Alley

“Because I am not a city person” I rather said than regret in the end for saying a terrible comment. Although she is my friend and we’re grown-up individuals, but these aren’t good excuses still for a blunt remark. And so I was right for keeping what I had in mind – a different preference – if possible to stay away from her place – an alley – a home to someone but not mine.

I may have come from a very poor family and brought up in a barrio lifestyle, but I would not settle in a place like this – a mega city – and not in this alley.

I may have hailed from a laid back environment while she is the irony of it all, and yet this isn’t what I understand a sheer bliss. I don’t belong where she lives – and will never be.  

    

The only time I am stuck here on and off, for more than a decade is a valid reason of course – my siblings have found their greener pastures in this alley for now. So I come and visit them whenever I am around. Like any dwellers who share the same rights, this is where they belong they say – only if there’s no choice.

Legally wise, I can be a resident here like my siblings, but I didn’t bother considering the possibility. For one obvious reason is my prejudice against this alley itself. I never like how each person in the community treats another person.

This place is not for me, but I respect every situation each resident has and each choice they made to be a part of this community. A home is not limited to physical structures or the presence of tranquility anyway– it’s where the heart is as one writer says – whether in this alley or not.  

Despite the number of chances I have tried immersing and welcomed a lifestyle not my own, at the end of each day I’d still say…this is not my life. Therefore, I don’t have to sweet-lemon the scenario. I don’t belong in this alley.    

It took many silent years to express this feeling but not judgment. So not in the position to condemn – this is just another way of saying…I am a stranger of the way of life here still. And God knows how I make an effort each time around, but it doesn’t change a thing that I am not for this alley. 

Aside from simply residing, I also tried hard to build a good rapport to the neighborhood and so I am in the right perspective to say something. I may not know everyone from head to toe, but I can see what’s going on every single day – the kind of life which surprises me and scares me to death. Isn’t it action speaks louder than word?

Hope I don’t sound rude or reproachful for speaking my thoughts in this manner.  

This alley isn’t a slum but the behaviors of some are no different. Some of them live and behave worst than those in slum areas. And so how can a village person like me adapt a lifestyle here?