Self Reflections and Misconceptions

On Saturdays, we reflect back on our lives. At least, I do. It’s like Mean Girls for self-discovery.

So today, I want to wrap up this Rhode Island series on a bit more serious note.

Because I have a lot of mixed feelings about Rhode Island and, today, I want to share some of them with you.

Growing up in Rhode Island meant that, by the time I was about to start my freshman year of college, I was so 100% ready to leave that I couldn’t wait to pack my bags and get in the car. You see, high school had been rough. Like Rough with a capital R. And I had grown to associate all the memories I had with the state they took place in.

So, for me, in order to leave those behind, I needed to leave it all behind. The good, the bad, the everything.

I needed to start over.

And I did. I went to Boston and thrived. Between classes and new friends, I felt like I was slowly shedding my old skin and stepping into the “new me.” Which was actually the old me, just a little more grown up.

Semantics.

I went home a few times during the year for breaks and weekends but, the longer I spent in Rhode Island, the more I itched to leave again. The beaches, the beauty, the food - it wasn’t enough to keep me there. I would hop on a train the first chance I had so that I could get out again.

This has become one of my favorite bakeries in Rhode Island. It only took me 14 years to discover it.

As college started to come to an end, I came face to face with a prospect I'd staunchly ignored for the last three and a half years.

I may have to move back to Rhode Island.

I don’t call it home. Anyone who knows me knows the lengths I go to actually not refer to any place like that. Growing up with divorced parents has given me a unique perspective on the concept of having a home because, for most of middle and high school, home was two different places. It actually inspired the title for this blog.

Home is wherever you make it - no more, no less.

I'm one of the lucky ones. I found a job and an apartment pretty soon out of college, which meant I didn’t have to move back to Rhode Island. The truly funny part about it all is that I think I’ve been home more in the last eight months than I had been for all three and a half years of college.

Because, somewhere along the line, my perspective shifted again.

It only took 18 years, but I've finally found happiness in my home state.

Now, I don’t see myself as a Rhode Islander. I grew up there, but I tell people now that I’m from Boston. The slowly developing accent also seems to be helping drive that one home (please help, I don’t want to lose my ability to say the letter “r”).

But I now find myself with the very distinct sensation of feeling like a tourist in my home state. I’ve discovered more about Rhode Island since I left for school than I had in the fourteen years I grew up there. I’ve explored places I didn’t even know existed.

Maybe, if I had been a little more open to start, it wouldn’t have taken me so long to start falling in love with Rhode Island.

I never understood how people could say that it was beautiful, and that they never wanted to leave. A piece of me still can’t comprehend the idea of staying in one place for your whole life. There’s so much beauty that exists in the world, just waiting to be discovered.

But there was so much beauty behind my own misconceptions, too.