Henry Abbott

To be a Southerner in Maine is to be homesick. It is to dream of an idealized version of a home that does not exist. It is an unrequited love, a longing for a place that does not want you back. In my imagination, home is thick, hot air and warm sunshine on my skin. It’s grass and leaves impossibly green, sand impossibly white, an ocean that looks blue from the highway but brown up close. It’s multi-colored houses looming high on stilts and stagnant swamps with a sulfur smell that leaches into the car when you drive past them during low tide. But in those romantic visions of home, there is a startling lack of truth.

The truth is that since I was in middle school, I’ve dreamt about leaving Mississippi. In my head, the idea that anything I hoped for in the future could possibly be achieved there was outlandish. The state doesn’t have much going for it, in all honesty. It is consistently ranked in the top five for poverty and obesity rates across the country. And now, as I discussed in this column a few weeks ago, the education system is at even greater risk than it has been in the past. And Southern hospitality, for all its niceties, doesn’t make up for the backward belief systems that many people there still hold.

But honestly, ever since I left, I can’t stop thinking about it. Like a scorned ex, I find myself obsessively staring at pictures—of the beach, of my house, of the highway, of my high school, of my favorite restaurants. There was a feeling in those places, a sense of home, that I keep trying to find in other places, unsuccessfully. And it sort of makes me sick, because middle-school me was correct. There are no opportunities there for me, and I will likely never return. As much as I dream of going back, of being embraced again by that intense Mississippi heat, the state does not want me—even if it needs me.

The Deep South is suffering from some of the greatest brain drain in the United States. Places like Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama are facing increasing struggles keeping college-educated people from moving to other areas with greater opportunity. When these individuals leave, they take with them their resources and knowledge. There are significant political and cultural consequences to this issue. Emptying communities results in increased social segregation, the crumbling of civil society and a lack of economic innovation, to name just a few. I feel particularly responsible for this phenomenon as someone directly contributing to it. When I leave Bowdoin, I will most likely be taking the skills and scholarship I’ve gained to somewhere that already has an abundance of them, rather than back home where they are desperately needed. But, like I mentioned before, it’s not that I don’t want to go back.

Every day last summer, I drove past at least one Trump flag, a constant reminder that people like me, like my partner and like my best friends, are unwanted. We are outsiders, even in the place we grew up. When I visited for Christmas, my girlfriend and I walked through a crowded street on New Year’s Eve, waiting for the ball to drop (the Oyster-ball, that is). But we couldn’t enjoy it because she was so afraid that someone would publicly shame her for existing as a trans woman. Home is not safe for her. Every time we hold hands while walking through the grocery store, the possibility that someone will say something hurtful is lingering in the back of my mind. Beyond just the social pressures that come with living as a queer person in the South, it also seems as though the laws are continuously changing for the worse.

So, the truth is, I do want to go home. I dream about what I left behind. I stare at pictures and feel like a piece of me will forever be stuck there. I want to go back and I want to make it better, but I resent that that responsibility falls on the shoulders of people who, like me, left because staying was too cruel. I hope that someday things will change.

I am grateful to those who are staying to do the hard work, like many of my childhood friends. One of them sent me a quote by Roderick Red, the owner of a Black-owned film and communications company in the South, that resonated with me deeply:

“Mississippi [is a place] that requires you to hold multiple truths at once. It’s a place where deep-rooted traditions and cutting-edge creativity coexist, where people can be both incredibly warm and deeply resistant to change.” I do love the South, and I want for her to blossom into all that I know she is capable of, to embrace change wholeheartedly.