The town you grow up in is typically only home for a while. People end up leaving and “moving on” “bigger and better things.” But I didn’t leave; I stayed. I go to school very close to my childhood home where my mom still lives, and I have never regretted this decision.

I am a creature of habit; I sit at the same table everyday for lunch, park in the same parking spot, take the same route home and very rarely do I switch this up. But I do not get bored, because every street I drive has a memory. I can tell you the spot I hit my first and hopefully last raccoon (he lived!), where my best friend and I always park late at night when we need to have a talk, where our favorite park with our favorite swings is, where I was standing with some of my favorite people when we saw a shooting star, and the moments after when we realized we were all too in shock to actually wish on it.

This was the world I knew, I ran these streets as a child barefoot or on a bike dreaming of destinies I had no way of obtaining, but that was the beauty of it. Because growing up is building yourself a life, finding a job, figuring out what you want to do, building a group of friends, a place to stay, relationships; everything you do is building something bigger. I stayed because I am this place and this place is me and when I start to feel down, when the world looks vaguely unfamiliar and I don’t remember what I am doing or who I am doing it for. The one thing I will always recognize is the lake as it glitters hello on a Sunday morning. The cracks in the pavement of my neighborhood that I knew to avoid on my bike. The world is very large and this town is very small. You cant go to Target without seeing half of your graduating class and that’s what I love about it; I know these people and I know this place and I chose to stay because I love all of it.

I got ridiculed for this decision, because the point of college to most people is getting away, experiencing a town that is not your own, and making new memories, but I can do most of that here. Because I have never experienced this town on my own as an adult and that is what I am doing now. Because now scraped knees on the side of the road is no longer a problem for me but a flat tire on that same road is. I have grown and my surroundings have too because the world no matter where you are is ever-changing and that is what is great about it. No two people will live the same life, regardless of where they live or where they move to. This town is growing with me, aging with me and we both feel a lot different now. When my friends from high school come home the area changes, we're suddenly those people again and time seems to have not passed at all. We gossip about the same people, relive old memories, drive the same streets I always drive, but when they’re here they aren’t my streets anymore. They’re our home town and I no longer feel like an adult me in an adult town. I am a child again, I have the urge to call my mom a lot more and while I would never ridicule someone for leaving a place that isn’t right for them, I would also never ridicule someone for staying, because this place can be right for them, because this town is right for me.

While I don’t know what the future holds, and although my life sometimes leans towards moving with every year I age, leaving this town will be leaving a piece of me and taking a piece of me and everything I have built; the person I have grown to today is because of this town. Because you learn in the first science class you ever take that the environment will impact the way you turn out. Because if I end up leaving this town I will stop building and everything I have built here feels right, so for now at least I will stay. Keep building.