The urban-rural divide is larger than ever and growing. Below is a ramble about my rural upbringing and how it sucked.

Preamble: A Rural Upbringing

I was born and raised in an extremely rural area. My parents wanted the extra land that comes with a rural area and moved from an area of a city experiencing extreme urban decay. The village I was raised in had a population of less than two hundred and the house my parents moved into in the early 2010s has its nearest neighbour about a kilometre away from anyone else. When I finished school, my graduating class was less than fifty people. I did well in school, so I managed to get accepted to a higher-tier university. There was one major thing, though, that would be a whole new world for my sheltered life: It would be in the city.

Yeah, if you wanna find love then you know where the city is

I had been to the city before, usually about annually when we would need something that was not available in our area (basically anything specialised). It would be a complete culture shock to someone like me who already had problems dealing with people in a rural environment. I did it anyway, the education opportunity would definitely be worth it. So I moved.

I left behind everything and everyone I grew up with to move to the city. To me, it was a way to start a new life. I never fit in with the other kids. I was not from here unlike everyone that had family there for centuries. My parents were not religious while the town was very much so. I had no interest in the outdoors, preferring to spend my free time inside on a computer. Beginning again seemed like a good way to maybe finally be normal. I was wrong.

My first year of university was miserable. The difficulty spike of the classwork, my already bad social anxiety compounded with not knowing anyone and feeling lost on my own for the first time lead me down dark paths. Maybe the second year would be better?

My second year of university started out much the same as the first, but I had a maths class that involved small group work. I naturally gravitated towards the back of any room I was in for class, as I liked being the first to get out when class was over. Bridging over a bunch of boring classwork, I ended up with a pair of really close friends. We would watch anime, play video games and drink almost every weekend. For once I felt pretty happy. When we went on winter break, everything seemed like it was going to be okay. The calendar then changed to 2020.

[Insert obligatory blame COVID on all my life problems] It was true though. The extreme isolation brought on by COVID did little to benefit me beyond giving me a reason to finally finish Legend of the Galactic Heroes (aside: strong recommend, especially if you are a fan of political dramas like A Song of Ice and Fire). We would still talk over the Internet, but it was nowhere near the same. Through 2022 we barely talked. Then I graduated.

When I graduated, I was completely unable to find a job. I was not able to find an internship (which can in 2020 be credibly blamed on COVID, after that no) and could not compete with all of the other graduates in my rapidly saturating field. Thankfully, one of my parents helped me find a job at a local factory. That is, local to them. I would have to move back. Moving back seemed like a good idea. It would be way cheaper than an apartment in the city, and I could get everything together before I eventually move back out. Again, I was wrong.

It turns out that job was awful. It started out fine. I rarely was given things to do but it would at least give me that extremely valuable experience. This excuse would rapidly fall apart as I would spend months at a time doing nothing. By the time I finally left I actively hated every day I had to go into the office, would spend most of the day with the computer not even turned on, and the last week I just was not there after lunch. Thankfully, my other parent helped me find another job. Sure, I would take a significant pay cut and the job was absolutely nothing that I wanted to do, but it is a remote job! In a surprise to no one, this was also a terrible idea.

Fast forward a year and I once again hate every single day I go to my work computer doing a fake job I hate. I spend about 0 hours a day actually doing my job. This time, though, I have no easy out. I am on my own trying to find a job in a terrible market that is even worse in a rural area like I am now. But, there could be an escape. I would just have to go back to the city.

It is painfully obvious I need a new job. It is even more obvious I need to move out. But will moving out actually help? No one knows yet.

Rural Life: Not for Everyone, Definitely not Me

“But why would you want to move to the city? Are you not a social recluse?” You probably thought when reading this. That is a fair point; certain Internet grifter circles love romanticising the quiet life away from everything bad about cities. They are wrong.

To me, the city is a place I can go and fit in by being a nobody. When you are in a train or walking around few will notice you beyond existing but you definitely exist. There is just something about people watching that I find enjoyment out of. It probably also does not help that I have an irrational hatred of cars stemming from a bad accident I was in when I was sixteen, so good public transit is a must for me. Sadly that means most rural areas are out of the picture when it comes to that.

Rural Decay

Most of the towns near where I grew up (and currently live) have been in terminal decline since deindustrialisation and internationalism started. The population has been going down nearby for decades. Most if not all of the properties in the “down town” of the nearby town are on sale and have been for years. The small city nearby, seemingly saved by the university it has in town that has a record enrolment, has not been much better. Part of the area gentrified while the rest went to nothing. Most of the businesses moved out decades ago but the few that remain get folded into conglomerates or go out of business.

I have not gone into the nearby town in years, but when driving by it is hard to not almost break down looking at the sad state of everything. Ruralites are being left behind. The urbanites fleeing “urbanity” with their young children then grow old and get left behind as those children raised in rural areas move back to urban areas for the jobs and education. The median age here is easily over 50. If you are younger than 40 you will be by far the youngest person there, unless someone in their 40s brought their young kids. Being between 20 and 40 though, you will be hard to find anyone that did not leave as soon as they could. Teenagers would be bored out of their minds and usually turned to drugs and alcohol because there was nothing else to do. All of the older people (there are many) are always happy to see someone young, to feel like their dying community might survive beyond them. In all likelihood, it will not.

Divide

Reiterating on the hook sentence: the urban-rural divide is extreme. Urban areas get all of the attention and all of the investment. Urban areas are far more left-wing than the conservative rural areas. Some extremely rural areas feel like remnants of long bygone eras. Some feel like they are trying to modernise and attempt to attract the increasingly rare remote worker getting away from the increasing costs of urban living. The divide is real. People post meme images from young people on Reddit that feel uncomfortable in rural areas. The increasingly elderly countryside gets left completely behind by the younger and faster paced city. It's all a mess.

Epilogue

I have been in a bad place the past two years, ever since I moved back in with my parents. I have since gone nearly full hikkikomori, leaving the house about every other month. It has been extremely detrimental for my physical and mental health. I know I need to escape to the city. I would have friends again. I would be free of my parents again, only back when I want to be. I would be able to be on my own again.

I could once again be free.

><>