country girl in the big city

I wouldn't consider myself to be a country bumpkin. I certainly wouldn't think I was a easily frightened country mouse. I guess I was wrong.

I grew up in a small town, The kind of town where you knew your mail man by name, even if she's your brothers ex-wife's mother. A town where the only two homeless individuals are long term residents, of almost thirty years who have never pandered and are know by name. A town where no matter the time of day or night I feel completely safe and comfortable to roam the streets, whether I was a kid going to the giant field behind the administration building to play flashlight tag, as a teenager just needing to go for a walk at midnight or even now as an adult walking home from work at three in the morning, I feel at home on these small town streets. When I went to college, it was a much larger city, but nestled along the Canadian boarder in a predominantly rural area of the state, it still had an almost small town feel to it. Maybe my sense of comfort and security were in fact false, but I felt safe walking around after dark in most every neighborhood. It may have been naivete, it may have been ignorance, it maybe just have been inexperience. what ever it was that made me feel so comfortable in my world never felt so odd to me as it did to me last week.

Back of a building in Old Town Portland , OR

Last week I I took a small day trip to Portland, Oregon. Since it had been my first full day off from work in almost seven weeks, I wanted to do something special. I hadn't been to Portland since  my spring break road trip almost three years ago I felt the need to get out of Washington state and feel like I was seeing the world like I've always dreamed and planned on doing. I love Portland, from Powell's City of Books, to the Portland Art Museum, from the Chinese garden to Voodoo Doughnuts there are certain special elements to every city that make them special and different and wonderful. What I find special about Portland it that the Broadway major shopping areas are only a short walk from China Town, or the eclectic Old Town and Pearl District, Its all just right there.

For the First time however in a big city I felt like a country mouse. Not in the way I dressed or acted though. For lack of a better way of saying it, I'm odd. I'd say I have a colorful or big personality, but those sound too much like euphemisms for be psycho of fat, so I'll say I'm odd.  The Thing about Portland is it's very subdued and Pacific Northwest, which means people wear a lot of earth tones and subdued colors, not a lot of bright colors and flashy colors. Since my professional work attire is blacks and whites whenever I'm not at work I usually wear lots of color, and with my bright blue leggings and grey sweater dress with brightly colored stripes (blue that was the same shade as my leggings, neon pink, bright fir green, and orange stripes),  I definitely stood out among the jeans, dark slacks and black yoga pant wearing people on the streets of Portland that day. Nothing I wore made me feel so small town, it was the feel of the city the itself. The homeless individuals in every park (which in Portland are EVERYWHERE), the teenage and early twenties age men just loitering on the streets. Maybe it was the fact that what I was wearing made me feel like a stood out, or the fact that I didn't empirically know that the man on the corner rambling to himself was harmless. Maybe it was the thinly veiled violence in the faces of the three young men sitting on a picnic table by the waterfront smoking, or maybe the slimy feeling I felt when their eyes followed me. For the first time I can remember, and maybe the first time ever I didn't feel comfortable in this town after dark. It maybe that I was in a city I don't regularly travel in with the responsibility of my younger teenage cousin, maybe it has been too long since I've traveled to a new place. Whatever the reason may have been I didn't feel comfortable and safe. Which I hate.

The sense of helplessness, the insecurity are usually something I'll stare down. Something I'll do everything in my power to conquer, but that day I tucked my tail between my legs and ran home like the country mouse I am and for the first time since I was about sixteen I truly felt like a county bumpkin. I guess I was just a little country girl in a city that was just a little to big for her, which is just silly considering at seventeen I went to LA all by myself for ten days to visit colleges and go to a conference. I guess however there comes a day when either you know enough to see the restrained violence in others, or the lose of your naive sense of security finally erodes and you see the world around you for the dangerous and scary place it is. However I still feel completely comfortable going for midnight walks through my own small town, maybe it's that I know the only person I may run in to is the town drunk stumbling from the bar to his apartment above it or maybe its that I truly am a small town country mouse.