“And so we leave”

My mother once told me that these were the years that I grew a permanent smirk on my face, like I was always thinking of a joke not worth wasting on the people around me. A healthy portion of my attitude was surely due to the anger I’d built up following my parents’ split and the general weight of my teen angst. But what had also risen inside me was the sense that I was a loser for living in Tucson, as if I’d come up short in a geographical lottery and now needed to take it out on the yokels too dumb to understand how dreary our days were in comparison to those being lived out elsewhere. I became the embodiment of the truth that there is nothing in the world crueler than an embarrassed person attempting to save face. I got meaner than I’d ever been. My temper grew shorter. I said hurtful things to people who loved me and even more hurtful things to strangers who crossed me. When people called me on being rude or malicious, I ignored them. What did they know? They were from Tucson.

Cord Jefferson wrote about his hometown, Tucson, Az., for Tucson Weekly, and if you’ve ever left a place behind and cried for it, you’ll want to read it. [TW]