Access Atlanta > The Newcomer > Archives > 2008 > May > 19
Monday, May 19, 2008
How do you know when you fit in?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One author’s description of a newcomer’s life in Atlanta: “A life sentence of having to sit in traffic and have to drive everywhere, even to grab a cup of coffee or a quick manicure. Of sterile strip malls and no late-night delivery options. Of mindlessly accumulating shiny, unnecessary possessions to fill the empty spaces in our sprawling home…Of still, sweltering summers…no chance of a white Christmas. Of saccharine-sweet, blond, blue-eyed Lilly Pulitzer-wearing, Bunco-playing neighbors with whom I have virtually nothing in common.”
Whew! Someone’s not adjusting so well to her new surroundings!
Maybe you read that line in a story in Sunday’s Arts & Books section about author Emily Giffin, who lives in Brookhaven. She recently published “Love the One You’re With,” which is set partially in Atlanta.
That’s her novel’s fictional narrator talking, not Giffin. But when the lawyer-turned-writer moved here in 2003, “I did have the sense that I don’t belong here…I just didn’t feel like sipping mint juleps or white wine spritzers. But I have different feelings now. That sells Atlanta short and Buckhead short.”
All right, newcomers, and long-time transplants, I’m looking at you: do you fit in here? How do you know?
And if you want to make a city work for you — our city — how do you adjust?
I dearly miss the people and places I’ve left behind, but it’s a lucky accident or a pretty sweet take on destiny that I found a comfortable neighborhood, awesome friends and exciting opportunities here.
Good thing, because I remember that feeling of not fitting in. Dallas, 2004, right out of college. Amazing co-workers, fun assignments, new experiences, absolutely the wrong city. I wanted to love Texas, and instead, just ached for Detroit. I’ve never felt more pride in the the nasal “annnnhhhs” of my Midwestern accent or more loathing for pick-up trucks. I didn’t adjust. I didn’t want to adjust. I just wanted to get out.
Giffin made the point that if her novel’s main character had moved to a different part of Atlanta, “she might have been happier.” Maybe, as Giffin suggests, I just hadn’t found the right place to live. Here, I happened to fall right into it. (And it has yet to involve a white wine spritzer.)
My perspective sold Dallas short, and a very large state, besides. Don’t care. I had six months to fit in, and never did.
Maybe we can adjust to make things work. Maybe sometimes person and place don’t mix. Maybe the optimistic flip-side of that is that we also can find our perfect place, even if it’s flawed and hard to deal with at times.
Let’s have a squishy, feelings-oriented, hand-holding talk, newcomers.
Fitting in. What do you think? How do you make it work?
