Back Home in the Middle of Nowhere

I have a complicated relationship with missing people. When I did my first stint away from home at sixteen, I was excited and champing at the bit to get out into the world. I spent five weeks away from home (granted, it was less than two hours’ distance), at a summer ballet program in a nearby city. The city, that distance of less than two hours, brought with it a culture shock in stark contrast to my hometown. I got used to subways, to walking, to my daily commute, to a diversity of people that rural, white America never showed me, to crossing the street to avoid the men loitering in front of corner grocery stores, fingers crossed no one would follow me home. At sixteen, I took on these challenges with an optimism older me both admires and misses. The change from country to city, from quiet to loud, from slow to busy happened quickly, so I put my hometown out of my mind and adapted.

Home for me is Xxxxxxxx, and although the name is censored, there isn’t enough of a difference between rural western New York towns for it to really matter. If you’ve ever driven through this part of the state, just imagine any of the tiny towns you may have passed, complete with pastures of cows and homemade signs reminding you, “Jesus loves you.”

My town has a post office, a laundromat, a church, two places to eat, and a nursing home. It also had the dance studio where I got my start when I was little, but which has recently been remodeled to become a café. We’ll see how long that stays, businesses often don’t last out here.

Since that first time, I’ve left my home many times, for dance training, to travel, and—most recently—for college. Coming home each time brings a mess of feelings I find hard to place. My high school bedroom is gone, taken over by a younger sibling, and I find myself couch-surfing in my own house, moving from one sister’s bedroom to another, to sleep on a mattress and exchange whispered confidences at night. There is a feeling of not belonging, of being forgotten, and I face the realization that the rhythms of family life go on without me. But there is also an age-old familiarity, an ease and comfort of things well known. My house, my family, my town, are all as if frozen in time, a snapshot of a place where life moves unceasingly and yet stays stagnant. For better or for worse, despite the distance I put between myself and my beginnings, this place and these people have still shaped the core of who I am. There is something of home that I feel sure I will never shake off.

That first time away, I have no memories of missing people. I flung myself headlong into my new life, into the world of possibility that was ballet, and—although I loved my family dearly—barely thought of them at all during those five weeks. Perhaps it was the naivety of being young (I write although I am ironically not much older now). When I traveled halfway across the world at nineteen, still chasing ballet, I missed my people more, but the excitement of what I was doing eclipsed any feeling of homesickness. When I left home for college, shortly thereafter, I felt something else.

I missed—home. Not the people so much, but the place, the tired old routines and familiar ease, where I could ignore my problems and my worries seemed far away. I know in many ways I am happier and healthier away from home. But there is a part of me that wants that back, that easy, secluded past. It’s the easy way out, the way that doesn’t challenge me, the way that keeps me in my comfort zone, and it has an undeniable pull.

The pandemic forced me back to that old way, as I returned home. And I found I missed it, I missed it terribly. Perhaps it was the power of nostalgia, perhaps distance truly does make the heart grow fonder, but I came home and marveled every day at the green leaves in the garden, at the mist that crept over the hills overnight, at the sunsets that were more beautiful here than anywhere else. People can argue about the meaning of home day in and day out, but for me, home isn’t just people, it’s tied to a place as well.

My hometown wasn’t a bad place. It wasn’t really a good place either. My town, my past, simply existed, moving along at the same, relentless pace. And a small part of it exists in a small part of me as well. I don’t plan on staying home much longer, but I have a connection to this place that I don’t plan to sever, a connection made of memories, dreams, nostalgia, family, and holding on to the past.