My Hillbilly Hometown
So, it’s my first day of school. I’m actually here, right now, in the library. I’ve never been here before and I don’t know anyone here. This is very dissimilar from my last first day of school, where I knew everything and everyone. I was going to the community college in my hometown; now, I go to the community college in my new town. I finished my two classes, and I managed to find comfortable paths to them both, and to the library, which is pretty much all I need. My second class finishes at 12:45, and I have two online ones also. This is also very dissimilar from going to school in my hometown, where I would sign up for a couple classes, and end up seeing maybe one through, if seeing it through means showing up to school every week and decidedly sitting in the student union or going to the beach, instead of going to class. For the first time in my collegiate life, I’m dedicated to school.
Whenever I refer to my hometown, I’m usually referring to the county as a whole- and sometimes the surrounding counties (hello Sarasota and St. Pete). The house where my parents currently live, where I spent all my teenage years, sits in a town where the population rests comfortably between 13,000-14,000 people. In comparison, Manatee County is home to almost 475,00 people. In middle school and high school, I went to a charter school, so kids from all over the county sat in my same classes. Kids from Anna Maria and Parrish and Sarasota and all of the other surrounding cities spent their Mondays-Fridays amalgamated into one place. We weren’t divided by the district lines that coordinated public schools. You lived in Bradenton, went to school in Palmetto, and worked in Ellenton. You lived in Ellenton but played sports in Parrish. Manatee County is one big hometown, divided into little sections that determined if you were geographically closer to the beach, the mall, or the college. If you’re curious, I was closest to the mall.
This is my first brush with kids and young adults from central Florida, and it’s very different from the people I grew up with. As I looked around my composition class, I only saw a couple white kids. My class was full of POC, something I’m definitely not used to, when my southwest hometown is known to be a retiree destination for rich, white folks. Even more than that, my class was full of alternative, expressive people; No one was wearing athleisure. As I recounted this seemingly unimportant detail to my cousin, Alexa, while I walked to the library- where I recount it to you know- I told her that it was weird. I don’t mean being alternative is weird (hello?), I just mean that Ii’m not used to seeing creative expression in vast numbers. I inexplicably felt really out of place, which doesn’t make any sense, because while I didn’t keep up with Andy Biersack in 2017 and can’t name a single Twenty-One Pilots album, I’m, by definition, a fairly alternative girl.
I didn’t necessarily grow up in a cookie-cutter environment; I was surrounded by artists and dancers and musical theater nerds and band kids. They were all my best friends. In the heart of my hillbilly hometown lies an arts-based charter school where all the alternative and emo and indie and everything-else-in-between kids spent their seven years of secondary school. I wasn’t the only girl with pink hair and 5-inch platforms. There was a balance though, between the emo art kids and the, for lack of a better word, basic contemporary dancers. There isn’t really a different word to describe the more traditional archetype of normal, white, and blonde girls besides basic. It’s the accepted and only known term to detail the people that rotate between straight jeans and “flared leggings,” the only common way to talk about those who enjoy Coach purses and Nike Air Force 1s (direct example of fashion gentrification, btw).
These are the kids that you saw walking around Manatee County. These are the kids you worked with, the kids you saw at the gym, the kids that came in packs. These are the kids that I did group work with, walked the mile with, and rode the bus with. These were my friends, my classmates, my not-so-much-friends. I knew these kids, I grew up with these kids. I could be one of these kids, even though I was quite different from them. I didn’t exactly feel out-of-place.
I feel out of place in central Florida.
At my new college, it feels like everyone is alternative and different- indie and cool, if you will. There isn’t a lot of white kids, and there isn’t a lot of basic kids. Of them, I’ve only seen less than a handful. This shouldn’t make me feel different, really I should feel like I finally belong somewhere. But I do feel different, I feel out of place. It makes me miss the seas of Adidas boys and PacSun girls, because now I feel like a fish out of water.
It’s a weird and hard-to-describe feeling, but I’m in an environment that’s just vastly different than what I’m hardwired for. I expect to be different, I expect to be weird. My brain works in a way where everyone around me doesn’t look like me and I know exactly how to adapt to that. But if there’s nothing for me to adapt to, how am I supposed to act? I was telling Alexa my thoughts about this, and I told her, everyone here can tell that I speak Lululemon. That’s how I felt. It’s almost like I’m an imposter standing among them, trying to fit in when I really belong in my redneck high school.
I’m also just an incredibly anxious and particularly socially anxious person, and I’ve never done well in new environments. Maybe once I’m comfortable, once I know my way around and maybe have an acquaintance or two will I feel like this is my place. Maybe I’ll join a club. Maybe I do belong and I do fit in and I’m just thinking too much. I do that a lot- thinking too much. I’m not sure.
I am sure though, that a part of me will always miss my hillbilly hometown.
xoxo, Willianny
