Small Town Secrets

This has the potential to be a much longer piece, but for now, I think I’ll start here.

Yesterday was my little brother’s graduation. The last Whipple in the school system. He, along with 150 or so 17- and 18-year-olds, made it through 13 years in what most consider a high-pressure school in a high-pressure town. I felt it in the minute I stepped out of the car when I got home, like a shift in the altitude. I had been living at sea level for so long that this sudden elevation was shocking. It made me wonder if it always felt like this. For the past few nights, I had an easy time falling asleep but a hard time getting up. The weight of the day sitting on my chest before I’ve even had breakfast. It felt like this in high school, too. I spent most mornings anxious about a day that hadn’t even started. But like most things, the pressure of a small town is a double-edged sword. The same blade that can cut you can also protect you.

The beauty of this small town is the most intoxicating. Stronger than the stolen beers sipped behind closed doors or on open soccer fields. I mean, where else do the high school cross country teams run along the river out to the marina at sunset? Or walk from their classroom to violin lessons before dinner? I don’t mean to ignore the charm and safety of this community. But you can see the church where my little siblings went to pre-school from the funeral home that held my friends’ open casket. I learned that the same place that raises you can also kill you. During my time in this town, there have been three suicides, each by very young people who lived here. When I was back in high school for my brother’s graduation, I noticed the posters in the bathroom stalls with mental health resources. I heard the way the speeches emphasized the importance of self-care and asking for help. It could be that I am sensitive to these things, as someone who is still grieving. But when my dad turned to me after the principal’s speech, I could tell that he had felt that same thing.

I learned about manifestation in middle school. I had so much anxiety that I wouldn’t make the soccer team that I couldn’t sleep at night. Constantly making lists of the girls I thought were going to make the team and trying to see if there would be room for me. Writing and rewriting the list if I thought something had changed, a girl had moved away, or the worst option, a new A-team-level girl had moved in. My mom taught me that when the universe hears good things from you, it can reflect them back to reality. I practiced this by saying to myself and the universe, “I, Quincy, will make the A team.” And put my name at the bottom of my fake list like a signature. Years later, I remember my mom telling me she had done the same thing. The panic I felt about potentially not making this team (in middle school) was not an individual experience; even my mom knew what it meant to me to make it. This town sucks you in deep. And while I am equally grateful for the experiences I had in it, I now can recognize the way it warped my perspective in so many areas of my life.

I still wear the title of being a “Yarmouth native” like a badge of honor. No one lets it slide if you moved to this town after kindergarten. Some of the kids in their graduation speeches mentioned it, and it reminded me of the pride so many of us take in being here from the very beginning. It’s confusing to have so much love for a place that has hurt you. To know that I was lucky to live here, know that people have it so much worse, and still recognize that it’s not perfect.

Being back home always stirs emotions that have been sitting below the surface for so long. Driving down Main Street, past the house I grew up in, reminds me of the things that have happened here. And what’s funny is that they sit in the same place in my brain as the stories I love reading. I think that means there is room for these in the same bookshelves, and the longer I stay away from this place, the more I feel drawn back. The secrets here have started to feel like the conspiracies we used to tell each other on the playground, and the more I think about it, the more I wonder if we could have manifested those, too.