There’s something really, really difficult about writing about your hometown, especially when that hometown is a small town. The words just don’t want to come out.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m assuming here because it’s just personally hard to write about my own hometown, but there’s just something about the process that seems unfair.
Writing about my hometown makes me question a lot of things: Am I being too judgmental? Are old wounds amplifying the point i’m trying to communicate? Am I painting people and places in an unfair light in spite of my own pain?
It also brings up all that pain. Reliving it. Revisiting it, sometimes from a 30,000 foot view. Sometimes from a first-person view. Both of which bring their challenges.
It’s unfair to assume everyone had the same experience I had, both on good and bad spectrums, and it’s unfair to not leave facts as facts and let them speak for themselves.
Hometowns can be funny places to each of us individually as we all grow and see those towns change from what they were to what they are, just as we change. And it’s probably fair to be patient with the places we grew up in as they do change, just as they were patient with us when we did the same.
-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Try not too be too critical (or too in love) with your hometown; it’s changing every day, just like us.