How to Leave: Quitting the City and Coping With a New Reality by Erin Clune

Author:Erin Clune
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: self help
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2018-10-09T04:00:00+00:00

1. TURN DOWN FOR WHAT?

One of the hardest things about moving is not fitting in. This is about you, but it’s also about them. Our first year in Wisconsin, we were scrambling to understand what people were even talking about when they strung together random words like smallmouth bass catch and release northern region season. Having to learn a new language reinforces that you’re an outsider. It also became apparent during that first year that my friends from New York were never going to visit. One or two of them might pass through, once every few years, on a work trip. But over time, I had to accept that if I wanted visitors, I should have moved to New Mexico. People love green chilies and hot-air balloons. Icy rain and mosquitoes, not so much.

I was also sad because in New York, being sad felt much more normal. Weeping on the Q train because New York is the best city on earth just means you have a soul. But weeping at Target in front of a woman who is there to buy weed killer and enjoy a venti caramel latte is just coastal white girl nonsense. It’s a common misperception that midwestern people, simply because they’re nice, want you to share your feelings. If you want to make friends, you have to keep some of it to yourself. And by some of it, I mean pretty much all of it. Why? Because compared to that Target mom, you are a bigmouth bass who needs to be released back into the city. Oh sure, you’re friendly enough. But your personality is a lot.

I was also sad because I was still judging everything around me and finding it mostly deficient. After raking, then cleaning up dead birds, then getting used to pedestrian supremacy, I still sometimes wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake. Maybe we shouldn’t have moved. Maybe I had chosen the wrong place. Had I been wrong to force my husband to live in the climactic equivalent of southern Canada in exchange for quiet evening walks in the pitch dark that we never took? I told everyone I knew—including my parents, our preschool teachers, and the guy who came to install our cable service—that we should probably move back. For a while, it was all I could talk about. Guess what happened then.

Everyone found me incredibly irritating.

I mean, they smiled. They patiently nodded. Of course they did! Midwestern people basically smile and nod in response to every subject, with the possible exception of a negative comment about hockey or pie. Fact is, you have to pick up on behavioral signals like these so you don’t make too many mistakes and/or enemies. You know how people like to joke about things being TMI—too much information? Like, TMI: I’m sweaty? It took me several months to realize that in the Midwest, pretty much everything—beyond a polite greeting and the possible disclosure of your surname—is TMI.

Midwesterners aren’t the only people who don’t appreciate your shade.

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