Homesick for St. Louis
Accepting the city I once hated
Ethan Kraus
I used to hate my hometown.
Throughout my whole childhood into middle school and high school, I had an awful view of where I came from. To me, St. Louis, Missouri, was a flyover city riddled with crime, wasted potential, twisted freeways and outdated billboards. I can remember sitting in the backseat of the car, looking up at the signs and wondering who the hell "Brown & Crouppen Personal Injury Law Firm" was. Some people had movie stars to look up to, but I had midwestern lawyers.
Every aspect of the place used to leave a bad taste in my mouth. It was as if the city was determined to stay dead. It was a black hole of energy and ambition. As soon as I got in, I wanted to get out. I felt no real connection and no genuine pride toward the only place I'd ever lived.
At the cusp of adulthood, I came to Miami University eager to be leaving behind that grayscale sinkhole I had called home. I felt free of a burden long carried for the first few weeks. However, over time, a feeling started to build inside me. This feeling started low, almost silent, and then grew in size as I continued school. Underneath the angst and disdain I held for St. Louis, a soft underbelly seemed to unravel.
At Miami, I felt genuine homesickness for the first time.
I found myself missing the minor things about St. Louis. I longed for the minute details that I once overlooked, such as the endless construction on Interstate 44 and listening to the band American Football while driving to school.
Homesickness, like any emotion, is a sensation that comes in waves.
It is heightened by experience and can throw anyone off guard. You can feel it in your chest, your head and even your fingertips.
Because of its intensity, my initial reaction was to reject the feeling outright. I couldn't believe that I was homesick for the place I had been fighting to get away from all my life. I interpreted this new feeling as a weakness, something I could fight and overcome. Battling this feeling during my first year of college exhausted me.
For a while, I didn't talk to my family. I tried to forget St. Louis, and I even prided myself that I never visited home. I treated homesickness like a disease that I could cure through pure willpower. Ultimately, I failed. The constant struggle of emotional denial held onto me like a true obsession, defining my daily experience.
At some point, I decided to face this feeling. There wasn't a specific day or a cinematic moment of realization. Instead, I gradually worked up the courage to question my feelings and attempt to change for the better.
If I couldn't bury the feeling, I'd have to learn to live with it.
I spent so long trying to hate homesickness that I had become miserable and pessimistic. Once I opened myself up and learned to embrace it, I felt a true sense of security and a real feeling of peace.
After all that time fighting and struggling, I found out that the key was simply acceptance.
When I eventually returned to St. Louis, I felt different.
I recognized the streets, restaurants, billboards and people, but the resentment was gone. I paid close attention to old routes to school. I spent time with friends I hadn't seen in years, going back to potholed parking lots to skateboard or even just hang out and talk.
For the first time, I was proud of where I lived. I felt connected to my home.
It hadn't changed, but my eyes had been focused; I learned to appreciate how my identity was founded.
All it took was three years of being foolishly pretentious to figure out what I was doing wrong.
As I approach my last year at Miami, homesickness remains, but it's no longer an enemy. It exists as a pair of shoes I put on every morning: an eternal part of myself.
These days, I see St. Louis in the faces of my family, in conversations between old friends and in memories I replay in my head. Even if I never return to St. Louis, a part of me will always be there. Homesickness radiates from the pieces of yourself left behind, but it's nothing to be afraid of. It's beautiful to be able to miss something.
