Entry #1: Never give up on your hope
For those who don't know, I grew up a pretty irrelevant, small city in Romania. The way these types of cities work - not just my small irrelevant city - managed to create a pretty bad environment for me, even if it took me a while to realise it, and the reasons for the environment of the city not being good for me were plentiful, but just to name a few key ones:
1) The people in these cities are fake; they are artificial in every sense of the word, especially people my age. People my age in these smaller cities generally try to one-up each other in who can be the loudest, most obnoxious and "rich" (in quotations because they pretended they were rich) asshole with no regards for anyone else but themselves "on the block". I was not able to vibe with this at all; that resulted in most of my 19 years living there being lonely, very lonely, with the only non-lonely period of my life coming around the time I turned 18, when I was lucky enough to form a network of friends that I cherish very dearly.
2) The city being small means that you quickly run out of things to see and do. I remember when I started regularly going out on night walks around the city, just randomly wandering around like a disoriented tourist who was visiting the city for the very first time and was trying to find the nearest supermarket to get food from, I thought that I'd need to go on multiple regular walks to see the entire city. This ended up being false, as I was able to tour the entire city in ~3 walks. And by the time I had gone on ~10 of these walks, I knew the city from corner to corner. There was not a single detail - like a toppled street sign - that I couldn't point out in any neighborhood in the city. This was a few good months before I moved to Bucharest, so I was stuck, or felt stuck, in a city that I had seen over and over again, in a place where I - quite literally - had nothing else to do. Most of my walks from then on until late September used to just follow the formula of "go to the mall, go to random park, go to random border of the city, go to supermarket to get a bottle of water, go to another random park, go home", and with this simple formula I would always tour ~75% (maybe ~65% in some nights) of the city. In one night. I came up with this formula after I had noticed that these were the only interesting places in the city. For the next few months I would go on the same path over and over again, which eventually led me to going out less. At one point, I would only go out when my friends invited me out, but even then we would all - as a group - follow the same path formula.
The city I was in created an Envrionment that felt like a Jail for me. A Jail where I had little to no people who I could vibe with to talk to for most of my sentence, where I had seen everything and then some. The former of these things especially contributed to my absolute feeling of dread that I felt for most of my time living there, being one of the main contribuitors into my depressive episode and my death wishes which some members of the community might still remember. It's scary what having no one by your side can do to you, we're called social animals for a reason after all.
This feeling of being jailed would all come to an end in late September, when I would definitively move to Bucharest. I knew this would be the biggest chapter of my life so far. I would take on everything that my Dad and I used to do around the house and do it all alone - but in turn I would have total freedom. I would live in my own little space, where I could express myself fully and be myself fully, where I could live by my own rules. Moving into a bigger city has also been a shock for me in another way - the sheer size of it. Sure, I knew it would be bigger than what I was used to, but I never could've expected what I was stumbling into (in a good way). Suddenly, I went from being able to tour 75% of the city in one night to having to use Public Transport to effectively move from point A to point B (God bless the Metro system). Just as suddently, I went from seeing the same boring aesthetic of multiple shades of grey mixed on depressed and old Communist Appartment Buildings, all alligned in one row along a street with certain supermarkets or other shops below them, to witnessing an absolute mix of Architectural Styles on absolutely every street. I feel like there's always something new waiting for me in a part of Bucharest that I haven't been to yet, and I for one am excited to see all that this city has in store. Not to mention that the Architectural style of certain Buildings may hide bits and pieces of Historical Gems within their shapes, curves, walls, and other elements that you could think of.
A bigger shock, however, was the people. No longer would I dissproportionally see the same large amount of fake people, the same amount of hopeless people - hopelessness which would beam from their faces, their manners, their way of talking. No, instead I would see a mix of people, of all ages, of all creeds and of all kinds, enjoying life. Just vibing. Most of the people I've interacted with are also incredibly nice, to a degree that I've never seen someone from my hometown be (refer back to me talking about fake people so I don't have to repeat the same point again).
Another big difference is that, here, you have so many things to do. There are so many events of all kinds hosted every week here - festival, concerts, marches, protests. Back in my hometown, you would be lucky if - once in a blue moon - a folklore singer would prop up a stage and sing for a few minutes then leave. The abundence of different types of places here is not even comparable to my hometown - malls, shops, supermarkets selling products you'd never see back in that city.
I have absolutely no clue if my rambles are still making any sense right now, but I guess what I'm trying to say with all of this is, no matter how hopeless your sitatuion might look right now, no matter where you are, who you are, and what you're going through, never give up on your hope, even if your hope is just a minuscule crumb of a thought that things might get better. I went from a person who felt jailed and profoundly lonely and hopeless in their own city to experiencing a total glowup and a total U-turn of my situation. If life can get better for me, it certainly can, and will, get better for you too.
(I will re-read this tomorrow when my head is clearer and I'm less tired and will correct any typos and weird wording that might be here - it's almost 3 AM lmao, so blame anything wrong with anything I've said on that)
1) The people in these cities are fake; they are artificial in every sense of the word, especially people my age. People my age in these smaller cities generally try to one-up each other in who can be the loudest, most obnoxious and "rich" (in quotations because they pretended they were rich) asshole with no regards for anyone else but themselves "on the block". I was not able to vibe with this at all; that resulted in most of my 19 years living there being lonely, very lonely, with the only non-lonely period of my life coming around the time I turned 18, when I was lucky enough to form a network of friends that I cherish very dearly.
2) The city being small means that you quickly run out of things to see and do. I remember when I started regularly going out on night walks around the city, just randomly wandering around like a disoriented tourist who was visiting the city for the very first time and was trying to find the nearest supermarket to get food from, I thought that I'd need to go on multiple regular walks to see the entire city. This ended up being false, as I was able to tour the entire city in ~3 walks. And by the time I had gone on ~10 of these walks, I knew the city from corner to corner. There was not a single detail - like a toppled street sign - that I couldn't point out in any neighborhood in the city. This was a few good months before I moved to Bucharest, so I was stuck, or felt stuck, in a city that I had seen over and over again, in a place where I - quite literally - had nothing else to do. Most of my walks from then on until late September used to just follow the formula of "go to the mall, go to random park, go to random border of the city, go to supermarket to get a bottle of water, go to another random park, go home", and with this simple formula I would always tour ~75% (maybe ~65% in some nights) of the city. In one night. I came up with this formula after I had noticed that these were the only interesting places in the city. For the next few months I would go on the same path over and over again, which eventually led me to going out less. At one point, I would only go out when my friends invited me out, but even then we would all - as a group - follow the same path formula.
The city I was in created an Envrionment that felt like a Jail for me. A Jail where I had little to no people who I could vibe with to talk to for most of my sentence, where I had seen everything and then some. The former of these things especially contributed to my absolute feeling of dread that I felt for most of my time living there, being one of the main contribuitors into my depressive episode and my death wishes which some members of the community might still remember. It's scary what having no one by your side can do to you, we're called social animals for a reason after all.
This feeling of being jailed would all come to an end in late September, when I would definitively move to Bucharest. I knew this would be the biggest chapter of my life so far. I would take on everything that my Dad and I used to do around the house and do it all alone - but in turn I would have total freedom. I would live in my own little space, where I could express myself fully and be myself fully, where I could live by my own rules. Moving into a bigger city has also been a shock for me in another way - the sheer size of it. Sure, I knew it would be bigger than what I was used to, but I never could've expected what I was stumbling into (in a good way). Suddenly, I went from being able to tour 75% of the city in one night to having to use Public Transport to effectively move from point A to point B (God bless the Metro system). Just as suddently, I went from seeing the same boring aesthetic of multiple shades of grey mixed on depressed and old Communist Appartment Buildings, all alligned in one row along a street with certain supermarkets or other shops below them, to witnessing an absolute mix of Architectural Styles on absolutely every street. I feel like there's always something new waiting for me in a part of Bucharest that I haven't been to yet, and I for one am excited to see all that this city has in store. Not to mention that the Architectural style of certain Buildings may hide bits and pieces of Historical Gems within their shapes, curves, walls, and other elements that you could think of.
A bigger shock, however, was the people. No longer would I dissproportionally see the same large amount of fake people, the same amount of hopeless people - hopelessness which would beam from their faces, their manners, their way of talking. No, instead I would see a mix of people, of all ages, of all creeds and of all kinds, enjoying life. Just vibing. Most of the people I've interacted with are also incredibly nice, to a degree that I've never seen someone from my hometown be (refer back to me talking about fake people so I don't have to repeat the same point again).
Another big difference is that, here, you have so many things to do. There are so many events of all kinds hosted every week here - festival, concerts, marches, protests. Back in my hometown, you would be lucky if - once in a blue moon - a folklore singer would prop up a stage and sing for a few minutes then leave. The abundence of different types of places here is not even comparable to my hometown - malls, shops, supermarkets selling products you'd never see back in that city.
I have absolutely no clue if my rambles are still making any sense right now, but I guess what I'm trying to say with all of this is, no matter how hopeless your sitatuion might look right now, no matter where you are, who you are, and what you're going through, never give up on your hope, even if your hope is just a minuscule crumb of a thought that things might get better. I went from a person who felt jailed and profoundly lonely and hopeless in their own city to experiencing a total glowup and a total U-turn of my situation. If life can get better for me, it certainly can, and will, get better for you too.
(I will re-read this tomorrow when my head is clearer and I'm less tired and will correct any typos and weird wording that might be here - it's almost 3 AM lmao, so blame anything wrong with anything I've said on that)
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- marbleland.vaniverse.io/pack/18
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