Everyone has a different relationship with their hometown. If you’re one of the lucky ones, your hometown is rife with nostalgia. Fond memories of soccer games and late-night ice cream runs fill the streets you know so well. Maybe you can’t wait for your prodigal return after four years of college, perhaps you never left. There are some, like my mom, who don’t have a tried and true “hometown”— kids who moved around a lot growing up. Torrance, Lafayette, Cameron Park, it’s all the same. And of course, some can’t stand their hometowns. Maybe you felt suffocated by your hometown’s sameness, or lost in its vastness.Â
The only way I’ve been able to describe my personal experience with my hometown has been to compare it to the ending sequence of Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird. The moment when Ladybird is driving through the streets of Sacramento on her own for the first time, over the bridges and around the curved roads she knows so well. The moment she feels grateful to come from there but ready to move on.Â
I spent my high school years lamenting and cursing life in the Central Valley, desperate for the day I would leave Clovis, California forever. I hated the scorching hot summers, the inescapable monotony of suburbia, the bubble of homogeneity. I hated not being able to get anywhere without a car, and I hated most of the people. Leaving Clovis was my north star during college application season, and it was a huge part of the reason I decided not to go to UC Davis (too geographically similar, sorry Aggies).Â
During my freshman year at UCSB, I didn’t hesitate to slander Clovis. When introducing myself in class, in dorm rooms, I told them I was from a hick town. I told people I hated my hometown. In some cases, I told people I was from the Central Valley and avoided mentioning Clovis altogether.Â
I went home early on into fall quarter to see my sister in her school play. Despite only being gone for a month, things were irrevocably different. My younger sister had fully moved into what was once my room, and I was relegated to her carpeted floor. On my way back to school the next day, I cried harder on that Amtrak than I had when my parents walked away from Anacapa Hall. I didn’t want to go. There was a sense of finality to our departure. I was finally adjusting to my new reality. This wasn’t summer camp, this was the next four years of my life.Â
The restlessness I had known so well in high school returned in that first summer at home. My first year of college had changed me, as it likely did many of us. Being back in Clovis again felt like wearing a pair of jeans from middle school — sure they fit, but should I be wearing them? Each week I felt like I lost parts of myself that I had built up over my time at school. I felt like my high school self, a little lost and a lot angry.
When I finally did return to UCSB in September, the key to my first “big girl” apartment in hand, I remembered who I was at the end of my freshman year. The truth is that our hometowns shape who we are, but they don’t define us. The same way that our college town doesn’t define us. Maybe we don’t like who we become when we’re home, but it’s natural for our surroundings to change our actions and our thoughts. Clovis is just a town, and Isla Vista is just an unincorporated community.Â
If you spent the summer writhing in your metaphorical seventh-grade jeans, not to worry, it’s completely normal. Looking back, I wish I had embraced that discomfort a little more. Being home doesn’t change you back into the person you were. If anything, it strengthens your newfound sense of self.Â
I changed my tune during my sophomore year. After years of being its primary critic, I felt somewhat protective over Clovis. Being at home helped me realize that Clovis was a good place to grow up, despite its faults. I was happy to have lived there. But I was ready to keep moving forward. This was my Ladybird moment.
