My life has been a very wild journey, I was first living in a beautiful farm in a rural town, no worries about school or even getting a job. I got my lifestyle for granted, until when I was 12 my grandfather sat me down at the table one afternoon and told me we were moving to the city. I wasn’t totally against it, but I wasn’t too thrilled either. My parents got a job in the city, while my grandfather had become very sick and needed to have access to a better healthcare system. Of course, I had to go with them since we didn’t have someone else who could take care of me. Things were pretty rough at the beginning, I had no friends, we had a bit of a financial struggle which led us to living in a very small apartment, and worst of all, we experienced quite a lot of discrimination. Nevertheless, as time passed by things got better, we had a better income than before, so we moved to a bigger place, I found a group of friends, and we got better access to healthcare and education. Overall, moving to an urban area has its negative and positive characteristics, and even though I already mentioned them, I will explain them with further detail.
Since most people choose to know bad news before good news, I will begin with the negative characteristics. As I previously mentioned, we had a bit of trouble to make ends meet. My parents had a better salary than in the rural town we previously lived in, however, things in rural areas were much more expensive, leading us to be able to only afford a small apartment in a very dangerous area. We sometimes weren’t even able to afford meals since my grandfather’s medicine and treatment was a priority. At school I had a lot of difficulties such as not being able to socialize well with others, since I was a very shy person, and having trouble to catch up with my classmates in an academic level, after all in my rural town educations wasn’t mandatory, and the material we reviewed there was far simpler. Still, those weren’t even the worst parts of moving to an urban area was the discrimination we experienced, and even continue to experience nowadays. At school, my classmates would constantly bully me for being from a rural area, making fun of my accent and claiming I could talk to chickens, they called me the chicken girl. They would also make fun of my poor grades, escalating things to the point they would blame me for anything they did wrong, and of course the teacher believed them since they didn’t have any faith in me. Things outside school weren’t good either, while walking in crowded places we often head things like “go back to where you came from” or “you’re stealing our jobs”, fortunately nothing escalated to us being physically harmed, but by watching in the news that discrimination could go to that extent, we never felt truly safe. Even now I still experience discrimination in my new neighborhood, with some neighbors often avoiding my family or calling us thieves behind our backs.
Still, when you hit rock bottom, the only way you can go is up. My parents worked really hard, and eventually it paid off with them getting a promotion, causing our income to increase significantly. We were able to move from that small apartment to a very nice and relatively calm neighborhood, and we didn’t have any more problems to make end meet, quite the contrary, we could afford more expensive things. When it comes to school, as I previously mentioned, the teachers didn’t believe in me, except for one who would give me extra classes so I could catch up to the others. One time, while I was made fun of by my classmates, one of them stood up to my bullies, leading to others also defending me, and later offered me their friendship. Even though I accepted, was a bit reluctant at first. I thought they would eventually leave me, but they didn’t, and now we are all best friends. Their parents met my parents and also became friends, we even host barbecues every now and then. As for my grandfather, he is healthier than ever thanks to the healthcare system here in the city, very talented and prepared doctors attended him, and after some time he was no longer sick. In the academic part, after catching up to my classmates, my grades increased by a lot, and I’m currently applying to scholarships for academic merits in various colleges.
You could say moving to an urban area is very hard, and it’s really difficult to get ahead and thrive without a significant effort, but it’s not impossible. My experience may be harsher than the experience of others, as well as less difficult than others, it all comes to luck sometimes. But if you really work hard and learn to survive despite all the hardships, all that hard work will really pay off in the end.
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