Getting out.
My hometown is pretty much dead. It’s like a ghost town – no one walking down the streets, no kids out and about, nothing going on but arguments and failed attempts to fix things that are too badly broken. Whatever changes could have been made here would have had to have been made a long time ago. Maybe even before I was born. It’s worthless, honestly. My Uncle evidently thinks that it’s ‘sad’ that so many teens here have a single goal – get out of this god-forsaken pit. No matter how badly you’ve screwed up in life, no matter how much you’ve got going against you, every teen here feels that if they can just LEAVE, everything can work itself out. And that’s partly true. I’m sick of hearing mothers and fathers and grandparents talking about ‘the good ‘ole days’ in those hushed voices of remembering something long-gone. It sickens me, how an entire city can decline how mine has. ‘Oh, there used to be factories and jobs here, so the city can’t be all bad.’ I beg to differ.
I don’t know what happened before my time, but if it led to this kind of outcome then it mustn’t have been good. The city is just a byway, a little group of houses that travelers pass through on their way to bigger and better things. Galion, in my humble, uneducated opinion, is too far gone. Too much dissent, too many different warring factions, and no reason to stay. None at all. I can keep in touch with friends, if need be, but I’d rather do it from far away. The selfish kid in me is crying out, ‘If I stay here, I’m going to be a no-name, a no-one, and I’ll have only my as-of-yet nonexistent children to remember me.’ Galion can’t help me on my path to change my own life. It can teach me how to read and write, which I suppose are the building blocks of any life worth living, but not much else.
It’s like a broken down gas-station on the road to greatness. A handful of years ago, people just stopped using it. It may have had shiny chrome pumps and plenty of people to wash your windows and fill your car, but it fell into disrepair. The chrome was stripped and sold for booze money, the people all left for bigger cities with more opportunities, and all that was left was a little shell. Sure, you can still fill up your car there, but you’ll do it alone. It’s going to be cold, in the middle of an Ohio winter. No one will wash your windows or tip their hat and hold the door courteously, but you can still get gas. There aren’t any cheerfully humming coolers, no little packs of gum for sale, just an angry old spinster who’s sick of wasting away behind a counter while people drive by. No reason to dawdle and make small-talk. And when you finally pull out of that tiny, dingy station, you’ll feel this profound sense of relief that you’re out. You plan to fill up the tank in Mansfield or Columbus, just so you don’t have to stop there again. And then you promptly forget all about it.
Galion has nothing but family, for me. There aren’t any opportunities. Sure, we have excellent scholarships up for grabs, but after I [hopefully] leave for college, there will be no reason to come back. No outstanding jobs, no gorgeous and quaint downtown, and no reason to stick around. It’s like this poem I found a while ago – I had to go and google it to find it again.
Leaving
by Robert Elliott
Open your arms to change, but please don’t lose yourself
You are what makes you who you are in sickness and in health
A friendly atmosphere has made you who you are to be
Your character is in charge and will control your destiny
You’ll go someplace you’ve never gone, you’ll make your mark again,
You will reset your standards, and sure will make new friends
As soon as today is yesterday your heart will always give
I hope you won’t regret today, cause your future longs to live
If our paths don’t cross again, I won’t forget this day
Cause I’m afraid of change, I’m scared to shift my ways
My eyes will see things they’ve never seen, but I’ve always been here
The time that counts your moments gone will teach me not to fear.
You’ll look upon your life and see familiar grounds
You’ll hear the call of memories and recognize the sound
All the lives you change will make stars disappear
And as you’re settled down, you’ll realize you’ve never left here.
I don’t want to get stuck here, pulled back from what I want by some trifling, nagging moral responsibility to stay true to where I’ve come from. How I see it, Galion has never looked kindly on me. I’m afraid of spiders, the dark, change, and being alone. If I leave Galion, I’ll be facing all of those.
But I think it’s worth it.
