The first thing people often say when they hear I’m from Ohio is, “Oh, I’ve never been.” To which I reply, “It’s not really a place you visit.” In many ways it isn’t. Most people don’t vacation in Ohio with its endless alternation of corn fields and strip malls, but somehow it’s become a place I long for, that I want to visit, that I love to call home.
When I applied to college, I was desperate to leave Ohio, I wanted a fresh start, a different place, a new adventure. Although I didn’t officially decide until March of my senior year, from the first time I visited Pittsburgh a piece of me fell in love with it. Pittsburgh was a ticket out, a pathway to that something new that I desired. Pittsburgh felt exciting to me, its winding rivers and endless bridges offering me a pathway to adulthood.
However, about 3 months into being a college freshman, I came to realize that Pittsburgh wasn’t so different from home, from Cincinnati. Both cities built on industry and steel, medium sized, with a passionate love for their sports teams. Suddenly, it became clearer to me that perhaps I had chosen Pittsburgh not because it was an escape from home, but rather because it was like home. Pittsburgh is not a clone of Cincinnati, it of course has its own unique slang, more neighborhoods, and a wider variety of places for me to explore that I had not known my whole life. It’s more like a cousin of Cincinnati than a sister, but still it beckons me in with a familiar warmth.
The more I fell in love with Pittsburgh, the more I also began to long for home, for the local coffee shop I always went to with my friends, the ice cream place I worked at throughout high school, the movie theatre where I watched double and triple features, and the sound of my dog running to me at the top of my stairs. And yet, these longings were also replaced by new places in my new home, a new coffee shop, a new ice cream place, a new theatre, a new home in my college apartment.
Without me realizing it, I discovered two homes, one in Pittsburgh, one in Cincinnati, each of which I always longed for while in the other. College in Pittsburgh has taught me the beauty of place and people together, that it really is the people who make the place, the love and memories what makes it special, what makes it home. And now, I count myself lucky to have two places I call home, and can say, come visit anytime.
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