold air fills the town that no one is giving enough love to keep warm.
I understand that when people grow up, they change, and their friendships change. I know it’s extremely rare that any person reaches an old age over 60 and still speaks to everyone that formed their character growing up. But still, in school, when teachers made sneaky remarks about how the insignificant arguements that were so important then wouldn’t mean dick to us in the future, no one told us it’d be as bad as this. There was no full disclosure on growing up. Why didn’t some adult who lived this before us stand up in the front of the room and scream at us and say “growing up is going to be the most painful experience of your life. No one that loves you now will love you in the future, and if you rely on this town to be your companion, you will be alone forever.” Why didn’t a counselor or advisor or even a family member slap us all across the face and let us know that “you all change as you get older” wasn’t even a drop in the bucket to describe what will happen when God turns his back on a town full of people that desperately need his love?
