This is not an "I need to see the world lalala and live in a metropolis lalala" thread.
I live in a city with 100 000 citizens or so. I think it's the 10th largest city in Sweden, which makes it rather small. All my life I've been excentric, weird and usually aggressive and outacting. I'm also very charismatic so everyone takes notice of me and remembers me well. Basically, starting at kindergarden there has been a chain of trashtalk and rumors about me. People I grew up with, their parents who are teachers, doctors or whatever. Everyone knows someone somewhere who knows someone who heard something etc. I'm the kind of thing which drunk middle class people probably used to bring up as the "scary/sad subject" during boxed wine dinners with friends. Of course my own actions have led to this so I can't blame others really.
However, it's gotten to the point where I haven't gone outside, other than going to the airport/Stockholm to see my surgeon and then back again, in years.
Believe me if you want, but this isn't all in my head. People still from time to time like to bring up some childhood rumor about me, just like 50 year olds sometimes gossip about the childhood of other 50-year olds they knew 40 years ago. I also have a certain way of being noticed. Kind of like Michael Jackson, people can spot me just on the way I walk. People who haven't seen me for 5-10 years will still put together 2 and 2 and realize that the person behind those sunglasses with that certain presence and style is the one they knew so long ago or heard rumors about. I still get easily recognized.
Being the way I am, an alien Jacko-type, very sublime, with expensive looking designer clothes, dark sunglasses and a priestlike, almost prophetic and sinister presence is nothing I want to change or probably even could change if I wanted to. I also use this to distance myself and maintain a sort of pride and integrity in the face of the trashtalkers. I'm weird, hated, ridiculed behind my back but even as time goes on never truly forgotten. Whenever people see me even from a distance the chain of rumors and trashtalk is revived again. Same old things.
It's not that easy to just move. I'm bad at organizing things like that. I'm like a child in that respect. I'm intelligent and very self-aware but I still have huge difficulties being an adult. It doesn't help that I feel naturally awkward around other people.
I don't know how I can get away from this.