It felt like I was suffocating. Drowning in a world where I was surrounded by all these thoughts and beliefs of the people that I had grown up with; family, friends, and neighbors. But those weren't my thoughts and beliefs, I was taught to believe them, thought as though I had to believe them.

But, they weren't what I chose to follow.

It's an odd feeling to not have the place you've lived your entire life feel like home.

It was as though it was a house that never made it to a home-like feel. It was unsettling to feel this way about the town that raised me, the people even.

It was an incredibly toxic environment I wanted nothing to do with.

I don't get excited when I have to come back home like most kids do. I have dreamt of moving far away from this place for as long as I could remember.

Find a new place that felt like I belonged and where my thoughts on the world wouldn't be judged and I could be my own person finally.

But, that all changes when I come home.

It's as if my town sucks the life out of my bones, and forces me to be the person I was before I left—before I discovered who I am and what I want to be. And until you know that feeling of being trapped in a place that you know isn't what you want, you don't know entirely how to react to a situation as this.

It makes you wonder if you should really feel like this; having your own opinions that don't line up with what everyone else believes.

Culture-shocking myself was what I decided I needed to do.

And that decision to do so is the best decision I have ever made. It allowed me to meet new people that were different than who I was, had different stories, a whole different life than mine. I was no longer stuck in my single-minded town with the same judgmental people.

These new individuals taught me what it was like to actually live in the real world, surrounded by different kinds of people and opinions.

This is not a hate letter to my town, it's really not.

That place will always be the home that I can run to when I need. It's a first-hand experience of how judgment and fear of wanting to be who you are can stop you from growing into those things.

It's proof that toxic environments can stunt amazing growth within ourselves, and how removing our souls from those environments can change everything about us and give us the life that we finally want to have.

It's about prospering; it's about wanting something better.