notes from a countryside girl

there’s this really romanticized idea of living in a small town. silence, peace, safety, everyone knows everyone, everything is close by. and honestly yeah, all of that can sound great if you’re like 70 years old.

i’ve lived in the countryside my whole life and one thing you learn pretty early on is that privacy basically doesn’t exist. stories travel ridiculously fast here and trust me, i can speak with authority on that because i am quite a gossip myself. but seriously, gossip travels faster than any actual news.

it’s funny sometimes because people try to invent a rumor with my name in it, even though i love exposing my own life so if it were true i would have already spread it around myself. i overshare constantly. if something dramatic happens in my life there’s a 99% chance i’ve already tweeted about it. and after a drink i’d probably tell a random stranger in the bathroom line about my love life too. so the idea of someone secretly “exposing” me is honestly kinda funny.

another thing that gets exhausting is the monotony. the same streets, the same places, the same faces. over and over again. after a while everything starts feeling way too repetitive. there aren’t that many places to go out, events do happen but they’re rare, and most of the time it just feels like nothing new ever actually happens.

there’s this weird feeling of stagnation, like time moves slower here. not in a poetic “peaceful countryside” way. more in a slightly suffocating way. like the world outside is moving forward and this place is stuck buffering. for the past four years i genuinely loved going to the karaoke bar every friday night. singing the same songs, seeing the same people, ordering the same drinks. for a long time it was actually fun.

obviously there’s only so many times you can sing the same songs and watch the same people do the same drunk karaoke performances before you start realizing you might be stuck in some kind of weird social loop. and the people.. omg. the repetition of people is honestly one of the things that drives me insane. you grow up seeing the same groups, the same styles, the same interests.

a few years ago when i started high school i made friends with this group of “alt” kids who for a while made me feel like i finally belonged somewhere. which was cute in theory but eventually i realized the group was completely dysfunctional and none of us were actually real friends. we would basically just go to the same little bar, get drunk, do stupid things, then the next day we’d only talk to comment on the stupid things we did and plan the next time we’d go to the same bar again… to do the exact same stupid things.

obviously when i was 15 that felt super exciting and chaotic and fun. but it didn’t take long for me to realize how empty that whole dynamic actually was.

so here's another frustrating thing about small towns: how hard it is to find people who genuinely like the same things you do. different tastes can feel weirdly out of place in environments where everyone kinda follows the same vibe.

you start noticing that certain conversations just don’t really happen here. certain connections you make with people online like talking about music, movies, aesthetics, random niche interests would probably never happen at some random countryside party where the playlist is three sertanejo songs and someone yelling “play that one again!!”. and trust me, i would probably go to that party too, but only because i wouldn’t have any other place to be.

there’s also this ridiculous level of predictability. you leave your house and you already know exactly who you’re gonna see, where you’re gonna see them, and probably what they’re gonna be doing. weekends almost always follow the same script. same people, same bar, same conversations. and you end up there again not because you’re excited to go, but because there’s literally nowhere else to go.

sometimes living in a small town feels like the edge of the world is right after the last street. which honestly could be anywhere because every street here is like five minutes away from the other one.

dreams about bigger things like big universities, weird careers, creative lives, meeting new people, experiencing different worlds, can feel really far away from this reality. not because they’re impossible. but because they just don’t exist in the imagination of this place.

honestly if i don’t leave this town soon i feel like my brain might explode.

but at the same time there’s this weird contradiction. because despite all these frustrations, small towns do have this strong sense of familiarity. recognizing every street, knowing exactly how the town looks at different times of the day, having little memories attached to random places.

there is a sense of belonging in a strange way. a feeling of home.

which, unfortunately for this town, does absolutely nothing to reduce my desire to get the hell out of here as soon as possible.

seriously.

someone pls come pick me up.

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