A Hometown Is Not a Place

To have a hometown is to know where you are from. Perhaps that is the problem with being a military brat. When people have asked me where I am from, I have discovered is that they are really asking where the last place I lived was. They don’t care about the towns and cities military families pass through. None quite know the unique struggle of moving every few years and calling a new place your hometown. Whenever I am asked about my hometown, I have to pause for a moment and think. Each time I come to the same conclusion:

I do not know where I am from.

Maybe that is not entirely accurate. I was born in Victoria, British Columbia. Would I call Victoria my hometown? If I were to be asked that question ten years ago, I would say that it was. In fact, I would say that I was planning on moving back there as soon as I could. If you asked me where my hometown was five years ago, I would say that it was Kingston, Ontario. I even applied to college there and got accepted. For years, I considered Kingston my hometown. It is where my closest friend still lives. However, life happens and your motivations change.

When asked today where my hometown is, I know that the answer is not that simple. I am no longer the ignorant child that saw the world one way. Through the years and the numerous moves I have learned that a hometown is not a place. It cannot be defined down to one single moment in time. There is more to a hometown than the coordinates on a map.

A hometown is a feeling.

Some would argue that a hometown is the place I was born. Others would claim that their hometown is where they had all of their important first moments. Where they learned how to ride a bike and tie their shoes. Their hometown could be the place they knew they could always return to.

As the years pass, I have questioned whether or not I would return to Kingston or Victoria. I have questioned if these places are my hometown time and time again. The simple answer is no, I would not consider either of those cities to be my hometown.

Instead, I know without a doubt that Dartmouth, Nova Scotia will always be home.

When asked now where I am from the answer is simple. Dartmouth. The place where I found the pieces of myself that I was missing. The place where I felt my first real heartbreak before I fell in love with myself. It is the place where I graduated high school, where I lost friends and gained new ones, and the place where I feel completely at home.

Dartmouth is more than a hometown. It is more than the city limits can contain and the ocean’s waves can wash away. To me, Dartmouth is a living, breathing place. However, my hometown is so much more than that.

A hometown is the sand between my toes, the salt on the wind, and the sun warming my skin as I stare at my aging dog playing in the waves. Long nights are spent on the sand, dreaming of all the things that could be. It is the feeling of peace after a hard day at work. From those sandy dunes, it is clear that the world is much bigger than the problems of daily life. That there has to be something better waiting after the sun comes up the next day.

It’s the crashing of the waves against the shore as we kissed in the rain on that first date. The same date that changed my life forever. A new beginning after a harsh end. The feeling of knowing that right here, right now, is where I was meant to be. There is no other place that I would rather be than in that moment.

That’s the thing about my hometown. All I have ever wanted to be while in Dartmouth is right there living in the moment.

Dartmouth is where I found myself. A shell of a person waiting to be filled. To start over. Sadly, the journey is never that easy. There is heartbreak and pain but there is recovery as well. Strength. Finding a hope that I never knew I needed. Darkness and misery surrounded me but there was something about Dartmouth, about being in the streets and looking at the old buildings, that brought the passion for life back. That passion for living and not just being alive.

It is here that a love of outdoors is born for all. It is here, in Nova Scotia, that you can chase waterfalls and climb down into coves with crystal clear water. It is where you can walk on white sand beaches and let the troubles of the world ease from your mind. Here you can spend weeks exploring the wilderness and still never see all that there is to see.

Perhaps what I love most about Nova Scotia is the past meeting the present and bringing together the future. Alongside the cities are small fishing towns. Towns so small that you know each and every person living within them. There are places where history thrives. Where you can see the lives that have come before you and how those lives directly impact your own. The murals painted on the walls reflecting the world as it once was.

Nova Scotia is the place that dreams are made of. It is both beautiful and deadly. Lighthouses stand tall, leading the sailors home while deadly waves crash against jagged rocks below. In that moment, looking at the waves below, I am as free and a wild as the sea below. There is nothing that can contain me. Nothing that can hold me back. Like the waves, Dartmouth has made me a force to be reckoned with.

My hometown is the place that changed me. In Nova Scotia, I found a place where I knew I belonged. Dartmouth is the place that made me who I am. After moving to Dartmouth, I became happier, though at the time I had thought that the world was ending. In my mind years ago, there was no way anyone could ever be happy here.

I was wrong and I am ecstatic about it.

A hometown is more than the place you were born. It is more than the city limits that contained you or the same city limits you wish to escape. My hometown was not the other cities I have lived in but rather the one I choose to stay in. Though it was completely unexpected, Dartmouth has become my hometown. There is nothing that I would change. A hometown is far more than the place you come from. A hometown is a feeling.