For nearly a decade, the hustle the metropolitan area I’ve lived in has grown not in leaps, but in Superman-level building scale heights. With every city block and street one turns onto, new construction appears like fungi growing up from the ground on once bleak, barren areas, in an effort to keep up with the demands of housing.
Green and white Tyvek, 3M coverings, and brick or gray and brown siding, or other drab colors reminiscent of the Soviet era style-construction we see, color the red-packed dirt lots where once who-knows-what sat empty for a decade or more before it was razed for cheap construction and housing that will cost more than the median average salary of most of those looking for a home.
Bleak as the picture sounds, there is a joy to anonymity to living in such a place, and a painful longing for community and belonging when the joy evaporates.
The rest of this post discusses the related experience of a longtime friend and her difficulty in fitting in, in brief, with the small town population of the hamlet she lives and works in. Though her story has a happy-enough ending, it still begs the question of how we understand our place in the world, and the emotional release and relief from living in a place with so many bodies, one’s past and pain doesn’t have to follow around like a surly ghost.
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