My tolerance for existing in crowded urban spaces has decreased markedly as I’ve gotten older. After only about 15 minutes in downtown Asheville a few months ago, I was just done. I couldn’t take any more. I wasn’t nervous, anxious, etc. Just imagine “annoyed” except if you turned up annoyed to the level of irked you’d be if a million bees kept flying at top speed into your face one after another — not stinging you, but dive-bombing you over and over again.

I was always more at home in the country, near a quiet river, and my predisposition to that environment only increases every year. Urban spaces are certainly better for the planet and probably just fine for most people (as a friend points out) but for me, they are hell — a particularly annoying type of hell that is in some ways worse than just being anxious or in pain.

Urban spaces, no matter how pleasant, just aren’t for me. Give me emptiness and solitude.