To hate the area I was born and brought up in?

[kenchurch]

Please don’t roast me for this as I have my asbestos flame proof suit on.

But I really hate the area that I was born and raised in. Does anyone else share this?

I’m not sure if it’s due to the fact that most of the people I associate with these areas as being those who were mean to me in school. I never fitted in.

If it’s due to the fact that they’re not very socially liberal and hence disliked me.

This was an area heavily affected by Thatcherism and completely destroyed the economies of this area. I just went home and sat on a late train through where I grew up and I can’t help but feel these people don’t help themselves. They all waste all disposable income on going out drinking and so live in the same houses that they were born in. Lots are on their 3+ wife/husband.
I just feel they live in such sad circumstances with so little money but yet each week they blow it on taxis and drinking, whilst they don’t give they’re children the means to pull themselves out of what is poverty really. In a way I’d say they’re happy, but also unhappy.

Many still have the same friends in school, their entertainment is dull, childish and gossipy. It just seems a terrible waste of potential

I just don’t feel like I belong to the community, or ever have. Having been top of the class and gone through Oxbridge to a job and moved away.

Sorry I know this isn’t really an AIBU but more a ramble. I can’t tell if it’s just me being snotty or if I do have a point. Perhaps belonging means more than I thought.

I always hated the area I grew up in.

So I left. Best decision I ever made in my life

I rarely go back there. Whenever I do, I have such a strong feeling of sorrow and horror. A lot of my feelings are caused by associating the place with the bad things that happened to me there. Sometimes I can look at it objectively and see it is just a town full of people like any other. But whenever I go there I remember the bad shit and want to get as far from the place as possible so I can forget and be happy again.

Move. Make new friends. Make new memories

plucked pencil

Where have you found that has lots of variety! I only find London does. I'm on outskirts but it's too the other way from money loop

Does it really matter? I would never live in the place I was born now anyway and it is a place that has a certain reputation that I don't identify with at all. But I only ever think about it if I have to put down my place of birth.

Read the wonderful The End of Eddy by Edouard Louis. It is an amazing novel (/autobiography) about this very topic of not fitting in with where you come from and the necessity to get out. I loved that book so much. It is raw and powerful.

Edouard Louis has become one of the most influential French writers with this book. Rightly so too.

I hate the area I spent the first 36 years of my life in, but that's not unusual for people who come from Croydon

I don't hate where I grew up, but I have no emotional attachment or connection to it at all. It sounds like it's kind of the opposite of where you come from, OP. It's a massively wealthy, posh, manicured commuter belt area. It's pretty, with lots of beautiful houses, but I find it soulless tbh. I now live in the NW of England in an area which is much less 'aspirational' but much more naturally beautiful. My parents think I'm bonkers for wanting to live here.

I can see were you are coming from.

But people lead different lives, you just have to accept that. As long as they aren't doing anything wrong, who are you you judge what makes them happy.

I moved away from my home town, and for a while saw the people left behind as insular. But now I see there lives as fullfilled.

many found work within the town or nearest small city, rented/bought little houses then larger ones, had children, when others that moved away would have been finishing uni.

Some of their DC have gone on to uni some haven't.

They spend lots of time going out in there old friendship groups, BBQs clubs, restaurants, pubs. holidays, mini breaks....

Their family support network was close, so had plenty of help.

pretty nice life really.

Don't get me wrong some probably struggle financially and made bad choices, but to have family and friends there around you must make life easier. Going to a friend's BBQ and being able to socialise and have laugh when you haven't a penny to your name is a good thing surely?

I didn't feel I fitted in either. But it's ok as I find my own kind of people where ever I go now, because I have confidence in myself.

As a PP said maybe it's more you can't shake the negative experiences you felt growing up, so the place will always be on your list of places you don't like or hate. which is fair enough. But no need to keep looking down on them.

You are no better then them.

You seem very quick to judge other people’s life choices. You have implied they are not nice people, but tbh you don’t sound particularly nice either.

Life is about more than material possessions and academic achievements. It is more important to be happy and to bring happiness to others.

Let go of your judgment of the people who you grew up around. You are seeing them through the lens of your own bias. You cannot see the full story. Judging them brings nothing good into your life.

I agree with pp that you sound young and inexperienced. That’s a good thing, it means you still have lots of time to work on your own social ethics. Be a forgiving, kind, humble and loving person and you might find that you start to see the sense in others life choices.

I have to go back where i was born and brought up as have relatives still living there - the area isn't great ( but where i live now has it problems too and isnt perfect ) but the thing i see the most is a bit of community spirit, something the place i live now doesn't- its all what you have and who you know here, at least there people will talk to you and are friendly.
everywhere has good and bad bits - i didn't go to Uni and dh did his degree through work, so maybe we have kept our working class roots a lot more than other people who couldnt wait to shake them off maybe. I certainly would not say i was ' middle class' but a lot of old school friends say they are now!

To be fair on OP...Its all very well talking about community spirit, OP's hometown may well have it.
But it sounds like OP felt excluded from that community and its probably quite painful for her.

Are you saying that only your way of doing things and he work you do now is good enough? So what if they drink, it’s their hard earned money and their choice what to do with it and I say this as someone who doesn’t drink. You sound very judged and I’m wondering if you maybe othered yourself?

I feel a bit like that towards the place I was born and brought up in. It was a northern mining village, and when the pit closed it (naturally) suffered. I left at 18 for education, worked in a profession and lived in different countries, now back in UK. I don't go back there (nc with horrible sister, parents gone). I wouldn't say I hate it but I feel a bit sad about it really, I suppose a couple of generations past it was expected that you would go to work in the pit, cotton mills etc but that's all gone. I don't really understand it but it seems that many of my contemporaries didn't have any aspiration to do better, but that's just my take on it and I think most of them are perfectly happy with their lives. Perhaps it makes me sound snobby but it's just choices that we make in life. I wanted to get away and see more than what I'd grown up with.

Maybe they look at your life and pity you? Maybe they love belonging to their community and having friends and family close to them?
I get it totally. Many of the people I went to school with live in the same place, in grandparents houses that have been passed down for years. I have nothing in common with these people - they work hard in their chosen jobs, save to go abroad for two weeks a year and drink in the pubs their families have always been to. However I value that we came from the same place and love to catch up and hear about their lives that are so different from mine.
I neither envy nor despise what they have.