Small towns in the US (and elsewhere, I expect) demolish so many people. Trent Reznor wrote a whole-ass song that easily maps to small-town life, and it starts with the line(s):

"I believe I can see the future
'cause I repeat the same routine"

It's a life where all the broader brush strokes were painted by one's (great) grandparents, a life where one either adds tiny details, replaces something big, or just leaves bc this ain't for them.

It's a life where one can experience every experience readily, immediately available by the age of about 22. It's a life where (increasingly these days) someone can read, see, or hear about amazing things, knowing they will either work their entire life away to do something amazing, facing incomprehension and ridicule the whole way,

or they'll never have any form of transcendental experience.

Small towns are why eclipses and comets were once Big News. They came to you; they didn't happen every day, so they were both new and still unique after the fact; and no one could stop them happening, no matter how much effort everyone put into being reticent curmudgeons.

Because small towns are full of reticent curmudgeons and, strangely, they'd fall into what I'd call the happier residents.

Broadly, there are three categories of small-town residents.

The Happy: We love it here. We love the 18 things to do and 450 people around us. (We don't talk to or about the 75 people over there; they're not really part of Our Town.) Don't you change shit.

The Ambivalent: It's fine.

The Dissatisfied: HOLY FUCKING CRAP, HOW CAN ALL OF YOU BE HAPPY DOING THE SAME 18 THINGS ON A LOOP FOR 89 YEARS

The Dissatisfied WANT OUT.

"Out" costs money.

Small towns are not exactly known for the plethora of "rags to riches" stories they generate. The businesses in small towns don't thrive; they subsist. All the money travels in a circle, one hand to another, until it lands in a hand that takes it out of the community.

The only ways out are extravagant gifts of wealth or a desperate play by the destitute.

Note: Higher education falls under both those categories. A person can be given the extravagant gift of a scholarship, or take on overwhelming student loan debt in the hope that they'll eventually pay their way out. (. . . mhm. 'nother discussion, that.)

So. We've described a black hole masquerading as a community, one whose event horizon might not be absolute but is way too fucking close to being. What the fuck are the Dissatisfied going to do if they can't get out?

Remember those 75 folks The Happy won't talk about, that don't get to be part of Our Town? Yeah, it's 76 now. When there are only 18 legal, appropriate experiences available, and you can't get OUT to do New Stuff, the option is Illegal Stuff.

Sitting in a bar for eight hours of the day, drinking one's life away may not look or sound amazing, but it can FEEL amazing.

Spending a week in a string of successive K-holes may look like a room of near-corpses to an outsider, but it can FEEL amazing.

It can at least feel like an escape, and the thing the Dissatisfied of Your Local Small Town want most is an escape. Any escape.

And all of that lines up perfectly with my cousin's adult life.

No one was going to give her a bunch of cash.
No one was going to give her a scholarship.
She wasn't ready to get on a bus, clothes on her back, and fail elsewhere.

But someone was absolutely there to give her a beer, a joint, a hit, or a bump, and tell her "Aw, it isn't so bad."

And it wasn't, if she had a beer, a joint, a hit, or a bump.

I don't feel I was ever in a position to genuinely help her.

For those who don't know me very well, I am The Gifted Kid Who Actually Had ADHD & Autism Spectrum Disorder, and I'm 43, so that shit went unseen, then misunderstood, until *checks notes* "this year".

At 19, I started hitching my wagon (over and over again) to different women who didn't share my issues. I still don't work. I am a 43-yo sugar baby.