I haven't lived in a house since I was a sophomore in high school and most of my early childhood and adolescence was spent in apartments as well. A house means a garden, and organization, and space.
Wonderful, wonderful, terrible space.
You see, living in Houston (or what Aaron calls "inside The Loop" or "Downtown") all of my life has ill prepared me for life in the suburbs. It's very itchy feeling. The suburb that we live in isn't one of the cookie cutter, cardboard house subdivisions that everyone is so fond of, but it still feels a little weird to me for a few reasons:
- Everything is weirdly spaced to me.
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| This was one of the top images when I Googled "weirdly spaced". |
The houses are just a little too far apart from each other. The roads are wider. (To be fair, we live off of a highway.) We have to drive everywhere: to the nearest grocery store, drugstore, Starbucks, park. Everywhere. The commercial buildings and businesses are (what seems to me) ridiculously far away from each other. I am used to leaving a Target, walking about two meters and being at a different store. Or across the side street and being at an apartment complex. Everything here just feels awkward and distant. This may be in part because...
- I don't have a driver's license.
I have never really wanted one, or needed one before. When I was a teenager in high school, I got rides from my parents or had a friend pick me up, and when I moved out on my own, I took public transportation or walked wherever I needed to be. These days, I don't go anywhere. I don't want a license, I don't feel like I should be driving a car, and I think it is silly that I should need one to get a pack of whatever product you want to imagine me buying, relatively safely and quickly.
- I feel as if there is too much sky.
This is probably THE biggest reason I feel so uncomfortable here. There are trees here, but they are mostly concentrated in either
(a) the neighborhoods, which I don't like to walk around because I don't like neighborhoods; with their weird people and dogs and lawns and gnats.
or
(b) the wooded, undeveloped areas, which are full of bugs, I am sure.
The lack of trees and buildings that are taller than one story here disturbs me. I don't feel protected from whatever is in the sky. (The sun? Clouds? Poisonous contrails?)
This is very hard to explain if you don't feel it yourself.
I think I could describe it as sort of a conditioned agoraphobia and compare it to a running theme in some of Isaac Asimov's books: a population who is so used to a enclosed space where they do all of their social and personal interaction, that they cannot comprehend any amount of substantial open space. The affliction is noted in this passage in Asimov's Foundation:
The man smiled. "My name is Jerril. First time on Trantor?"
"Yes, Mr. Jerril."
"Thought so. Jerril's my first name. Trantor gets you
if you've got the poetic temperament. Trantorians never come up here,
though. They don't like it. Gives them nerves."
"Nerves! – My name's Gaal, by the way. Why should it give them nerves? It's glorious."
"Subjective matter of opinion, Gaal. If you're born
in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and work in a cell, and vacation
in a crowded sun-room, then coming up into the open with nothing but
sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown. They make the
children come up here once a year, after they're five. I don't know if
it does any good. They don't get enough of it, really, and the first few
times they scream themselves into hysteria. They ought to start as soon
as they're weaned and have the trip once a week."
And that my friends, is why moving into this house is affecting me in an odd manner. It's a disorder!
THANKS, MOM AND DAD.
Stay tuned for Part Two of "We're moving!", where Megh covers her eyes from the car to the house, closes all of the blinds, and remembers all the neat things about moving into a new house!
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