The Gilded Cage

By Nicole Cater

Why did I move to Clinton?  Love?  Pssshh… not good enough.  I know no one. I sit in my house I slave over so that it has become just short of perfect.  Perfection requires money.  I have none.  This means I also cannot leave this prison to socialize were there anyone with which to socialize.  There’s not.  My main form of socialization is watching the Wal-Mart cashier flirt with my boyfriend.

I have no hobbies.  Not for lack of trying.  My baking skills are rusty.  New hobbies seem to crash and burn before a decent attempt is made at starting them.  I have no money, so I can’t buy more books.  And I’ve read all the books over and over again.

I don’t want to cook dinner and do the dishes but if I don’t, no one will.  I don’t want to play taxi to my teenager but it’s the only thing that gets me out of the house.  We never go where I want.  We only go to the video game store or to pick up his girlfriend.  This isn’t exciting.  This isn’t even interesting.  On a scale of one to ten, this is a negative five.

I’m sad.  I’ve been here less than a month and I hate it.  My friends are not here.  True, I’m sure their lives are just as mundane.  But they are mundane without me.  Is this life?  No friends, no hobbies, and endless dinners I don’t eat, dishes I didn’t dirty, car trips to nowhere?  Did all our parents hit this point and think “This…I struggled and screamed and begged for this?”

I don’t want it.  This godforsaken area is so isolated even the birds think twice before taking a shit overhead.  Shopping?  If you count Wal-Mart, which I don’t.  How long can I shuffle through Walgreens pretending to look for nothing before security is called?  There is only one coffee house that that isn’t the size of a hut with windows on both sides.  Ice cream comes in one flavor; Dairy Queen. 

Sure, this seems like big time living to someone used to a one-stoplight town.  But I’m stifled.  I hate it.  I’m used to a stop light on every corner.  This is a pioneer village.  And I just want to leave.