Trapped

"For those who grow up in Dryden, it's like Crack. You have to keep coming back to get your fix." Those words were just too true. Ever since I heard one of my co-workers, a woman out of high school for several years, who, like me grew up here in Dryden, speak those words, I cannot get them out of my skull. They are a constant echo. And a true echo.

How can I ever leave Dryden? My family, several generations of my family, is here. My friends are here. It's in my blood. All I know is Dryden. I love this town, the trees, the Wabigoon lake and river, everything. Even the God-awful unsightly mill. I love this place.

But I also hate it. It's small, boring, racist and prejudiced. Conflicts frequently happen. The streets are no longer safe at night due to racial issues since the first nations people began to come in off the reserves.

My feelings for my home town are mixed. I want to stay forever, but I also want to leave, experience new things, something I could never do here.

I am trapped. Almost all people born in Dryden are trapped. You leave, tell yourself it's for good, then you're back again forever. I do not want this to be my fate, yet I also want to stay for good. It's all I've ever known.

But I do not want it to be like that. I want to escape, but I can't. I can't leave. I'm scared to leave. Thank God I haven't graduated yet. But I will in June. I'm in grade 12 now. I plan to do an extra year, then maybe stay one year more for work. That is what I tell myself about that work year, that it's just to get money for school, that it's because I don't want to be away from my family when the cancer finally claims my grandpa. Those two facts are true, but not the full truth. Deep down, I know I'm just buying time. Time until I know I have to leave to God-knows-where.

Because the truth is, I know that I could never face goodbye. Goodbye to friends, goodbye to family, and, worst of all, to the place that made me who I am. Goodbye to home. Because home is where the heart is, and my heart is here, in North Ontario, with those I love, and the town I love.

I am trapped in Dryden.