Essay: Woman in her hometown
On the places that haunt us
Nothing hurts like a hometown, especially Dayton, Ohio. Cornfield after cornfield. The notorious HELL IS REAL sign off of Highway 35 that, after all this time, still makes me sweat. I contain multitudes and apparently all of them are anxious.
After nearly three years away, my hometown now feels like a sweater left too long in the dryer. Familiar but unwearable, itchy at the edges.
On my drive in, things start to feel surreal. The neighborhood grocery store has gone under and been replaced by the Midwest Shooting Center. Nearby, the trendy church recently accused of being a cult has been rebranded to the innocuous-sounding Dwell. I turn into the suburb where my parents live—the house where I spent my high school years. It’s covered in twinkly lights and my mother has made 8 different kinds of Christmas cookies. When I arrive, she pulls out the biscotti, hands me tea with cream and sugar, then sits and watches me eat in that urgent way mothers often do.
I haven’t lived in Ohio for nearly three years—not since I loaded up my Subaru, two cats, and 14 plants, then drove west. In the decade before I finally left, I used to wake every morning from the same nightmare: I was trapped in a barrel of water decomposing. The morning I left for Oregon, the nightmare disappeared, as if it drained right out of me.
All that to say, visiting Ohio now is hard. It’s strange how you can build another life—one where you travel thousands of miles away, make new friends, shred religion, change careers, fall in love, fuck up, and even write a book. But then you come home and, there, in your teenage room with the sad yellow wallpaper, you find your sixteen-year-old self again, right where you left her, chewing on her nails.
I once had a professional development coach tell me that it takes approximately 9 months of altered behavior for colleagues to see you differently in the workplace. This means you have to repeatedly remind peers that you’re trying to change before the narrative around you can also shift. The problem with reshaping family dynamics (among many) is that we don’t see family all that often, so our past selves become crystallized in time, like summer bees suspended in resin.
My family and I are close, but we disagree on things like politics and religion. My parents were Baptist missionaries and I spent much of my childhood overseas. I was raised to believe in the inerrancy of scripture, that there was a literal Heaven and a Hell (a terror later reinforced by Ohio’s billboard signs), and that the worst sin a woman could commit was having sex outside of marriage.
For years, my mother used to separate me and any boyfriend I brought home into different bedrooms, even if we were already cohabitating. The strategy backfired. As an adult, nothing made me hornier than sneaking out of bed to go fuck my tattoo-covered boyfriend imprisoned in my parent’s guest-room.
Things have softened over time. My parents no longer separate me from a partner during Christmas and they don’t flinch when I swear. They’re pretty cool with the fact that I live in Portland, don’t go to church, and the only time I talk to God is when I trip on psychedelics.
As for me, I love my parents, and I’ve stopped wanting to change their mind about most things. Especially a faith that brings them deep comfort as they get older. We’ve fallen into a gentle understanding, but I think we still wish the other saw the world a little more like we do.
Downtown Dayton, I spot the ghost of my 16-year-old self leaning against the skating ramp of my old school. It’s the place where I’d hide and smoke vanilla Djarums—not because I particularly liked to smoke but because I liked the thrill of sinning but not getting struck dead.
I can’t help but feel grateful to that girl with her unquenchable angst, bad eyeliner, and migratory instinct to leave. I owe a lot to her. She’s the reason I went west.
After my visit, I return to Portland and immediately take a long hike through the mountains. It’s rainy, but I can still see the curve of the coast. In the distance, pines upon pines. I get that sensation again—the one I felt when smoking or making forbidden love or wildling along a secluded beach, salt in my throat. It feels a little like being born again—not the evangelical kind, but the rebirth you usher forth yourself. The second life you choose after the life you’re given first. The one where you chase whatever calls you west until you find a tiny square of earth to plant your feet on. A home that can hold all of you. A place you get to call heaven.
What’s the hardest/best part of going home for you? I’d love to know in the comments.
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As someone that left a rural/suburban Ohio town as a young adult and having the cold shock of coming back this holiday season, this post was felt so deeply. It’s so good to be surrounded by places that you know instinctively, it’s even better to see how much you’ve outgrown them, but there is so much grief in knowing that it is not a place you could return to because it is no longer yours. Thanks much for this xxx
Beautifully said. I am still in Ohio, but I feel more and more at home in my own family that I’m making and (more importantly) in my body. I’m also happy that we’ve begun the tradition of having holiday celebrations at our house and inviting my parents in - inviting them into my home, instead of having to go back to a complex feelings in my childhood home. Also, love the containing multitudes line 😅