Dear small town,

First of all, I want to say thank you for being a safe place to grow up and go to school. I learned what a safe environment was, but only because there was no physical violence. You're a toxic environment. You grow people who are clones of one another and claim to be "unique" and "different." You grow racists and people who are ignorant simply because they have never had to interact with anyone different from them. This may not be true for everyone because, of course, there are some outliers, but the crappy people you helped create helped leaving you behind be so easy.

Thank you for making me realize that I am not much different than the other people who surrounded me growing up, but that realizing that I wasn't different is actually what made me different. By leaving you behind, I learned how to think on my own and how to befriend people who were different from me. Meeting these people who don't exist in your small bubble made me better; they made me grow and evolve and learn what hardships are really like.

Thank you for being so goddamn small. I will never understand why we needed five pizza places in a span of approximately six miles, but I'm glad that's a thing. I appreciate that I get the chance to know what it's like to live in a place where virtually nothing happens and yet people gossip more than I've ever witnessed. You've taught me how to be private and how to make sure my secrets are only told to the right people, because if they weren't pretty soon the whole 6,000 person town would know them.

I am blessed to have left you when I did otherwise, I probably never would have. You keep people trapped in you for their entire lives, never letting them experience what the outside world is like, and my god is it better than you are.

You shaped my childhood and molded me into a person until I left you for college at the age of eighteen. You created me, my interests, my thoughts, my friends, and even some of my emotions. You helped me develop into a person who figured out on their own that it was time to depart. It's been four years since I've considered you my home, and I wish I was sorry that I outgrew you, but I know that you're both better off without me and that I am better off without you. You'll always be beautiful to me and I promise to visit.