There is this sign posted on some God-fearing farmer’s land along I-65 that I saw every
time I drove back to Indiana.
It read: “Hell is real.”
And I always thought, “I know.
I live here, too.”
My time in Indiana was filled with the thought: “I don’t belong here.”
After 5 years of living in the Hoosier state, I feel as disconnected from it as I did when
my girlfriend and I first moved.
Something about it always felt temporary.
Like, even the state slogan is “The Crossroads of America,” which is just a nice way of
saying, “No one wants to stay here longer than they need to.”
And I relate to that because I didn’t spend one second longer there than I needed to.
It is hard to properly describe why I hate Indiana.
All of it will seem petty and exaggerated, which, in fairness, it is, and most of it
has more to do with who I am than anything else.
But here are my grievances.
First off, the state is flatter than it has any business being.
Wherever you are, it feels like you can see miles and miles of cornfields (or soybean
fields depending on the crop rotation), meaning from an aesthetic standpoint, it is pretty
much saying, “Hello, I am boring as fuck.”
Also, people everywhere like to focus on how messed up the weather is, and despite having
relatively normal weather in Indiana, the people there are no exception.
It will snow 2 inches, and everyone in the state will lose their collective minds.
The best thing is that a week later, it will be mildly warm, and you will hear at least
4000 people make the same comment about how “the weather really just needs to make up
its mind.”
The real issue is that the state never learned how to deal with the various types of weather
it gets, so when it rains, everything floods and when it snows more than a dusting, approximately
90 percent of all drivers just forget how to drive.
Despite getting it every year, Indiana does not know how to deal with snow, and I think
it is because the state views itself as the South, but it forgets it is north of the Mason-Dixon
line.
People think Indiana is part of the Midwest, but, culturally, it’s not.
It’s really its own thing.
Indiana is like a little brother who wants to be just like his older brother, in this
case, the South, so in an effort to emulate his brother he put sweet tea and Confederate
flags all around his room, but despite that, the South never really gave him the acceptance
he so desperately needed, leading Indiana to fall back on his very kind older sister,
the Midwest, who accepted him for who he was (but she was too bashful to point out that
all the Confederate flags were in poor taste and that the sweet tea would likely give him
diabetes, so he ended up keeping those things around).
Indiana takes a lot of pride in its ruralness, which is not inherently a bad thing.
However, the “country” lifestyle is really not for me.
Maybe the worst part about Indiana is that it is in Eastern Time.
It is pressed up against the western side of that time zone, which means during the
winter, if you work a day job, you will probably never see the sun, and in summer, it stays
light out pretty much all night.
Look, eastern time sucks.
If you are watching any live event, it goes way too late, and if you have friends living
on the West Coast, just learn to never speak with them again because your schedules won’t
line up.
All of this together, makes Indiana’s identity an amalgamation of the regions surrounding
it, creating a frankenstein’s monster of culture that I still do not understand.
And although I never felt like I truly fit in, for the past 5 years, Indiana has been
my home.
It is where my girlfriend and I first started living together, and we went from being two
people who loved each other to being partners in every sense of the word.
It is where I eventually proposed to her, and she made a massive mistake by saying yes.
It is where I worked my first real, adult-type job, taking on more responsibilities than
I ever had before and feeling like an imposter the entire time.
It is where I put down new roots, even if they never went that deep, finding people
I liked, restaurants I deemed tolerable, and various places to go to distract from the
fact that I lived in a cornfield.
I got comfortable there, and there is something to be said for that.
I learned about the city I lived in and the ones around it.
I explored places enough for them to become familiar.
I met a lot of new people, and while the values, interests, and hobbies of most of them ended
up being far different than mine, their mixture of midwestern niceness and southern politeness
made me feel welcome, and as a longtime Midwesterner, their ability to make meaningful conversations
about anything, even the fucking weather, is something I can appreciate.
Indiana was the world I spent everyday navigating.
If you wanted to get to Walmart, I could annoyingly give you directions to it even though we both
know it would be much easier for you to just look it up on your phone.
Walking out of the places that I frequented over the past 5 years, knowing that I most
likely will never set foot in them again, gave me the strange sensation that I was forgetting
something inside of them.
That I left something behind.
That I’d need to go back.
But I don’t, and, in all honesty, I probably won’t.
Home is a weird thing, and I think it has more to do with the people you are around
than the place you are in.
Indiana is where my fiancée and I started our first “home” together, and a part
of my is always going to be in those places I left.
Despite being beyond excited to be moving somewhere that is more me, I will always owe
Indiana for that.
So, thank you, Indiana.
I still hate you though.
Sincerely, Raz
P.S.
Indianapolis, I know you are watching this.
This ain’t about you.
You’re cool.