As I start to get things ready to head back to college, I find myself bouncing around with anticipation for this new year. I can't wait to be back. Part of my excitement is just getting back to my college town. I feel like it has truly become my home, instead of my hometown. With that, I have realized that my hometown is simply my hometown, just another part of my past. I have also realized though that it is so important to who I am. So here’s to you, my hometown, I owe you so much.
To provide some backstory: it is not like I grew up in some tiny town with one stoplight and everyone knows who everyone is. It’s not like it was so populated and popular that we had our own geotag or skyscrapers and socialites at every corner. Roanoke, Virginia is pretty average in terms of population for Virginia and, as I thought throughout high school, average in activities to do around the town.
I grew up in a neighborhood with a bunch of other kids running around and went to a good public school not even ten minutes away. I would go to the zoo or hike one of our many mountains or be content jumping through the sprinkler in the backyard. Roanoke was my world and I loved it.
As I grew older, I began to wonder if Roanoke was so special to me because I was a kid or if it actually was that great. In middle school and high school, I felt like the activities that Roanoke offered were dwindling. You could only feel content with going to the movies, on drives around the Blue Ridge Parkway, or attending one of your high school’s sporting events for so long.
When I went away to school, I was dying to go somewhere new. It wasn’t just so that I could meet new people or study new things, but part of me wanted to leave Roanoke too. So I did and I could never imagine living in Roanoke after college now, but that’s okay. Roanoke has served its purpose for me in a different way.
Roanoke, for me, will only be my hometown. I still complain sometimes that there isn’t anything to do. But I’ll always love Roanoke for shaping me into the person that I am today.
I will always look back and remember gathering at my neighbor’s house for a neighborhood-wide game of capture the flag. I learned more about teamwork then than I have in any book I've been given in class.
I will remember hiking with my brother, my dad, and another family and once getting to the top, knowing what it feels like to know you’re a lot smaller than you think that you are.
I will remember rushing home from an unexpected early dismissal to pick up my friends and head back to my house before the blizzard arrived only to have my car start backpedaling down the slick road and almost crash. I experienced way too many emotions that day.
The list goes on and on. The point is, my hometown is what made me who I am today. Sure, it would have been awesome to have grown up in a big city with a lot of things to do or live out in the country and experience nature up close, but I know I would be a different person if I had. I experienced friendship, loss, love, responsibility, trust, and all the other cheesy aspects you can think of and, for that, I will be truly grateful.
