In honor of Halloween, I want to tell you all about the town I grew up in or where I spent the crucial years of my brain development - my late childhood and teenagerhood. When I first moved to this town, I was of the tender age of 11 years old and was only able to escape it when I was 24 years old. There was a saying around there: “Once you set foot here, you only leave in a coffin.”
People would repeat that adage to me, in a very nonchalant way, every time I shared my dreams of seeing and traveling the world. It was always followed by a light chuckle as if to indicate the stupidity of my thoughts. Looking back, the residents of this town weren’t far off. I watched friends I went to high school with die in mysterious circumstances, others leaving in a hurry as if the police were after them and others…well, they simply accepted their fate of spending the rest of their lives there and completely forsaking their big dreams. The latter group turned out to be the bitterest of all. Can you blame them? I certainly don’t. I feel absolute heartbreak when I think of them because most of them are battling diseases such as alcoholism and narcotics addiction. Mind you, they were brilliant and they had incredible potential. But believe it or not, they are luckier than those who passed so young.
One of my very dear friends died when I was 16 years old. He was a charming, kind, funny and athletic young man that every girl in my high school instantly fell in love with. To me, he was like a little brother. We lived near each other and would hang out and share stories of our big dreams in my mother’s immense garden. I always felt protective over him, kind of like a big sister, even though we were the same age. But something about him made me want to constantly remind him of how fragile life is, and he was full of it. That dreadful feeling would come full circle when I received a phone call from one of the many girls who loved him who somehow managed to tell me he had passed in between sobs. I simply couldn’t believe it, the day before I had seen him on my way home from school and we made plans to meet up in the next couple of days so this couldn’t have been true. I really thought this was a sick joke played on me by the many bullies I had. Later on, it was revealed that he had done drugs on top of an old building and fell. To this day, I don’t believe this for one second. He didn’t touch drugs and never showed the intent to. A couple of months later, it was revealed that he had been beaten to death by men who wanted his money on that same building. But what was he doing there at supposedly 3am? Then it was revealed that his step-father paid for his murder. To this day, nobody knows what happened to him. And here’s the spine-chilling thing, he was not the only one. Many acquaintances my age would die and/or disappear in shady circumstances.
These occurrences that would loom over the town didn’t help with my depression. I was already being bullied and going to school was a torturous chore. I loved school and still do but I found myself fleeing it out of fear. It was around that time that my panic and anxiety attacks would rear their ugly heads and I didn’t know what they were, let alone have the tools to deal with them. The country itself had just come out of the revolution - or as the west might know it, the Arab Spring - and it was just me and my mother who was doing her best. Hell, the only place I felt safe was our home. She always made sure that our space was safe for me. However, I was convinced that our home was haunted.
I mean, and follow my train of thoughts here, it was built on the tomb of its first owner and nobody would live in it until we did (we had come from another town and didn’t know any better.) No matter how many lights were around the house, it was always dark. When I would be home alone, I would hear the dishes in the kitchen clatter and the toilet flush. I always felt the presence of somebody sleeping next to me and sometimes I would hear them snore. No, we didn’t have neighbors that close. The only ones we had were a couple that had a dog that always barked in distress. I don’t know if through the years I gaslit myself into thinking none of it was true, but to this day I don’t know if any of it was true or if I was in a very bad mental state because of what was happening in that town. If you’ve watched and/or read Castle Rock by Stephen King, then you would know the type of town I’m talking about.
Yesterday, I had to revisit this town for paperwork. The minute the car crossed the bridge that led there, my heart clenched and I put my hands protectively around my pregnant belly. I didn’t want my child to even feel the dread and sorrow that surrounded us as soon as we arrived. I looked at my mother and said: “I don’t have any good memories here. Everything about this town is bad. I only remember our Christmases in our home with my late grandpa.” She looked at me and nodded before saying: “This town gnawed at my life and took away my years.” After finishing the paperwork, I had the first panic attack in months. I was convinced I wasn’t going to be able to leave. I was on the way out of town but I just felt an entity pulling at me, unable to let me go.
Don’t worry, I made it out.
I don’t know what it is about my hometown, or the weird fact that I still call it my hometown. Was it perhaps the fact that when the French colonized my country, my hometown was the last one they’d let go of? Massacres sure don’t help. Is it the fact that it’s always gloomy and fishermen always have a look of anticipation of horror on their faces? Or is it because I battled my biggest demons there? Who knows. All I know is, it haunts me even in my wildest nightmares today.