Travels with Charley

“I went to find the truth about my country.”

I could tell that he was a writer at once. Maybe it was his demeanor. He had at once an air of importance about him, but also a relaxed manner that segued between a sort of jaded weariness and a quiet curiosity. I encountered him while I was driving across the Badlands. The poodle at his feet was settled and dozing off.

“Have you found it?” I asked. It seemed like such an impossible undertaking—how does one encompass the breadth of one’s country and immerse oneself into every facet of a nation? There were some days that I didn’t even feel like I knew my town well enough, and I’d grown up there all my life.

“There isn’t one truth,” he said. And then he went on to tell me about the things he’d discovered—such as how the quirky local dialects now were becoming obsolete and gradually shifting over into a unified national language and how the attitudes of the people in different places were different.

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, the people in New England are pretty taciturn. To the point. What they want, they communicate, without a lot of space for open talk. But in the Midwest, once you cross into Ohio, they become much more friendly and open. It’s been an interesting time, discovering that.” He turned to me. “For example—where are you from?”

“Alaska.”

“And what was your town like?”

I thought about it for a moment. How could I sum up the place that raised me? “People weren’t that open,” I mused. “We talked when we had to.” I thought about it some more. “It was like most small towns, I think. Not that I’ve been to many. But I think that it was a place in where secrets never stayed buried, but feelings did.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Do you think you are like that?”

I kicked the dust. “No. That’s why I left.”

“Why?”

There were so many things I couldn’t vocalize. I left because I was tired. Because I felt trapped and wanted to get out. Because it was a town in which people defined me and didn’t let me become myself. Because it only took one night—that one night—that caused my friends and my community to turn against me; the night my best friend and I kissed.  

It was tiring to strip myself of my identity and leave. But it’s such a wonderful, freeing thing to be anonymous. To not have to define myself as my home. To become who I really was.