The Problem with Suburbia

I got off work last night and I was starving!  I was going through my phonebook wracking my brain for people who would be available to eat with me.

I wasn’t able to make it up to the alma mater as usual (probably won’t at all this weekend due to my work schedule), so I was at a loss of what to do.

But, I was finally able to get in contact with my friend Seth.

The problem with suburbia is that the people who are here haven’t ever really left here.  Or, once they are here, they revert.  How I Met Your Mother calls it revertigo, but I really don’t know if other people necessarily cause revertigo the most…

I think it’s much more noticeable when a place causes revertigo.  Most of my friends here revert into a state where they cause high school type drama and go back into their old personalities.

Larissa is probably the worst, but of the Fab Five, she’s the only one who hadn’t left for college.  She doesn’t necessarily revert, she just never really changed.

Seth and I were talking about this yesterday, because he has the same problem I do.  No one we know is willing to just drop everything and head off into the unknown at a moment’s notice.  Everyone is really set in their ways.  Seth describes it as “acting thirty in your early twenties.”  He definitely agrees with me that they’re way too young to already be acting old and shut in, especially considering that most the engaged ladies don’t even live with their fiances yet…

So, that’s the problem with suburbia.  People come back here and they forget how to have fun.  It’s really unnerving for people like me who see this as a temporary stint and not something I want to make permanent just yet.  I don’t know if they see it as a permanent thing either, but the longer they stay here, the more permanent it seems to feel for them.

I think that’s hard to be so old at such a young age.  It’s not even a maturity level thing, it’s just having the expectation that since you’re entering a new stage of your life, suddenly you have to let go of everything you used to be.  That’s wrong.  You shouldn’t suddenly change who you are because of your perceived situation.

I do understand, of course, that people do change because of their situations, of course, but this is the wrong way to do it.  You can’t experience revertigo to your old drama and call yourself mature.

I think that’s everyone’s main problem.  They’re trying to grow in their old environment and they’re forgetting that they’re twenty-two and twenty-three.

I think that that’s my main goal while I’m stuck in suburbia.  I am me.  I’m not that person I used to be.  And more than positivity, I think my main goal is to continue to be who I am.

It’s something to think about.