The answer is yes.

I recently moved to a city I can not see myself a part of. Walking down the street feels like a freak show where I am the main attraction. I’m different than these people and I feel like everyone knows it.

I was sitting in a Bank of America people watching and eavesdropping and I noticed why I can’t fit in with these people. Everyone who walked in fit into a stereotype. It was kind of ridiculous actually. There was the deep and sensitive liberal arts student, the 30 year old never-made-it wannabe musician, the Mexican worker complete with paint covered over-alls, the mom by day street walker by night lady, the scary drug dealer, the really a good guy at heart drug dealer, the 14 year old mom holding infant, the ultra-hip city chick that only digs things that nobody else knows about, and the stupid undergrad who still thinks the party will never end. Yes, these are all stereotypes and yes all of them walked into that Bank of America within a 15 minute time period. So, on the walk home I started looking around and seeing this city for what it really is… lame. Everyone here fits perfectly into some kind of category like they do it on purpose. How boring! I don’t want to have to fit into a mold in order to know who my friends are.

I’m not ultra-hip, I don’t like anything cool, I’m not into any underground scenes, I don’t have a kid, I don’t have sex for money, I don’t deal drugs, I have no musical or artistic talent, I’m not big on underpaid manual labor, I didn’t go to a liberal arts school, and I know the party is over. It now makes sense why everyone stares at me.

Is it possible to live here and just live? I feel like I’m in west side story trying to pick what gang I want to be a part of (Sharks? Jets? I don’t know.) Here it doesn’t feel like my T-shirt and jeans can cut it and I don’t want to wear anything else. I don’t want to advertise what kind of music I listen to or what kind of person I am. If you want to know you get to know me. I don’t want to be one of these people. There is just falseness about them. The way they talk and present themselves is very dishonest to me.

Is it possible to be alone in a city of 600,000 people?