As a teen, I couldn’t wait to move away from my hometown. As an adult, I wish I had never left.

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  • I lived in Salem, Oregon growing up and thought it was so boring.
  • After leaving for college and coming back to visit my parents, I realized it wasn’t so uncool.
  • Moving back to Oregon now feels impossible.

When I was 16 years old, I was convinced that the most boring place on Earth was Salem, Oregon .

As a grunge-punk teen growing up in the 90s, I thought Salem was everything that Seattle and Portland were not. It wasn’t cool, edgy or exciting. It was a city of bureaucrats, where you could find dozens of spots to grab coffee or a sandwich, but not much in the way of night life. And anyway, underage fun was strictly forbidden. Forget sneaking into a bar; we couldn’t even get into an R-rated movie. My friends and I spent our Friday nights at Denny’s, drinking endless cups of coffee and dreaming about moving somewhere cool.

I had lived in Salem all my life, and although I’d traveled with my family to California, Hawaii and even Europe, I longed to experience something new . In Salem, I felt like a round peg in an extremely square hole.

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