love where you come from ♥

[ photo from gabri le cabri ]

Right now, I'm enduring some rather unfortunate circumstances: I'm a 22-year-old college (super) senior who is stuck at my parent's home for the summer in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio.

Doesn't sound too glamorous, does it?  

Spending time in my childhood home (but not my childhood room; the family stole that one from me before I could even throw down the security deposit on my first apartment) has created quite a mess of anxious, exciting, childish, squeamish & sometimes down right depressing emotions in me.  

I have spent the last three weeks lounging poolside with high school friends, stuffing my face with Mama's delicious homemade dishes & basically avoiding reality at all costs.  All this delicious (& precious!) idle time has led me to one conclusion:  I love my hometown.

Now, if someone would have talked to me about this idea of "loving" where I come from a couple years ago, I would have laughed right in their face.  My sole reason for traveling cross-state for university was to "escape" the "evil clutches" of my hometown - & my parents.  I wanted nothing more than to run as far away from all the bad people, things & ideas that had suffocated & consumed me for the better part of teenagedom. College was this magical place where everything would eventually be perfect. I would finally accept my imperfect body, I would stop violently shaking when I had to speak to more than one person at a time, I'd actually find alternate means for dealing with my problems besides self-injury.

Yeah, right.

The thing that I - & most people - seem to forget is that wherever you are, there's one truly important thing you cary with you...& that's yourself.   Sure, you might sleep in a pretty, swanky apartment, or wear fantastic new clothes or hang out with a different crowd, but deep inside, you're still whoever you were before.  Problems & issues you're dealing with don't flitter away into the sunset just because you're in a new location. When I came to college, actually, the opposite happened.  My problems & issues with self-loathing became even more magnified.  I was forced to stop blaming extraneous circumstances for my failures.  I was still the same kind of person even though my surroundings were vastly different.  I still had to the urge to cut myself, I still felt that I was always being victimized, I still hated the way my face looked in the mirror.

But, now that I'm back at home I am able to really take a look at the progress I've made over the last four years.  I get to be my new self in an old place & see how differently things feel.  Let's just say, the results so far have been WAY dramatic.  I still have a lot of the same girl friends & go to most of the same places, but the way I feel about myself & my life is way different than it was in high school.

Let's just say, I definitely don't hate my home anymore.

I'm sure there are others of you out there in similar situations.  You just can't seem to stop hating that certain thing, person or place from the past. It seemed to me that no matter how long I'd been in college & no matter how much I learned about what it meant to be mentally stable & healthy, I still resented my past (namely, my hometown).  There was still a tiny part of my heart that wanted something else - my family & my upbringing, my old friends, my ex-boyfriends, the suburb I live in - to blame for the mistakes & pain of my past.

So, for you & for me, here are some reasons you should stop hating on your hometown & some of the great things that can come out of revisiting the roost:

 

♥ If you weren't happy at home, you are the only one to blame.  One of the first steps to becoming mentally healthy is accepting that you're the only person responsible for your feelings.  Your hometown was not to blame for your unhappiness; you were.

♥ Your family & old friends from home do not define who you are.  Even if you hung around some bad apples, that doesn't make you a bad apple.  Just a slightly bruised one who can choose to hang out with some prettier fruits in the future.  

♥ Reconnecting with old friends can bring back a sense of belonging.  There's really nothing quite like being around people who once knew you inside & out.  It's also fun to let them get to know the newer (& hopefully better) parts of you that they didn't get to see before.

♥ You didn't choose your hometown, but you can choose to see the best in it.  Since I hate everything a lot less now than I did, almost everywhere & everything seems much more beautiful to me now. Because of this,  I feel like I'm finally able to see Columbus for what it really is - which is a pretty amazing little place.

♥ Others in your hometown may have changed, too.  Although not all change is for the best, sometimes it can be.  Some of the old people in your life may have matured, changed & morphed into fabulous new creatures.  Acquaintances from the past may quickly turn into new friends because you can connect on some new level you might not have been able to before.  I know I was extremely judgmental of people from my high school, but I have definitely grown past that & have created some new friendships - with people I never thought I would have.

♥ Last but not least, you only have one home, right?

"Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave & grow old wanting to get back to."

 -- John Ed Pearce

love & madness