I'm from an incredibly microscopic town; I've lived there my entire life.

I never really enjoyed it, but I was usually able to make it work. I guess I had gotten too used to it or something. The people are generally fine, my family and friends are here, but other than that it is just another small, southern town. It works for plenty of people, but as an ambitious and curious teenager, it doesn't work for me.

Thankfully, I finally branched out of my town of 8,000 people, as one would do when they graduate high school and go off to college. I even graduated a year early because I was so curious to see what else was out there.

Any college town would have been a step up but I picked a school that is pretty large. It has about four times as many students as my town has people and I absolutely love it. Even when there was nothing to do, I could always find something.

Even boredom was more fun when I was away at school.

But where I'm from? There's the same restaurant I went to last week and the week before that and the one beside it that I went to yesterday. Oh, and Walmart. Walmart is the hangout spot.

Of course, the school year ends and you have to return home for a few months. It shouldn't have been that bad but it was. There are so few ways to even kill time, let alone do something valuable with it.

These few months have been the worst ones of my entire life.

I couldn't even get a summer job because no one wants to hire someone for three months when there are so many people that will never leave... at all, ever. Therefore, my human interaction was cut to a minimum and I just counted the days until I would get to leave town. I tried hard not to fall back into the old routine I had for years.

And yeah, all of my oldest friends are there and getting to be with them is the best part by far, but nothing's the same when everyone goes their separate ways for eight months. Some stayed at home and so they stayed connected. Others went off and missed out on a lot.

I missed out on so much and I can't act like I didn't. I made new connections with new people who were hard not to miss because they met my new needs.

I spent the entire summer feeling like something was missing and like there wasn't much to gain.