Going home for holidays since coming to college has been a more bizarre experience than I ever anticipated. A year and a half ago, as I packed all of my things and moved to Auburn, I was ready and eager to leave Birmingham behind. I wanted new people and new scenery.
In high school, I hated Birmingham and the Deep South in general. My friends and I would spend hours complaining about it. We hated the people, we hated how boring we thought it was and, most of all, we hated feeling trapped there. Complaints that, looking back now, were painfully unoriginal. As I drove back to Auburn after this past winter break I thought mainly of how drastically college has changed my view of where I'm from.
My family loves and embraces southern culture. My entire family is from the south; one side of the family lives in Talladega, Alabama, and the other side is mostly in Spartanburg, South Carolina. My parents met at the University of Alabama, got married and lived in various parts of the southeast until they had me, and we settled in Birmingham.
I experienced the quintessential southern childhood: football every Saturday, church every Sunday and “yes sir” or “no ma’am” every day. These are the things I resented for a long time. I wanted the kind of variety I thought the South couldn’t offer.
I wanted excitement.
Throughout my freshman year at Auburn my perception of the South shifted, and each time I went home for a long weekend my perception of Birmingham changed as well. I began craving the familiarity of Birmingham. It was a feeling I would have never predicted.
Birmingham slowly morphed from the place I felt confined in for so many years into the place where I had been shaped. I started recognizing how rare the durable relationships I built in Birmingham are. I started appreciating my parents more for choosing such a beautiful environment for me to grow up in. I was looking at Birmingham more critically and discovering the amazing food and local musicians and extensive history it has to offer. I started recognizing the positivity of the South rather than reducing it to its many faults.
My new appreciation of Birmingham and the South does not mean I like everything about it. The South and I will always have a complicated relationship. I will never understand how people are so emotionally attached to men in tight pants throwing a ball.
Alabama politics are endlessly frustrating to me. The weather can never make up its mind. I still plan to leave it and experience life elsewhere for a while. But, Birmingham is where I cultivated life-long friendships, found the things I’m passionate about and became a person I embrace.
I'll always value what Birmingham gave me.
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