Small Towns Can Make You Live on the Edge of Your Emotions
Nick Nolte’s pain of trauma and inadequacy in ‘Affliction’ is mine too.
I grew up in a small town in South Hungary. For eighteen years, it was great — and then it slowly became depressing.
In a small town, everything’s always the same: The people, the parties, the bars, the cliques, and the vibes. In American movies, these places usually have a calming and inviting charm. Where I grew up has lost that quality a long time ago. It's a dead city now, I sometimes refer to as Silent Hill — it’s bleak as hell, and the lack of change is constant.
I had to break out.
After I graduated high school, I moved to a bigger city and went to college there. My expectations were through the roof — new people, great parties, huge opportunities — yet life hasn't differed much from the one I had before. The new people I met haven’t turned into friends, the parties were average at best, and the lack of real opportunities has been disappointing. The truth is: college life is overrated.
I became lonely, and the visits home on the weekends didn’t help. Unlike me, most of my friends moved on and built a new life in other cities where they studied. At the time, I didn’t realize I had to recreate my entire worldview — and by staying in the same close-minded, depressive country, it just wasn’t possible.
It took me four years to find the place that actually helped me change and move on — it just happened to be in the United Kingdom.
It’s been eight years since I came to England — and each time I go back to visit my hometown is another reminder of how much I've grown. I don't belong there anymore. Regardless of how much time I spend in that town, I feel that my connection to the locals is almost completely gone. The city rejects me. It refuses to be my home — which sometimes makes me wonder if I have one at all.
But I no longer think of “home” as a geographical concept. I think of it as an internal feeling, which is defined by the people I love and who love me.
To my friends, who never left that town — or returned after a few years — I’m an anomaly. They can’t truly understand why I’ve escaped and why I wouldn’t ever want to come back. They’ve never felt so suffocated there the way I did — or, at least, they haven’t admitted it to themselves.
The main reason they’re still there is their unwillingness to change. The thought of leaving and adjusting to a different environment paralyzes them. They stick with the limited possibilities the town and the country provide even if those make them unhappy.
On some level, I feel sorry for them because they seem bitter and defeated. Occasionally, they confess that if there'd be a second chance, they’d do it differently — without creating emotional strings that pull them back. In those moments of honesty and vulnerability, I can feel their pain. They’re healthy young men, looking at a dreadfully certain future that holds zero surprises. And the chances that could give them a different outcome are getting fewer with every passing day.
In Paul Schrader’s 1997 family drama, Affliction, Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte) is the sad testament of what it feels like to be trapped by the past in a small town.
He’s the sheriff of an ice-cold New Hampshire place — and he has a lot going on. He’s trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter and preparing a custody battle against his ex-wife, who hates his guts. While he’s investigating a hunting accident, which is possibly connected to the mob, he also learns that his mother just died. Right before he was about to ask his girlfriend to marry him. And on top of everything, he suffers from an unbearable toothache that just won’t go away.
Wade is a textbook case of failure: a divorced, unsuccessful, broken man.
When we first meet his dad, Glen (played by a terrifying James Coburn), in a daunting flashback, it all makes sense. Glen is a self-absorbed monster — the type of drunk and abusive father people talk about in therapy for a decade. But Wade’s only therapist is Dr. Booze.
He isn’t a bad person, though. We empathize with him because he’s trying hard not to turn out like his old man. But we sense that it might be too late. The wounds he caused to others — and the ones he has — are too deep and infected. It’s just a matter of time before they absorb him.
Blinded by his own rage, pain, and resentment, Wade thinks that everyone is against him. He begins to see things that aren’t real. He believes the hunting accident was a calculated murder, and he's convinced that he could get full custody of his daughter — who’s clearly afraid of him. He recalls memories that didn’t even happen the way he remembers them. Clearly, he’s on the verge of a mental breakdown, and his compulsive drinking is just a tool to delay the inevitable.
I understand Wade's pain because I see fragments of it in my childhood friends. They might not have the same emotional scars, but they all struggle with the feeling of inadequacy. It could be a parent they lost too early, the mistake of getting married too young, or the inability to let go of the past. As an attempt to cope, they drink, medicate, gamble, or play video games obsessively. Nevertheless, they can’t shake off the feeling of worthlessness.
I fought the same battle for almost five years. I felt hopeless, bitter, and insecure, no matter how I tried to explain all of it to anybody. They just couldn’t understand it. I needed to hit rock bottom to turn to therapy — which was the last option to find a way out.
I remember the day when my dad — who didn’t believe in getting professional help — told me angrily that I had to see a therapist. He was right. Therapy helped me crawl out of a numbing depression and made me strong enough to survive the most painful breakup of my life. Without it, I’d probably be stuck in the same small town in the same country — still being angry, bitter, and terrified of looking beyond the borders. I’d be living in a place that died a long time ago, pretending I haven’t noticed.
So, in a way, Wade’s pain used to be mine too. But I was lucky enough to find a solution before it swallowed me whole.
Wade isn’t that fortunate, though. Back then, in order to protect his mother and siblings, he stood up against his violent father regardless of the consequences. His brother and sister left home as soon as they could, but Wade stayed behind because he's that kind of a man. He made a sacrifice. But you can’t try to control a monster for a lifetime without losing your sanity. Without losing your family. Without becoming the same beast.
It’s funny how life works, though. After I moved to London, I couldn’t imagine for years that I would ever want to leave here. That I would ever long for the same type of small-town atmosphere, I despised and had to escape.
But now, after living in such an enormous, vivid, and lively city for more than eight years, I need something low-key again. I want a quiet and peaceful place where I get to be familiar with the unchanging faces, spots, and vibes. I want to be part of the charming and inviting landscape American movies portray of small towns.
Because this time, I feel ready to build another life in a new place where I wouldn’t be lonely — where I’d have enough friends, and I’d be proud to call myself a local. A small town where I wouldn’t be feeling the need to break out from.
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