If you would have asked me a year ago (when I was living in a small town) if I was a small town girl, I would have laughed my ass off before trailing into a long, sarcastic, “Nooo.”
Before completing middle school and high school in a small town in Southern Utah, I had lived in Bakersfield, California. I made that very clear whenever it came up in conversation during my teenage years. I did not identify with the common culture in Southern Utah, and I wanted to leave from the first day I had moved in. I believed for eight years (yes, a full eight years) that I was a California girl who had been unfortunately relocated to a cozy little podunk town.
I didn’t care that I was living in a town of a mere 23,000 people. I didn’t care that I graduated from a class of 230. It didn’t matter that going to the mall was a luxury for me. I did not believe that I fit the small town label.
This all changed during freshman orientation as I was trying to meet people in my group. I decided to chat up a girl who had said that she was from California, since I had also lived in California.
“Hey, you said you lived in California. I did, too. What part are you from?” I asked.
“Bay area. What about you?”
“Oh, I used to live in Bakersfield.”
She laughed. “Um, that’s not California.”
I was very taken aback. I had been living on the label that I was a dislocated Californian who just happened to wind up in Cedar City, Utah. But in that moment, I realized that I hadn’t been honest with myself about where I had come from. After all, how could I possibly assure people that I as a true Californian when I didn’t even realize for eight years that I had been living in a terrible part of California?
The first few weeks of college only produced more evidence that in spite of what I wanted to believe, I was a small-town girl. I became overwhelmed at a large party when a boy tried to get me to dance up on him—my roommates from larger schools were shocked that this had never happened to me in high school. I also quickly realized that it was weird to know almost everyone in your graduating class. Plus, most of the things I kept discreet in my hometown—off-the-shoulder tops, short shorts, drinking coffee—didn’t even scratch the radar at my college. Additionally, these things did little to convince anyone that I wasn’t the moniker I loathed: small-town girl.
For the first few months of my college experience, I absolutely hated this label. Anytime I said anything “innocent” or “small town” that struck my new peers as bizarre, I cringed inwardly. The feeling was just so very frustrating. I was uncomfortable with much of city life—the roar of the trains, the uncertainty of requesting an Uber, the drunken laughter from a neighboring dorm room. Worse, I had never wanted to be this way. I told myself time and time again that I would be comfortable with drinking or weed or sex if I had just grown up somewhere else. I developed a strange sensation of self-loathing for my all too wholesome upbringing.
Looking back at my situation, I realize that I probably would have been pretty “innocent” no matter where I had grown up, just because of other elements of my personality and my upbringing. However, even if my surroundings did transform my upbringing, it’s important to realize that where I am from is a part of me. Yes, maybe it sucks that I didn’t get to choose where I was raised and who I was raised around. But I still got to make my own choices about how I acted in that environment. In the end, I think that’s really what mattered.