I was the kid in high school who couldn't wait to leave. Unlike most of my peers, whose families had lived in the area for generations, I was not eager to stick around after graduation; so I applied to schools several hours away. I spent thirteen years in this sleepy little snow covered town, and I moved six and a half hours away.
A recent trip back to my hometown for Thanksgiving helped solidify the fact that my small, conservative town has never really felt like home. On the train home, the closer my stop came, the more anxious I began to feel about returning to a place that had never really come to understand me.
It isn't uncommon for college students to feel differently about where they grew up and have a sort of crisis during their freshman year, when neither home nor school feels quite like home. For me, school has become my home. I have made friends more easily in the three months I have been in college than I did in my thirteen years of living in my hometown. My new community makes me feel as comfortable and accepted as my family. Being part of such a strong support system has only added to my experience, making me feel like I belong.
Returning after several months of being away made me realize just how little I have to come back for. My family is my home, and they are just as disenchanted with my town as I am. I speak to only two people from my high school just months after graduating. Coming home for a month between semesters does not yield excitement, but rather an intense fear of loneliness and boredom.
After years of being left out, I turned to my studies, seeing college as a guaranteed way to start over in a place far from the one I was living. Acceptance does not promote intense escapism.
The reminders are everywhere. These are the streets that I would walk down with a heavy backpack on my shoulders. This is the town I wasn't anywhere near when the explosion sounded. This is the school that took my voice. This is the community that told me my politics were wrong and snubbed me for speaking out. This is the lake at the end of my street that taught me to look to the horizon for diversity and culture and art. This is the teacher who refused to stick up for me time and time again. The peers who only paid me any mind after I started going to parties and made sure the drunk kids got home safe. This is the place that made me lust for the opposite of loneliness.
This is the town that made me long to leave, only to have never heard of my school and ridicule me for attending a women's college.
It's my town, but not my home.
