Discussion The suburbs

[hurts2b]

Anyone else feel like the suburbs are a huge theme in your suicidal thinking?

I grew up in suburban environments (but without all the privileges and riches that normally entails, my childhood was complicated).

I feel like suburban environments are so uniquely dystopian in a way that's hard to articulate for people who haven't experienced it.

I'm currently stuck there in the suburbs (trying to escape). It's not the same location I grew up in but it's exactly the same, if that makes any sense at all.

 

[eggsausagerice]

you double posted lol

 

[Forever Sleep]

I grew up and live in the suburbs. I'm not sure really- how much it's contributed to how I feel. Seeing as I don't have anything to compare it to. Do you think growing up in the inner city or somewhere rural would have been different?

Then, there are various areas within the suburbs. Some more depressing than others. Do you think it creates a certain mentality though? It's an interesting idea.

 

[hurts2b]

you double posted lol

Did I? Whoops.

 

[Forveleth]

As someone who does not drive, the suburbs are a prison to me. I grew up never being able to travel to a grocery store, movie theater, mall, or any of my doctors on my own. I could walk a mile to a 7/11 and the library and that was it. When I moved closer to a big city with public transportation, I went to the movies on my own for the first time (at 28) and almost cried.

 

[hurts2b]

I grew up and live in the suburbs. I'm not sure really- how much it's contributed to how I feel. Seeing as I don't have anything to compare it to. Do you think growing up in the inner city or somewhere rural would have been different?

Then, there are various areas within the suburbs. Some more depressing than others. Do you think it creates a certain mentality though? It's an interesting idea.

The suburbs in my experience are uniquely dead. There's no human life inside the suburbs like there is inside the city. You don't get the wilderness or public explorable land of the country either. It's just parking lots and consumer culture and individual family units. There can be some variety sometimes but often it all comes with that same deadness. But I can only speak from my own experience. Maybe I'm just romanticizing what I don't know.

 

[randomuser2348]

I hate the suburbs, they are the bane of my existence.

As an individual whose mobility is reliant on the presence of my immediate family and/or the absence of the human gaze, a home surrounded by a dozen others, with another hundred around that feels more like a cage hoisted over a pit of spikes than any real domicile.

I'm hoping my mother decides to move back to the southern valley once more. Although I was born and raised in the suburbs, both sides of my family draw their roots from the colonial settlers of the region, only emigrating the last generation.

I need the freedom of the bush, the isolation of the natural state, watched only by the sleeping eyes of the trees, blinded but caring.

 

[yotaka]

I didn't mind growing up in the suburbs because I didn't know any better. After having lived in places with density, walkability, beauty, and charm, though, moving back to my shitty hometown has been especially painful. It's made even worse by the fact that everybody around me wants this bland, asphalt-covered purgatory. Just another way I don't belong, I guess.