Thug life. Hood...or how come it used to be so much easier

A: It's so much easier to be a good person in small-town Indiana than here, in our hood.

B: Oh no, it's easier here. There's a lot more good that needs to be done.

It's difficult to figure out what's right. You can live in white suburbia and pretend that all the shit outside of it doesn't exist, you might just not know about it. You can do it all your life, never confronted with the issues hitting and kicking you, often literally, right in your smiling face.

Ethical questions have been concerning me ever since we moved here. "Am I doing the right thing?" Or the one that's way more common, "What the fuck is going on and why am I here?"

Just the other night I was out on the street at night and police stopped me, suspecting I was a prostitute. I was wearing sweats and tennis shoes. They couldn't believe I lived here. "This is a really rough neighborhood", one of them said...as if I didn't notice.

Real shit is happening here. It gets nearly impossible to not get in it.

There's always police here. They never go alone. Usually at least 2 to 5 officers keeping together. I'm white and I wear nice clothes for work. I often get the "good guy" card just because. I also get asked for change, bus tickets, phone, laptop, real money...also, just because a.k.a an affluent white young female with license plates not from around here. I used to feel like we stood out too much. "Ahem....Did you just get off the bus, darling?" Now I'm concerned we're well too adjusted.

The clouds around my husband and me seem so thick I can barely breath. It's almost humorous when I go to work or grad school classes, immersing myself in a completely different world. They don't understand. I'd never share. I don't know nothing anyway, right?

Half of the time I sincerely don't understand the way the people speak around here.