I come most recently from a suburb of Providence, Rhode Island. However, I have lived in a plethora of places in my life, due to being a part of a military family. My dad would get stationed somewhere else every few years, and along to the next town we went. Luckily, I have been able to stay in some really nice places in my life, with which I have many connections to people. I still visit Long Island (my last place of residence before Rhode Island) every summer to see my best friend. I think that moving all over the place for my whole life has definitely impacted my ability to create a connection with a location, and at times it negatively impacted my wellbeing.
I think a positive of moving around has been that I have connections all over the east coast now, and I probably know more people than I ever would if I had stayed in the same place for my whole life. My connections with people have been rich and I often stay in contact with many of them, thanks to technology.
However, there are many detriments too. When I used to come into a school as the “new girl” there would be a whole new set of people to meet and nerves to tame. I have been so lucky to live in places that are safe and accepting, but it’s still difficult to leave behind your old friends that you have worked so hard to make. Each time my dad got new orders, I would anticipate packing up our life once again and invading a new suburb for a few years before moving to the next. I ended up becoming scared to make too good of friends because I would just end up leaving them- this ultimately affected my wellbeing adversely. Being closed-off and scared to make new friends will definitely not help anyone in their teenage endeavor to fit in.
I think something that has plagued my ability to create a solid sense of place in my residences has been this theme of quality over quantity. I have a very surface-level sense of place, but in many different places. This has given me the ability to gauge what a place is like in a very short amount of time spent there, but I think I would rather have a very deep connection with fewer places than I do.
All in all, though, I have loved the places I lived. I have lived in Rhode Island the longest and I really enjoyed going back there over break. I think now that I have been apart from it for a few months, being at college and all, I have a newfound appreciation for that little state.
Burlington called to me the second I set foot here. I didn’t know what it was called at that point in time, but now I know that it was called sense of place. And the Redstone Pines have provided me with a much smaller scale location to form a sense of place with. For that, I couldn’t be more thankful. I plan to stay here for a long time.
