I Left My Hometown, But I Keep Coming Back

Part of me never left.

Photo by Emily Corley on Unsplash

This was written in response to the Medium Creators Write Here prompt during an Open Writing hour. This is in response to prompt number three for the week of February 14. Please follow other people’s responses here.

I attended college in Los Angeles. In my 18-year-old mind, it was the only place to be as a budding artist and filmmaker. And like most folks who move away from their hometown, I happily shook the Alabama dust off my feet and stepped into LaLa land with the goal of telling all my hometown haters and bullies to kiss my Black ass.

Even when I ate humble pie and sat out a year of college back in my hometown, I was mentally in Los Angeles. LA represented freedom, enlightenment, and unlimited potential. Unlike my hometown, LA didn’t appear to have a church on every corner, a liquor store in between those churches, and blighted shotgun houses with blue tarps replacing roofs on the other corners. Los Angeles was the promised land. A place where you can reinvent yourself. Even the ‘hoods in LA were a type of ghetto pipe dream compared to the rural-flavored South. So when I returned to college in 2006, I went with the idea I was gonna make it in California at any cost.

Then I fell flat on my face and had to move back into my grandparents’ house in Mobile…