THE NARRATIVE ARC
A Vast Mudslide of Listlessness and Depression at Turkey Mountain
When you’re lost in heart and mind
I mostly hated Tulsa when we moved here in 2006. Drivers blared their horns, angry and rude. The streets were narrow and pitted with potholes. I hardly saw cops anywhere, which left me feeling strangely out of place and sort of unsafe — Norman crawled with police, which gave me a (misguided) sense of security.
I felt like a small-town transplant to a hostile city. I despised it.
After graduating with our college degrees, my husband and I moved from Norman to Nowata, Oklahoma. In August we moved to Tulsa.
Our new apartment complex was grungy grey, inset below road level. Inside, it was a spacious well-lit modern apartment. It was near downtown, surrounded by many unhoused people and bail bond shops. It muttered under its city sidewalk mouth, people were down-and-out.
When we told new acquaintances we lived near 15th and Denver we’d usually get some kind of surprised or questioning look — you live there? People seemed genuinely confused by our choice.
My husband started his job in downtown Tulsa. When he got off work at 5:00, downtown’s workaday turned into a ghost town — offices closed, lights…
