My Caterpillar Scheme

Suburbia is a very odd place to be trapped in. On the surface it seems dull, mundane- they like to pretend everything is sweet and idyllic. Yet it seems to me that I hardly know a person who isn't doing something that would be considered morally iffy, to say the least. Haven't you ever seen the show Weeds? I refuse to believe that is the life I'm living. But wouldn't that be interesting, more fascinating? Wouldn't that at least be admitting that there is something lying under the surface? I cannot stand writers who discuss at length their difficult childhood growing up in suburbia. This is not pain, or hurt, or poverty or illness or any of those things one would actually have the right to complain about. It is just boredom because people refuse to let the interesting manifest itself. The snippets of conversation one hears in line at the Starbucks are utterly dull, all the women with their long painted nails and expensive designer handbags- these are not innocent, boring people, as much as they would like to cultivate such an image. They are fascinating, fascinating and broken and utterly fucked-up, but they don't let anyone see this. They prefer the control of having a set image, a mask to wear at all times. That is what I am most afraid of in life; the mini-van with the 2.3 children, going to yogalaties with my overpriced cup of coffee before heading to the nail salon and sneaking in a quick trip to the grocery store before picking the children up from school and taking them to their soccer games and ballet classes. And I will escape- the minute I turn eighteen, I will escape. Maybe I will live in Paris, the women with their noses turned up and their cigarettes, and wear all black and grey. I could move to New Zealand, and learn to love having more sheep than people as neighbours. I don't think the sheep would care much what my nails look like, or if my handbag is properly overpriced. I think in a way, nobody is real in the sense that they are all pretending to be somebody they are not. I think in a way, nobody is inherently anything- we are just masks, shades of different people that we become due to the people around us. The Parisian women are just as fake and cultivated as the woman who lives next-door. I will escape, and create my masks as needed, but when I return I will return to the sheep. They are what they are, and they aren't pretending to be anything. They need no scheme- they are already butterflies.