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How to Dump Your Toxic Hometown

 

Ever feel like you’re in a toxic relationship with where you are from?  Like you want to get away from it yet somehow it keeps pulling you back in?  Maybe you have family there.  Maybe the town keeps promising to change but it never will.  Every time you visit it is depressing, it reminds you of where you came from, and doesn’t make you feel good about yourself.  If it’s like my hometown it keeps growing but doesn’t ever get any better. It has been written about in the New York Times as the most impoverished city in the nation.  It is currently overrun with drugs, violence, and general misery. I have moved away, moved back, moved away again, moved close to my hometown, and now I’m about to move away again and the only way I’ll ever move back again is if I die and hell is full and that’s where they’ll send me. 

 

Like any relationship it didn’t start off badly. It was a nice place to grow up- nurturing, small town community, great neighborhood, all that.  Age and ignorance have a blissful relationship so I didn’t know any better of the town.  It was my home, and I was happy enough.  As we aged together, my hometown and I, the relationship declined.  I was different from everyone else and it had no problem letting me know that at any chance; the town became mean and unwelcoming to me.  Just like any other good narcissist or generally mean person it spawned from the lack of confidence in itself, and from its own self-hatred. What we receive is often a projection of what the other partner is feeling.  So, I left. Never to return.  And like any Lifetime original that we’ve all seen a thousand times or more- I came back.

 

Round two of my hometown came out of necessity and it seemed like a comfort and maybe it has changed.  It hadn’t. You can put makeup on a mudhole, but it’s still just filth underneath.  I moved back to finish school, help my family, and generally get myself together.  I was hoping for a reconciliation between my hometown and I, and maybe even the chance to understand it more and enjoy it.  This did not happen.  It had actually only gotten worse.  Under the façade of arts centers, farmers markets, and splash pads it was still the same entity- unforgiving, unwelcoming to anyone not exactly the same, and unaware of it’s own toxicity and need for growth.  I vowed when I finished college that I was moving, and I graduated on May 2 and moved on June 1^st.

 

Then I came back again. This time not to my hometown exactly, but to the closest “city”- far enough away to not have to be in it, but close enough to be in it.  Like I still needed to keep tabs on it, or I wanted it to apologize to me.  Well, let me say- Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice or more I’m an idiot. My hometown is somehow even more unwelcoming than ever behind a mask of festivals, events, new business growth, and even a second Walmart.  It’s still the same people, still the same sadness, still the same glue that holds everyone down and makes them think this is as good as it will get.  The “city” that I am in?  No better.  It might be my hometown’s bigger sibling, however it has the exact same family traits as all the other siblings.  It is just as bigoted, just as uncaring, just as unhappy, and just as unaware of all of this as any other town around here.  It just has on nicer shoes.  Everyone acts as though this place is a huge cultural mecca of liberalism and inclusivity- and comparatively it is.  However, and I’ve said this before, how liberating to a fish a ten gallon tank must feel after living in a 5 gallon tank because the fish has no clue that oceans exist.

 

What is the draw that keeps leading me back to a relationship with an area that I know in my heart of hearts isn’t good for me?  I wanted to be a positive light- a shining beacon of what we could achieve and that there are good people everywhere.  I wanted to affect a change and I saw the potential in the town and wanted to bring out the best, but as my therapist told me once “You have to stop looking for the best in [people] and start seeing the now.  Not the what if, but the what is.”  This was in regard to romantic relationships which I also seem to fancy the toxic ones, but it applies to many aspects of life.  What is the situation, face value, right now?  Do your surroundings match with your personal morals and values?  Is it nurturing your areas of wellness, because much of your wellness is dependent on your surroundings?  Is it providing you with a good social structure, environment that is fulfilling your needs, offering occupational wellness, and what about spiritually or emotionally?  Are your needs being met?

 

I had a great conversation with a dear friend of mine who also broke up with our hometown, but much cleanly and never looked back.  I told her that I wanted to stay here, to make a change so that no kid has to experience what I did in my home area again, and to try to bring some enlightenment to the area.  She replied “Is that fair?”  I said something about not wanting to be a martyr for my cause and she cut me off. “That’s not what I’m asking.  I’m asking if maybe 5% of the people think like you, is it fair for you to ask 95% of people to change?”  That hit hard. No, it’s not.  It might not be morally right what is going on here, and certainly doesn’t hold to my standards of values, yet who am I to hold my sign and yell at everyone to change?  I likely seem just as out there to them as the man preaching on the street corner about our damnation does to me.  It’s time to change, and not the city but where I am.

 

I have to break up with my hometown, home state, home region. It (the larger part of the population) does not hold the same morals and values that I do.  It has afforded me some great opportunities and has had my back a few times, yet for every help it has given me it has asked more of me in return.  I have been yelled slurs at from moving car windows and sidewalks frequently, had LOTS of fights started with me for no reason (well, the reason being everyone here is unhappy and ready to take it out on everyone else), I have held toxic positions with employers, and my values of science, health, community, and wellness are not being nurtured or valued similarly.  As scary as it is to leave familiarity it is more terrifying to stay here and be unhappy.  Just because something is familiar or habit doesn’t mean that it is good for you.  Ultimately we have to do what is best for us mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, occupationally, etc., because what is best for us personally is what is best for everyone we have contact with.  Our lives are a direct result of decisions we make and if I want to see a change in my life I have to make the conscious decision to make that change, and not some half-assed attempt that when it fails I can blame on everything around me- no, if I’m blaming everything around me then it’s time to change what is around me.  Another of my best friends leant me a phrase a long time ago “If you’re falling off a cliff you might as well try to fly” and I have adapted that phrase to my own situation-You’ll never get the chance to fly if you don’t jump off a cliff. I owe it to myself, to my well-being, to jump off of this cliff and afford myself a better opportunity to fly.  I can still affect a positive change in many ways: by philanthropies, by charity, or simply by being an example of how to get out and get away from your toxic hometown.  

 

I am on to new opportunities, and to a new community.  January the 11^th is my projected date to leave this toxic relationship for good.