The Inevitability of Denying Where You're From

“There is something so inevitable about the process of growing up and denying where you're from, then realizing two minutes too late that it is a beautiful place.”

Greta Gerwig

For me, my two minutes too late was about two months into my freshman year of college. I had done the thing I always said I was going to do. I moved to New York City from the Dallas suburbs, but about two months later, once the shiny newness of it all had left my mind, I started to miss Texas.

I had been so confident in my decision to leave it all and make New York City my permanent home. I had spent as long as I can remember telling everyone how much I hated living in Texas (I am certain everyone was annoyed about hearing about it) and couldn't wait to “get out.” It was not until I had actually left could I take the time to realize that there was beauty in my Texas life all along. The process of realizing I loved where I was from was pure panic; was it too late to appreciate it? Maybe I didn’t appreciate growing up or the environment of my childhood; will I never have that again? To be honest, it still gives me panic.

Growing up, I seemed to think there was pride in hating your hometown. It appeared as an elitist mindset that you were “more enlightened” than those who liked the metroplex where we lived. To me, the kids who enjoyed where they were were going to be the ones who never left, got married at 20, had kids, and were stuck. All because they liked where they grew up? I realize now how strange it sounds; you can like where you live and still want to go to other places. I felt like I could see the world for what it really was, a boring suburb where there was no culture, everyone participated in the same three activities, and everyone looked the same. It was not until after I left that I was able to see that there are beautiful things in suburbia too. Of course there is beauty everywhere, but before I left, I had such an elitist mindset that I could not see it in all types of living. If it wasn't a big city, it was boring and mundane. Nothing important could be in towns that are primarily just strip malls and parking lots.

Things I would complain about in Texas became the things I missed the most once I was gone. The warmth of the winter, wide open spaces, how rarely it rained. Turns out, those are the things I would miss the most, and their direct opposites (the painful cold in the winter, cramped city blocks, and non-stop rain) would become the things I loathed the most about New York. Perhaps it was a lesson in taking things for granted. It was a shock for me. The place I had spent all of my life thus far denying and being embarrassed of was something I longed for. I am not certain that it is rooted in as much of the place but more the memories. For a while, suburbia was the only place I called home. It was the only place I knew love. I had no memories in New York compared to the well I had from home. Once you are out of the only place you’ve called home you can see all the formative memories, good and bad, that are deeply connected to the physical location. I don’t love every part of my hometown, but I love it a lot more than I used to. And I love the life I have there. I don’t love everything about the New York I once romanticized, but I also love my life there. It’s a daily live-and-learn situation.

It’s something I'm still learning, not to judge just because others live differently than you. I am still working to love wherever I am whenever I am there. But, as Greta Gerwig said, I think that the acceptance and seeing beauty in your hometown is inevitable.