The Trauma of being Raised in Suburbia

I grew up in what really was an upper middle class town from a lower income family. My grandfamily lived in the same neighborhood for almost their entire life, so I was under the impression the “small town” world in the community I grew up was actually people knowing others name, a friendly, a humble ego, when in fact it was the total opposite. I live in the Boston, Massachusetts  area, so Southern New Hampshire has become a huge metro area to Boston in the last 20 years. Its a lot worse now than it was like 5-10 years ago.
Supposedly the numbers of autism is much higher in lower social class, but that doesn’t mean an ultra rich could have an autistic child or adult/it

I started to have doubts about the “small town” climate when I was around 20. I think part of it was the normal experience of not being as naive,  I think part of it was to do with not looking outside my window, but really my browser window on my computer. With the advent of Facebook and MySpace, I started to realize how absurd the rich suburban brats really were.  The town was mostly republican or conservative, but that didn’t matter, because the liberal people were just as indecent.

So what I am getting at is living in the suburbs is really brutal as someone who isn’t one of “those people*” To start, people in this area drive big vehicles. You’d be asking: so what if someone wants to drive big SUV? Well what if you are going over the speed limit of 30 miles an hour? Especially in a dense part of a town that has thousands of people and a road that was built with no intention of becoming a suburban? Its an entitlement of a driver can do whatever the fuck he wants with no responsibility.
*a phrase actually used to describe the lower class by an unnamed planning board member in unnamed community several years ago.

People in this state take our motto pretty seriously, and in fact we have a lot of out of staters coming here just because they want to Live Free or Die. And they can be a little extreme, I just mentioned the speed limit. They love to personalize their license plates. Not sure why, but not that I have anything wrong of personalizing plate issued by the local Department of Safety, the parent agency of our DMV where actually the D stands for Division; but some of them just go too far. I just ask myself: can you be more self centered?

I hear the phrase “like” every other word  and more and more do I hear the Southern California whiney dialect more and more. Most people around here are very materialistic. Not that there’s anything wrong of showing off your Abercrombie shorts or jacket from Guess, but I think people don’t have any understanding the value of the dollar, let’s use the example of girls, where they live off their daddy’s paycheck or retirement depending how old he is.

Which goes back to the fathers meets their little girls. Again this area is somewhat conservative, lets just use the phrase traditional. Traditional like looking down at autistics and other disabled people. You got the stereotypes of  the protective father who looks down at the looser who is lives on the streets in the urban area and you got fathers who are very stubborn at any guy living with his mother and these overprotective fathers are often found in Suburbia.
Meanwhile, according to some organization, there was a stat that New Hampshire was #1 of the most tolerant state of people with developmental disabilities. Unless they overcounted the Great North Woods over the Merrimack Valley I don’t know. Living in the downstate area, I beg to differ. There are areas where they think the government should be no business of helping people with intense disabilities. You got “little bus” jokes the “Special Olympics” jokes mixed in, so how in the hell can they claim that this little state of over a million-five people is “tolerant”? It puzzles me.

So that being said, growing up in the Suburbs can be really painful and having to suffer living in a lower middle class and someone suffering with a disorder he didn’t ask for and the arrogance of where I live is still traumatic.

And with that being said, I don’t ask for a “handout”! If I am frustrated, its the HUMAN aspect, how people perceive someone different social class.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *