Every time I visit the town I grew up in I can't help but be slightly alert all the time I'm outside. Alert because I might pump into someone I used to go to school with, someone I knew. I'm not quite sure what it is that makes me want to avoid them altogether but I suspect that my life in that town was never very satisfactory. It was like I was confined to it, physically because I knew no one anywhere else, ideologically because the place was and is so conservative, biologically because of my family.
My grandmother, once again, called to ask me when I'm going there to visit. She does that quite often -at least in my opinion often, to the point of being annoying. I suppose it's because she seems to think one is alone unless they have daily contact with relatives... I mean, I am lonely at times, but having relatives here could only make it worse.
Anyways, back to my home town. My mother has subscribed the town's local paper to me and my sister who don't live there anymore. I just glanced the latest one and saw a familiar face in the front page. A woman (let's call her One), now with a different last name, two years my junior who used to go to same elementary school as I did in our village. Last I heard she was studying theology in Turku. It just makes me wonder.. why do these people go back there? What is it that appeals to them in that town? In some cases (Two) I understand why they haven't left: Two never even graduated from vocational school so she might as well live on the dole there as anywhere else. Three studied to be a pharmacist and is now living in that town again. Four.. haven't seen her a while. Last time I came across her at a store and fled in fear elsewhere wondering if she recognised me.
Why go back? Or are they just that conservative like everyone else, not minding being "stalked" by everyone as they do the same to others? Or is this all just normal human behaviour I just don't understand?
