this place is a prison

The suburbs.

I say these words and most people cringe. People conjure up visions of SUVs, 9-5 jobs, identical houses, Walmart, nonsensical and horrifically long bus rides, ill-spent youth, boredom, suffocation, upper-middle-classness.

I understand all that. Really, I do. But I guess how I differ from the vast majority of my friends (aside from the ones who have actually high-tailed it out of the lower mainland in search of *greener* pastures) is that, while I feel that suburban living leaves much to be desired, I prefer it greatly over being in the city.

I have been told again and again – subversively + also in no uncertain terms – that I am somehow less of a person because of my life in the suburbs.

The suburbs are:
- too privileged
- too vast
- not ‘hip’
- not ‘cultured’
- not close to anything important
- are boring
- lack community
- are inconvenient
- are for people who haven’t matured enough to realize how crappy suburbs are

I could go on… I have heard it all.

I recently blew up at a friend of mine because he made an innocent comment about how much more ‘connected’ I will be now that I am moving to Vancouver (yes kids, I am moving to Vancouver-proper – but only for a couple of months). He made comment about how ‘convenient’ it will be (for people to spend time with me) now that I am moving to the city.

It’s not his fault that I threw a hissy-fit. He deserves an apology, and he will get one. He felt the wrath of anger that I have about being told for 27 years that urban is superior to all else.

Take the time to apply all the well-meaning anti-oppression politics that you gathered during your activist years to the situations of people living in the suburbs - - - and you will soon realize that what you thought you knew – was wrong.

In my case, I live in the suburbs (with my mom) because of poverty. As someone who spent the majority of the last 3 years on welfare – staying in a suburb, where rent is still not low enough to allow any sane human to live on the (max.) $325/m ‘granted’ to people on social assistance, has really been my only option.

The assumptions that are held about what suburban living is all about – and what the character of suburbanites is - is totally bunk. I stand as living proof to refute it.

Did I think that at the age of 27 I would be living in Coquitlam with my mommy? No. I am sure that I would have been voted ‘most likely to move out before reaching the age of majority’ in junior high. Were it not for the fact that I got bitch-slapped with a debilitating disease at the age of 23, I would be living in a lovely little house, on the water, far far far away from the concrete, nauseating capitalism, rugged individualism, and corporate-whorishness of the city. These are *my* feelings about the city, and I do not use them as a reference point of judging the character of people who live in the city.

I respect my urban friends. They have found something that they love, that feeds them, that drives them, that nourishes them, that turns them on about living in the city. But I also assert that being city-dwellers doesn’t make them better people. It does not make people more cultured or genuine or informed or right or good or learned or vivacious.

For the next few months, I will be living in the city. Because of the health-issues that I face – this will actually be a *harder* way for me to live. My day to day life will be more filled with panic, will be laced with uncertainty, will be tangled in disorientation. Getting to work and doctors appointments and volunteer shifts and friend’s houses and grocery stores and meetings and events will be mountains to climb... without the peacefullness of a suburb that I have almost managed to wrap my abilities around.

I think to myself - - - if people look so far down their noses at the suburbs, I wonder what it is going to be like when my plans to move to a rural place finally come to fruition.