My Love/Hate Relationship with Home

Introduction: Where the Heart is… Or Isn’t

If loving where you grew up were a relationship status, mine would be “It’s complicated.” Montgomery, Alabama, is home in the way that your favorite ex-boyfriend’s hoodie is—comforting, familiar, and sometimes infuriatingly hard to part with. It smells like memories you never fully unpacked and feels warm in a way that makes you question why you left it behind in the first place. But then, the seams itch, and you remember exactly why.

Growing up in the South means living where history is baked into the red clay and served alongside your mama’s pecan pie. It’s charming and beautiful, sure, but also sticky with generational baggage you didn’t ask to inherit. My love/hate relationship with Montgomery is less about what it is and more about what it represents—a place entrenched in contradiction. Nostalgia and frustration. Simplicity and complexity. Church potlucks and harsh politics. It’s the kind of place that teaches you to hug every person at Publix while privately wishing they'd stop asking if you're dating anyone "serious."

Home as a First Love (Messy but Impactful)

Home, for better or worse, is our first soulmate. It shapes us long before romantic relationships ever do—teaching us lessons in patience, loyalty, and, occasionally, eye-rolling tolerance.

Montgomery has been my greatest teacher. It showed me how to love wide porches and Spanish moss, but it also dropped some hard truths about when love—be it for a person or a place—isn’t enough. Growing up here meant learning the dance of unspoken social hierarchies (bless your heart if you don’t conform) and marveling at the genteel charm of strangers who absolutely will not admit they cut in line at the DMV.

But like every first love, Montgomery left a mark. The kind you can’t scrub off with distance or time. When I left for Auburn, I was convinced I’d outgrown it, like a cheap prom dress. I’d strut into adulthood and never look back. Except… I did. Because attractions like “home” aren’t one-night stands. They linger.

Ghosts Under Magnolia Trees

Montgomery isn’t the easiest place to love. It’s heavy with history—the kind you learn in glossed-over chapters at school or whispered conversations over iced tea. My parents, both educators, were on a mission to teach nuance. The version of Montgomery they gifted me wasn’t just white-pillared mansions and sweet tea picnics. It was protest marches, civil rights scars, and complicated narratives tucked in museum corners for the curious to unearth.

Imagine dating someone who’s a mixed bag of charming personality and unresolved trauma. You love their laugh but hate their baggage. That’s Montgomery in a nutshell. It’s impossibly beautiful, with stunning oaks casting long shadows, but those shadows fall on hard truths I can’t ignore. Sometimes it feels like trying to date a Brad Paisley song while knowing your heart really belongs to Dolly Parton.

This duality has a way of sneaking into every fiber of your being. It’s no surprise that as an adult, my relationships mimic this complicated dynamic. I crave warmth, but not without depth. I need kindness, but not at the cost of confronting honesty. I’m drawn to people, places, and partnerships layered with stories, messy but meaningful.

Leaving… and Coming Back

I’ve left Montgomery more times than I’d like to admit, mainly for college and “better opportunities”—the sort of phrase that always sounds more tangible than it actually is. I lived in Auburn’s college town bubble, immersed myself in Tuscaloosa’s gritty poetry, and traveled through the Deep South in search of narratives that didn’t start and end with Gone With the Wind clichés.

Every time I left, I swore it was for good. And yet, like a poorly timed text from an ex, Montgomery kept calling me back. It wasn’t just nostalgia; it was the kind of gravitational pull that makes you question why a place so flawed still feels like safety.

The answer, as I’ve come to learn, is simple: Home forces us to reconcile. With ourselves, our past, our wounds, and our dreams. You can run halfway across the globe (or at least to Birmingham), but you’ll still carry those lessons deep in your bones. Montgomery didn’t just shape me—it gave me the ability to navigate messy systems of love and loyalty in people, too. Turns out, voicing my frustrations while still showing up is my love language.

What Home Teaches Us About Relationships

Home has an uncanny way of showing you your relationship patterns in bold and italicized font. For me, growing up in Montgomery translated into:

  • Learning Balance: Just like my conflicted feelings about home, I know relationships are rarely all good or all bad. The South taught me to appreciate the complexity of connection—where beauty sits beside imperfection, and your job is to find a rhythm that makes both sing.
  • Staying Despite Flaws (or Knowing When to Go): Let’s be honest—Montgomery isn’t perfect, and neither am I. I’ve stayed because I believed in its potential, even when it didn’t deliver. Just like in dating, I’ve had to learn when showing up is the brave choice and when walking away isn’t weakness—it’s growth.
  • Finding Comfort, Not Stagnation: There’s a fine line between falling in love with stability and sinking into complacency. Montgomery showed me that comfort is invaluable, but not at the cost of settling—for a relationship, a career, or a version of myself smaller than I’m capable of being.

Reclaiming the Narrative

So, how does someone like me—a Southern woman with one foot in tradition and another trying desperately to outrun it—come to peace with her hometown? The answer isn’t as neat as a Taylor Swift bridge, but it’s just as emotional.

I stopped letting Montgomery be just one thing. It didn’t get to be “backwards,” but it also didn’t get to claim idyllic status either. It existed, much like I do, somewhere in between. The stories I grew up hearing, the relationships I built here—I’ve allowed them to be complex, messy, and human.

Turns out, that’s not just the key to loving your hometown. It’s the key to loving people, too.

Conclusion: From Love/Hate to Love, Full Stop

Montgomery will always have its rough edges. It can still make me want to scream into a pillow, much like a partner who won’t load the dishwasher the “right way.” But it’s also the first place that taught me about warmth, community, and the importance of showing up for what matters.

Sometimes, love isn’t about fixing something or making it perfect. It’s about standing still long enough to understand it. So, whether it’s your hometown, your relationship, or even yourself—lean into the imperfections. You never know what beautiful truths you might uncover beneath them.