Where I'm From and Where I Am

Past and Present Band NerdsI was born in Lexington, South Carolina, and have lived there for the past eighteen years of my life. I grew up in a small town where the place to be on the Fourth of July was the Peach Festival and students in camouflage overalls drove to school in pickup trucks (the color of the vehicle indiscernible through the multiple layers of caked-on mud). In Lexington, you read the bible like your Momma and supported the Republicans like your Daddy. You went to Wildcat Hollow on Friday nights to watch high school football (or play their fight song like I did), to Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday to cheer on the Gamecocks, and sat at home on Sunday to watch professional football on Direct TV Sunday Ticket (after going to church, of course.)

In Lexington, everybody knew everybody else, and they were all content to keep it that way, therefore, I was never encouraged to leave the town I grew up in. Aside from a marching band trip to Hawaii in my junior year (which in spite of its tropical locale was still undeniably American), the furthest west I had been was Nashville, Tennessee, and I had never left the country. After falling in love with New York City during a trip with my eighth grade history class, I knew that was where I was meant to be. I began to feel stifled by my hometown, and worked hard throughout high school with the sole purpose of leaving it.

After receiving my unexpected acceptance letter from NYU and deciding to attend the school of my dreams, many of my family and friends (some more explicitly than others) voiced their confusion and disapproval of my decision to leave Lexington. They couldn’t understand what New York City had to offer me that I couldn’t find at any of the more “prestigious” South Carolina schools. I was told that I didn’t belong there, that I wouldn’t be able to handle the city and the workload, and that it was way too dangerous; all of these assumptions based on where I am from and a result of how sheltered I was in that place. They thought that this “mistake” I had chosen would be an overwhelming and ultimately disappointing decision. I set out to prove them wrong.

Once settled in, I found myself adjusting better than I had expected, especially with all of my family’s doubts fresh on my mind. I grew accustomed to the subway system and started recognizing buildings and remembering how to get to them, much to my surprise. Instead of feeling helpless and alone like I thought I would in my new home, I began to grow more and more confident with my surroundings. The admonitions from my friends and family back home that hung over my head in the early days of my college life slowly began to fade as I grew more comfortable with my surroundings and proved to myself that the city wasn’t entirely unconquerable.

All of this changed when I realized how "worldly" most of my freshman class was. Almost everyone I met had been out of the country at least once. They were able to chat with each other about the public transportation system in Mexico City, the drinking age in Peru, or hiking in Switzerland, all of which was Greek to me. While I had been making the twenty-five minute drive to our “thriving metropolis” of Columbia every so often as the extent of my travel, my new classmates at Gallatin had been jet-setting between London and Prague, Venice and Amsterdam, and spending whole summers with friends in France and Belgium.

For the first time, I had the overwhelming sense that I had not experienced nearly enough in my life so far. All of a sudden I felt like I wasn’t deserving of or ready for all that the city had to offer me: I was too inexperienced to know how to take advantage of all that was at my feet. I felt like I should be meeting new people and constantly exploring the city, absorbing every aspect of it, and I felt guilty when I wasn’t making the most of it. Unlike my classmates, I had a lot of catching up to do, and “experience” was hard to come across as quickly as I needed it.

At the peak of my discouragement, I bought a plane ticket home for the weekend. I didn’t tell any of my friends back home, mostly because I wanted to surprise them, but partially because I was reluctant to admit that I wanted to come home. I didn’t want it to seem like I had left determined to prove that the city was everything I needed, only to come back before break with my figurative tail between my legs to everyone’s “I-told-you-so’s.” While I looked forward to seeing all of my friends and my new baby sister, I was anxious about how everyone would receive me after my departure. Nonetheless, I skipped out on Halloween in the city to go back to Lexington for one of the most important weekends of the year: marching band state finals.

My weekend back home was light-years away from what I had expected. I felt absolutely no animosity directed toward me or my decision to go to NYU. Instead, I found everyone I encountered to be eager to hear all about going to college in New York City and how I liked it “up there.” I called my dad on the way to his house, and when he answered the door and realized that I was talking to him from the front porch instead of my dorm room 750 miles away, there were tears in his eyes. It seemed as if all of the uncertainties, resentment, and financial difficulties attached to my decision to leave vanished in that moment. When I walked onto the practice lot where all of my former classmates were gathered in their matching blue and white marching band uniforms, I had to brace myself for the wall of screaming high-schoolers that swarmed toward me. Most of my friends that had stayed in South Carolina for college were present for State as well, and even though there were so many other people to see at this annual gathering of past and present band nerds, it seemed like everyone made a point to see me. Regardless of whether they were at State or not, however, it seemed like everyone was greedy for some of the short amount of time I had home. Budgeting my time in order to see all of my friends was so difficult, and I gained a new level of fondness for my hometown; one that I had never experienced before. I definitely made the most of my weekend home.

My flight touched down at LaGuardia Airport, I caught the Q33 bus to Roosevelt Plaza, and hopped on the V train to get back to my 5th Avenue dorm. While on the train, I reflected on how much my seventy-two hour visit to my hometown surpassed my expectations. Before I went home, I was discouraged by the sheltered life I had lived in Lexington and how far behind I felt in relation to my new classmates. After experiencing how proud everyone back home was of me and indulging in recounting a couple of “only-in-New-York” stories to them, I realized that I was never that sheltered Southern girl that I thought of myself as once I reached the city. So what if I haven’t been to Jamaica, Canada, Australia, or Germany (yet). Going home that weekend made me realize that life experience is not measured by how many countries you have been to or how many different cultures you have seen. Sometimes simply going home is enough to make you realize exactly how much you have grown without even realizing it.

.:EPILOGUE:.
After coming up with an idea of what to write for this assignment, I couldn’t help but be reminded of themes from A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers while recounting my own story. Like me, Z lived in the same place her whole life until she left to go to school far from home. While I had never (and still haven’t) seen the continental US west of Tennessee, she had never even seen the sea. Z was in awe of her lover’s past, constantly questioning him about his past experiences and his feelings. Similarly, I was blown away by how much others around me had experienced abroad. We do have some differences as well. Unlike Z, who was content with finding one person to latch onto, and happily secluded herself within his world, I felt guilt at not experiencing as much as of this new city as I could. Upon returning home, Z was met with more respect because of her new ability to speak English, and I was met with a new sense of pride in my endeavors from those close to me. Our homecoming stories differ slightly as well. Z’s return to China caused her to question why she even left London, and she was filled with a sense of sadness upon leaving her lover and reuniting with her family and her government-issued job. My trip back home, although it made me appreciate New York much more, lifted my spirits rather than dashed them. Coming home gave me a new outlook on my new life, and for that I am extremely appreciative of where I’m from.