To the hometown who made me realize I didn't belong,

Your hometown is supposed to be the place where you can go back to if everything else falls apart, except mine isn't. We all work to find a place that we "fit in" to go to school, start a family, or find a career. But what happens when that never happens? We go home. that raises an issue, what if, the one place you've always called home, is the same place you will never belong.

I come from a small town in North Carolina. I was born and raised in a sweet, little town with not much to do. My entire family lives within minutes of each other. That is wonderful, I fit in with my family but I do not fit in my hometown. As to be expected, in a small southern town, the past seems to never change. The same stores are still in town, well those that Walmart hasn't overtaken, the same pastry shops have a monopoly, all the activities shut down at 5 pm and Sunday we turn into a ghost town. The population is very much a southern, white community but is ever changing.

What hasn't changed is acceptance and understanding. You are deemed an outsider if you have a view that breaks the Southern Christian mold. My town gives a lot of sideway glares to tattoos, interracial relationships, and ideologies that don't match. We are evolving, becoming more accepting, but not at a rate that makes me fit in. In my hometown, I am too liberal, I am too "millennial" for such a small town, and that's okay.

I never expected to have a desire to leave my hometown, I could have gotten an internship and turned that into a job, I could have found a husband and started a family, only, I don't belong. As a progressive feminist, moving to a college that contains so much love and acceptance, made me realize I didn't belong.

So to the hometown who made me realize I don't belong,

Thank you for 20 years of love, 20 years of lessons through which I became to know myself and where I stand on issues, and for being so easy to leave behind in order to find where I truly belong.