I used to love my neighborhood. It is a very nice, very diverse neighborhood. It is also big, there are so many different types of people there. I met my first friend who I wasn’t related to there. I also experienced my first form of bullying there. When I think back to my childhood, there were many not-so-great moments, most of which happened inside my house. So, getting to leave and go somewhere else was fantastic for me. There is this Retirement/end-of-life care place right next to my neighborhood like I’m saying you don’t even have to cross the street to get there, and they had this big field and a park with a church close by, these are areas me and my friends went to a lot. Being able to race our bikes and skateboards around this big empty parking lot for hours was so fun.
I would also be so sad when I had to go inside. I remember there was this one street inside my neighborhood which we called “the boys’ street” because pretty much every boy in the neighborhood that was our age lived on this street. A creative name I know, of course, me and my friends would pick boys to have a crush on I say pick because no I didn’t actually have a crush on the guy I picked, I just liked how he had the biggest house and the most games. His mom was also very nice. Throughout the school year, I wouldn’t get to see my friends as much and this made me very sad; I also didn’t know what this was. Was school really that busy that they couldn’t hang out? It felt like I was trapped in my house for the first half of the day.
My parents told me I wasn’t allowed to go outside until at least 3 pm because he didn’t want anyone asking why I wasn’t in school. Which perhaps I should have been in school and then no one would have been asking questions. The summers were amazing, I would wake up, eat breakfast, and leave. I would be on my bike all day with my sister and my friends. We would make up dances, race, play house, do all of the fun things kids did then. I think without those summers and without those friends I truly would have gone insane in that house. On one of the streets there is a dead end that ends by the woods, with a secret trail that would lead to some apartment buildings, me and my friends would always feel so sneaky going through this opening, it felt like we were breaking a law or something. It’s safe to say that no matter what we always had a good time together.
I have yet to find experiences that have brought me as much joy as those summer days outside my house. Maybe now because I’m too old to have carefree fun like that. If I leave my house, I must think about gas money, and do I have homework, or work that day that needs to get done? I suppose I just have so many more responsibilities that it’s hard to find time to have carefree fun. I still have friends I enjoy spending time with, but it’s never 16 hours of going back and forth to different friends’ houses and doing gymnastics in the tall grass in one friend’s backyard. Don’t get me wrong, me and my friends fought a lot.
One friend was a character, who very much liked to be the center of attention, but that was okay with me. I would give it to her, because she gave me somewhere to be that wasn’t home. Now my house has cast a stormy cloud around my neighborhood, I always get this feeling of anxiety when I pull in. All my friends and most of my siblings are gone, the sun doesn’t shine as bright, and I haven’t felt that summer joy in years. I would do just about anything to have one more summer day like that. I would give anything to see my neighborhood in the eyes of 10-year-old innocent carefree me, before all the bad stuff, before all the responsibility, before I was scared to be anywhere near my house.
