stuckincoolsville

[stuckincoolsville]

7/23/24: what's my name?

i absolutely hate these things. 

intros, blogs; it's all stupid, really. it's not even worth the effort of capitalizing, let alone proper grammar. 

who's gonna read this? who's gonna care about some random weirdo teenager moving to some random weirdo town? in OHIO, of all places. the meme is writing itself and dying as we speak.

but my therapist says this will help me. somehow. he says we don't meet enough, so he has no way of knowing how i'm truly doing or feeling. starting a little blog will, supposedly, help me get my feelings out.

i feel it's just another way for him to keep tabs on me, but whatever.

don't worry, i'm not dumb enough to reveal my actual name. just call me V. 

i recently graduated from a high school in New York. yes, i lived near bodegas. yes, i'd rather attend NYU, or a CUNY, or anywhere else besides Coolsville Community College. yes, i walk wherever and whenever i fucking want. yes, i miss the bagels. and the pizza. and the water.

so, that being said, what am i doing in Coolsville, Ohio? 

moving into the house i inherited from my mom. who i have not seen since i was...twelve? yeah, about twelve. i still have this vague memory of watching her pack up her car with all her stuff. her mouth, pressed closed. how she kept refusing to look at me, at my dad. and then walking back in the rain so she can get in her car and drive out of our lives.

yeah, that's rather grim...but it's also relevant. 

surprisingly, she's not the main reason i'm in therapy at the moment. well, not because she left. children are abandoned by parents all the time. most divorces are the result of a parent walking out on a family. i'm not special because i'm another statistic.

i'm in therapy 'cause of the other thing.

anyway, the relevance of this is that i haven't seen my mom in six years. no one seemed to know where she went. it was like she literally dropped off the face of the earth. and yet, a few months ago, my dad and i got a visit from a lawyer. my mother's lawyer.

he said my mother died of a tragic...accident (spoilers: i don't think it was an accident), and that the ownership of the house she lived in recently transferred to me. a house in Coolsville, OH.

if this was last year, i would have slammed the door closed in the man's face. or had my friend Johnny do a prank call and scam the guy out of his money. or maybe had Marcy

...

i think you get the idea.

but this year...it was like the guy handed me the solution to all my problems on a silver platter. after everything that had happened this year, all i wanted was to disappear. to go to a place where no one knew my name or who i was. 

you'd think that'd be easy in New York, a city of several million people on its own. but when you've gone through what i've gone through, when your picture has been published in enough NYC newspapers or blogs or anything with readership, it becomes difficult to be invisible again. 

i had to argue about it with my dad, but it was weak on his part. i think everything was starting to strain on him too.

so with a few bags packed and a rather emotional goodbye with dad & the few friends i have left, i hopped in my car and headed for Ohio.

took me a little bit to find this place. Coolsville is pretty obscure, even by most small town standards. if you can get past the sense of dread you get from Toledo—with all its emptiness and boarded up houses & buildings—you're already on the right track. 

go past the long highway. head east, towards where the trees gather most. down that long, long road that seems to be an entrance to another realm. towards the faint sound of rushing water flowing from a place you can't see yet. and suddenly, you're there. in a town stuck in time, struggling to embrace modernity as we understand it. a place that is just outside the border of the area considered to be part of Appalachia. 

it's like i walked right into the 1960s...or maybe early '70s. every house is painted in bright colors, the grass never seems to brown; and the flowers are always in bloom. and all the people seemed to dress like they go thrifting on the regular, their clothes are so...retro? vintage? any of those words work? and they always seem to have a smile on their faces. typical welcoming committee, wholesome small town edition, i suppose.

i was a bit wary at first. still am. but it's been a couple weeks since i moved in. no one's asked the questions i've expected yet. no mob is calling for my blasphemous head. everything and everyone i speak to actually exists, which is a relief. so things are okay. 

for now.

no idea what the future holds, but i recently registered for classes at the community college here. it's much more affordable than the schools in NY, even for a newcomer like me. (guess enrollment must be pretty low over here.) no friends, but the few neighbors i've met seem friendly. there seem to still be teens my age over here, so that gives me some comfort. the house my mome left me is already paid for and has all the furniture and appliances i need. i just need to pay for utilities and maintain the house.

that's why i got the job at the bookstore. it's pretty cool, run by this weird old lady who likes to cackle and rant about the new age occult scene. says my generation doesn't know how to properly communicate with the Old Ones, and that will lead to our ultimate downfall. 

things like that. 

she has a lot of weird takes, now that i think about it, but i'm not gonna argue logic and reason with the crazy lady signing my paychecks.

not much else to say at the moment. i mean, there's more but. this was just supposed to be an intro. i don't wanna vomit out everything in my head. not yet. 

(Dr. Dimaggio, if you're seeing this, you already know. so there's really no point anyway.)

so i guess i'll be signing off. i'll update this when something happens or if there's something i wanna get off my chest.

later.

signed,

V.D.