Thursday the 13th: Big city, bright lights

Come wintertime, I like to turn off the light in my room when it gets dark, so I can watch the stars. The quiet leaves room to think.

The future of this town won’t have me in it. That much I can tell. All my life, I’ve had to deal with the simple truth everyone seems to think they know everyone. The place is too big for most of them to be right, but too small for one to be really out of sight. It gets exhausting when you’re not a people person. Leaves you with a yearning to disappear.

In a big city, few look twice at a girl with a sketchbook in some park. Fewer remember her face after a minute. The kind of loneliness I’m drawn to is wherever you can find lots of people with a friendly disregard to what someone is doing sitting there all by themselves. As cars, bikes and the occasional pair of rollerskates go by, knowing where I am and being completely lost is neither mutually exclusive or disconcerting. The farther from my hometown I go, the cozier I feel, and it’s been like that for a good while.

It’s clear to me I’ll move away. I need to go get attached to new places, find a favourite café and wrap my way around the order of things in the library. I’ll feel homesick and be missed. I’ve ways to deal with that kind of thing.

But when the streets light up for the night, I will mourn the stars a skyline outshines.