No Sleep In the 'Hood

 After leaving University, I did a very silly thing. As if leaving my schooling as a physics major didn't already qualify me for a Gold Medal in the Daft Olympics, I decided it would be prudent to move to West Virginia. Unfortunately, that is no typo. West Virginia, for whatever reason, seemed like a good place to live. Although I laugh about it now, it was a very impulsive decision based on love. However, it had a happy ending. It was the middle of the story that I had problems with.

 We moved to a very dodgy neighborhood. You've seen the type: run-down houses, random kids on trycycles at three in the morning who, when asked about their parents, give very vague answers as to their locations. My feelings concerning our street declined very rapidly from thinking it was interestingly cultured to thinking it must be the inspiration for every gansta rap song ever written. Polic cars constantly patrolled our street and ambulance drivers knew the area by heart. Eventually the only thing that let me escape from the foreign country that was our neighborhood was my music.

 Many a day I listened to my favorite song at the time, 'No Sleep Til Belfast', as I washed dishes, cleaned the house, or relaxed on the porch. Quickly I became the Weird Irish Girl that nobody would speak with because they couldn't understand what she was saying. Initially I was self-conscious because no one really likes to be in a new place and be different from everyone else. All I wanted was to make a few friends.

 Walking to work one day, someone sneered and called me "That stupid Mick from down the street". At first I was the slightest bit impressed; not many people in the States, let alone in West Virginia, knew that slur. But then I thought of something else, something that's helped me. Anything that makes me different should make me proud, not ashamed. I moved away after only six months, but even though I've forgotten a lot of the specifics concerning those months, I hear that song and remember what makes me...well, me.