It was a small town, about 15,000 people crammed into a five-mile radius.  It was a combination of mansions and apartment complexes, of wealthy and slightly less wealthy, and the occasional family who struggled with money.  It wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, but it was in the middle, a middle child who feels detached from her successful siblings.  And it was small, so small, forcing everyone to drive at least a half hour to anything even remotely interesting.  Sometimes it felt almost suffocating, this feeling that everyone was watching you, the feeling that anything bad you did would spread like wildfire across the town, burning relationships and leaving destruction behind.
The smell of clean streets, of covering up the ugly with pristine perfection, was everywhere.  The people met in clusters, in cliques, feeling the need to be perfect, to maintain their personas and pretend that nothing bad ever happened in this town.
But bad did happen, all the time.  For the teenagers, the suffocation of this town became too much.  They couldn’t escape, couldn’t be free.  They stayed in their bubble of protection, of naivety, wanting to escape but never knowing how.  So they took a different route, covering up their problems with alcohol and drugs.  The parents were so busy preserving their fictitious lives that they were oblivious, not noticing their liquor mysteriously disappearing from their cabinets, or their children coming home at 3 a.m. with their shirt unbuttoned and their eyes bloodshot.
Every day, people rush down the road, accelerating their expensive cars until they are at the very top of the speed limit, or far above it, not bothering to pay attention to the beautiful nature surrounding them.  But I pay attention.  I always have.  I love to walk the forested area of the nearby parks, listening to chirping birds and chattering squirrels as they welcome the spring, and smiling as the sounds of cars and people fade out of existence.  I love the feel of the trees, of branches scraping my skin, of ferns and bushes tickling my legs, of the dust beneath my feet.  The smells of nature and wildlife surround me as I look to the sky, thinking of how large the world really is.  And for a moment, a single moment, I escape from my miserable little town, from the bubble that suffocates me, slowly choking me to death.