I'm a freaking fish out of water in my community. I'm a liberal oasis in the midst of a conservative ocean. At night, when my parents sit down to talk about politics, or about social issues, or basically about anything, I have to practically shove my fist in my mouth to prevent myself from saying anything to prevent a fight from breaking out over our thirty-minutes-or-less meal of the evening. In AP Economics, when we discuss different ways of approaching nationwide economic problems, every student says something to the effect of: "Poor people are lazy. We shouldn't pay so many taxes to the government. Universal healthcare is a waste of money." And of course, I'm sitting in my seat, squirming, and debating whether or not I should speak up and argue for free college.

Besides me and my few friends and some adults in my life, everyone around me is hyper conservative. My community is almost actively against having people like us in it: the progressive people, the liberal people, the people who actually want society to adapt to its changing state. I think that's why my friends and I found ourselves together—through shared adversity. Like my home experience, they are cursed to be liberal in a conservative household. They have no outlet for their beliefs, no one to have a political discussion with that doesn't end in screaming and being grounded. So, in school, we found each other through shared political beliefs. Of course, we had other similarities as well: I have writing friends, artsy friends, serious friends, and gamer friends. But our political stance is, in essence, a representation of our core values. If I don't share my core values with the people around me, I won't be very inclined to spend a lot of time with them.

With that being said, I have found that those people in the South who also happen to be liberal seem better-informed than other leftists who live farther north. Since we live among people who are constantly challenging our political beliefs, it's almost necessary that we know more about our political stance, even at a young age, than most other people. We know why we believe that there should be universal free education; we understand that welfare helps bring people beyond their station by meeting their basic needs so they can focus on being productive members of society; we realize that our government isn't taking up enough taxes and call for more to be levied on businesses and taxpayers to ensure a higher quality of life for everyone in the country. We have to constantly explain and explain again why we believe what we believe. Why we think the way we think.

I've been up to more liberal places in New England, California, etc., and there is no such community there that is opposed to liberalism. Most of these areas lean very far left themselves. There isn't a church on every street corner. Politicians tend to be progressive. Everyone recycles. Boston even had recycling bins placed next to their public trash bins and the home trashcans had matching recycling bins of the same size. LGBT+ events aren't just prevalent, they're obvious. When I was in San Diego during pride, the whole town was decked out for the upcoming facilities. Every business had a rainbow flag flying. In Boston, every church in the area had a rainbow flag over their entrances to signal that they welcomed gay people into their establishments.

We don't get that at all in the South. We get Trump signs, Blue Lives Matter, and rebel flags flying from the back of pickup trucks. And yet, I feel as if living in the South has really made me a better liberal. It's made my beliefs stronger, and my ability to argue for them much much better. I really don't think I'd like to have been raised anywhere else. Because, even though I'm a freaking fish out of water, it's really forced me to become a more educated political citizen.