When I was a young girl living on a pseudo-farm in the far reaches of the suburbs, I remember people talking about the "city folk." City folk weren't even really "folk;" they were a different kind of human species altogether. They were tough, cold-hearted, and cynical. They were unfriendly and suspicious. They were also glamorous, sophisticated, and conceited.
I desparately wanted to live in the city.
When I finally moved here about three years ago, I was still mostly a country girl. It was hard to remember to lock all the doors to my apartment. I left a gym bag on the backseat of my car one time, and the next morning the window was smashed and my bag was gone. I squirmed under the catcalls and comments on the street. I was confused by the belligerance of cashiers and the outright hostility from bus drivers. I was frightened by the aggressive panhandling. With horror, I witnessed people blatantly littering.
The city slowly changed me. In the suburbs, I had assumed the best about people. Now, I daily witnessed the worst. I started realizing that many stereotypes I had dismissed as unfair or untrue were, in fact, representative of reality. Mistakes were more costly in the city, so I learned to make quick judgement calls. I stopped being politically correct and persistantly polite. I learned to ignore everything, while at the same time being aware of everything. I learned there were a lot of people making a living exploiting human sympathy, so I became less sympathetic.
But I also learned to walk with confidence, and to stand up for myself. I learned to pay attention to certain signs and signals, how to navigate social minefields.
I didn't realize I had changed until I went back home to spend time with friends and family...and it felt different. They noticed that I was different; colder, harder around the edges, less generous in my evaluations. I'd become someone who could survive and even thrive in a city, but it came across as something frightening to people who left doors open at night and trusted strangers. And my habits were oddly out of place here; locking the car doors in the driveway, looking over my shoulder in the parking lot. And now all the country's smiles and pleasantries were as jarring as the city's rudeness had once been.
Utlimately, I was neither city girl nor country girl. I was a girl who was prudent at all times, never taking safety for granted even in the small-town parking lots or the comfort of home. And I was a girl with manners and respect; putting my garbage into trashcans, smiling at cashiers even if they only growled at me. I even still responded to bums' requests with a firm but cheerful "no thank you."
Naivete and niceness made way for savvy and shrewdness. I grew up on a suddenly accelerated schedule, and I still feel as though I have not begun to understand what I need to as I swing wildly around this learning curve. Sometimes I still feel wide-eyed and vulnerable, sometimes I still want a hand to hold. But feeling that and plunging ahead anyway made me stronger and more resilient than I would previously have thought possible; holding myself together because falling apart simply isn't an option has shown me that I can pull it together and keep going. And if I can walk a city mile in four-inch stilettos, then surely I can walk through anything.