Did you escape your hometown?

I still speak to my hometown fag hag but everyone else can suck it.

Couldn’t wait to escape the suburbs of a medium sized town.

Yes -- I have one old friend I keep in touch with, but that's it.

I haven't been back very often - family still lives there but haven't been back in 5+ years.

I had to live w/my parents a few times in my early 20s for 3-6 months but other than that I escaped. I still see my bf from childhood but he lives in the next biggest city.

Had an atrocious experience in HS, never going to go to a reunion. Nope.

Yes. I still have relatives in the area but tried looking up people from my highschool and can't find anyone. My highschool years predates the internet and there's nothing online.

Left my rusting Pennsylvania steel town as soon as I graduated high school. I only went back to visit my parents a couple of times a year. It was a nice enough place to grow up, but there is absolutely no way on earth I would live there now.

R6 eastern, central or western?

Small town in the West of Scotland. I got out of there as soon as I could, only going back to see family. My siblings moved away, and my parents died, so I have no reason to go back there. I have occasional contact from schoolmates on social media, but the gap is too wide.

No. I never looked back. I remember the day I was leaving and making it a point to never look back. Not the best memories there. Luckily we all moved away with my family so we never had to return.

R7: Western. About halfway between Pittsburgh and Lake Erie.

R6/R10 Yup. I understand.

I was just east of Pittsburgh. Ran for my life!

Yes and no. I grew up in the burbs of Chicago. My family had a summer home on a lake in southern Wisconsin where I spent most of my summers and weekends growing up. Due to job opportunities and a need to come out away from my family and friends I spent most of my adult life in Atlanta with my partner. When that ended I came back to the family lake house. The place that I found boring as a kid turned out to be the ideal place to grow old in and here I am back where I started

[quote]Couldn’t wait to escape the suburbs of a medium sized town.

Me too. When we drove to visit relatives we'd pass through a genuinely large city and my face would be pressed to the window, particularly at night with all the lighted tall buildings. We had a lower middle class suburban house and I wanted to live in Unca Bill's apartment from Family Affair.

Yes. Queens,NYC.

R13 that’s the thing with a medium sized suburban town, it doesn’t have the culture and bright lights of the city nor the rural charm of the country. Everyone knows each other, there’s nothing to do if you don’t like local sports or getting wasted, you have to drive everywhere and it’s ugly.

Horrific experience. It gave me PTSD. I still have siblings in the area, but try to limit visitation. I’m ok with never going again.

Not exactly. I’ve lived in and around NYC my whole life.

R15 my suburb was in central New Jersey....we would go to NYC fairly frequently. You can imagine how done I was with that crumby nothing town...I have since accomplished my dream and moved to NYC and never put a foot in NJ again.

I’m from a small lower-middle-class town in PA.

Fifteen years ago, my company hired a peer who grew up in the next (much more affluent) town.

When she learned where I was from, she said, “How did you ever make it out?” Because few did.

Honey, I chewed through the bars and hopped on the back of the first passing train.

I grew up in a small suburb of NYC in Westchester county where it turned out that we were the first Jewish family in the place -- we only got in because the real estate agent didn't realize my parents were Jewish (changed last name). It was weird -- I was the only kid in elementary school not invited to join the town's tony dance school for kids; I was not allowed inside the town's (public) country club, the neighborhood kids somehow found out about us and called me a kike although I had no idea what that word meant.

I hated the town and couldn't wait to get out. I did go back for a few weddings and of course, the town is completely changed. Lots of Jews, Blacks, and a huge contingent of Asian families as well. The powers that be are now the powers that are dead, so although prejudice still exists, it's not as obvious any more. Still, when I see on Facebook people talking about how wonderful the place was in the 1950s and 60s, I still to this day get a little angry and paranoid.

I was forced to live through mild white flight so yes. It had to have been the last town over 50k to get a Starbucks. It was a suburb that was not what Karen would call a suburb. None of my family lives there anymore, they all live in the city. I fled for dear life to flyover land.

This thread got me curious and I googled earthed my old town and am marveling at how little it has changed in the 30 years I've been gone. Like its 90% the same, same houses, same stores, same strip joint, same pizza place, same gas station. I nearly fell asleep scrolling through that. How depressing.

I grew up in a good-sized suburb of Dallas. After college, I never moved back. But my parents still lived there, so it wasn't like I never returned either. I ended up creating a life and family about 50 miles away on the other side of the DFW area. It was close enough to my parents but far enough away to not have to make frequent trips over there. After they died, my siblings and I sold the house, which was bittersweet for me as it was the only house I ever lived in as a child. And that was my last real connection to the town. My job ocassionally takes me back over there. And every time I'm there, I'm reminded how backwards and suffocating it was, and how thankful I am to no longer be tied to it.

While I'm pretty much done with my hometown though, three of my best friends are friends I made in high school. Our friendships never waned even as we all went separate ways for college and careers. We've all made our way back to DFW in the last few years and we're all still as close as we were 40 years ago in high school.

R23 What suburb of DFW if you don’t mind me asking? I lived in the Plano, McKinney and Frisco area for a while although it was never a good fit for me.

[quote]My family had a summer home on a lake in southern Wisconsin

Lake Geneva R12?

Mesquite, R24. It was an OK place while I was growing up. But I was a child and I didn't really have anything else to compare it to, so what did I know? Now it seems worse than I ever thought it was back then.

R25 I thought the same!

R19 I grew up next to a wealthier suburb in PA and sometimes randomly get messages on FB from someone wanting to reminisce..."wasn't that wonderful"....and I'm like, yeah bitch, you drove daddy's Bentley to school, while I had to walk a half mile to get a stinky old bus.

I never had a home town.

Yep. Pokey little town in Wisconsin. I still maintain a strong friendship with at least one guy from my elementary school days: We have music in common and he knows about how fucked up my stepmom was and how that has impacted me. He flew a great distance to be here for me a couple years ago when I had major surgery and none of my family members could pry themselves loose of grandkids, fish fries and God knows what else they used as fucking excuses to not get off their fat, cheese-curd ASSES. I'm going up to see him and (yes) pay homage to my oldest sister (since I can't really get out of it) in May. She's already warned me how fat she is, ha ha!

I moved, yes.

Now, I wouldn't mind going back. It's a nice area. Considering it was a small town, you could go out and not run into anyone you knew.

[quote]that’s the thing with a medium sized suburban town, it doesn’t have the culture and bright lights of the city nor the rural charm of the country. Everyone knows each other, there’s nothing to do if you don’t like local sports or getting wasted, you have to drive everywhere and it’s ugly.

Very well put. And chain restaurants everywhere.

Left my crappy hometown in Ohio, moved to LA and never went back.

I escaped my hometown. I ended up back in my college town (an hour away) after a few post-graduate years waiting tables in New York.