Have you lived in a place that wasn't a good fit for you?

Currently in Alabama and the constantly fluctuating weather is hell on every joint and bone (So that’s left foot, right knee, right femur, a rib, right shoulder, left thumb, and lower neck) I’ve injured. As soon as I’m done with college, I’m out… hopefully. Perhaps back to California or somewhere North were it’s generally cold.

I’ve had fun every place I’ve lived. I know we all crack jokes on the south, but I still had fun there. The only bad part was the humidity, and knowing that eventually a hurricane may come through if you decide to live there long term.

I can get along with people from anywhere. I’m not the rabid atheist I sometimes portray myself as on the internet.

Yes. I lived in Boston for 3–4 years and hated it. Unfriendly people, lousy drivers, awful climate.

Happy to have left.

Yeah, for the first 23 years of my life. I’ve already bitched on here about my disgruntlement with my Texas roots, but I’m not above doing it again.

Let’s get the good stuff out of the way first: mild winters, good Mexican food. There, that was easy.

Eastern Texas has the climate of a tropical swamp, but lacks the scenic charms. Houston, my home town, grew out of that steaming flatland like a malignancy, with no pretense of urban planning, aesthetics or “livability”, just an any-which-way spasm of roads, ranch houses, strip malls and car dealerships.

Walking, as an actual mode of transportation? Not an option (most neighborhoods didn’t even bother putting in sidewalks). Ride your bike? Ha! The roads belong to the pickup trucks, and they don’t like your kind out there. Take public transportation? That’s just a purgatory reserved for those poor misfits who can’t afford a pickup truck.

And then there’s the culture. God help you if you don’t care for football, faux cowboy schtick, guns or free-market economics. Oh, never mind, God is a Texan.

Stuff to do in Houston? Well, there’s…I don’t know… shop? Go to a bar? Stomp roaches?

I have been living in a place I’ve hated and not felt a part of for almost fifty years. New York

Haaated Delaware (and I suspect I’d hate it in any tiny state). It’s so small they have only 3 counties and so county news instantly becomes state news, and from there, with the right topic, it can jump to national news in hours. It’s a hotbed for gossip. However there are whole counties in many states that are bigger than the ENTIRE STATE of Delaware! Maybe they have a little dog complex. (If you live in Delaware, my apologies, but this is my opinion.)

And last year in my new state, Texas, we lived in a house with the steepest driveway in the neighborhood. The stupid HOA (Home Owner Association) wouldn’t allow anyone to park on the street, and it was a lowball home (meaning the garage was too small for our car). Ridiculous rules. From now on when we move again we’ll look for a place with no HOA.

@BeenThereSaidThat In Texas, they’re one of the states with counties larger than Delaware. So that’s a good thing anyway.

Yes, Florida. The climate was wonderful for five months of the year, and then miserable for the other seven. Rick Scott is the governor. Oh sorry, that’s now, but it tells you the political climate. Total Bible belt, right wing nightmare.

My first go at college was in an all-girls freshman dorm with 1 roommate and 20 girls to share a bathroom with. I was also extraordinarily sick with a digestive disease.

I found that having 20 girls that age all together in a confined space really brought out the worst in them. It’s hard to explain but they seemed to feel some kind of pressure to be ultra girly and ultra judgmental. Maybe some of them were actually like that, but it felt like they were just doing it because they felt they needed to in order to fit in.

They would get really dramatically grossed out by minor things. I remember one girl shouting to anyone that would listen about how there was gum stuck to the side of the trash bin in the bathroom, instead of inside the bin, and how that was basically the end of the world. Another girl threw a fit one time when I accidentally dripped water on the floor while exiting the shower and she was convinced someone had peed all over the floor. It felt fake, like they were expressing their disgust to try to convince everyone else that they themselves were far more proper than that.

Being there, sharing their bathroom, trying to fit in, while having diarrhea eight times a day and bleeding rectally, was an absolute nightmare. I had to hide absolutely everything. I knew they would hate me if they knew what I was.

Luckily, or unluckily, I only lived there for 7 weeks before I had to drop out because I was too sick.

I finally returned to school in the middle of an academic year, so the college administration had to put me wherever there was space. There was space in a very nice 4 person suite in an upperclassmen dorm. The reason there was space was because one of the girls had just broken lease to go move out. That should have been warning #1.

I had a room to myself within the suite, which was nice, and now I was only sharing a bathroom with 3 other girls. However, one of the girls in the suite quickly made herself known as an absolute nightmare individual.

When the RA came to do the paperwork soon after I arrived, she mediated a quick chat among us so we could discuss what we require in our living situation. Nightmare girl thought it was worth mentioning to the RA that all the blinds in all the adjacent windows have to be even with one another. OK, whatever.

Nightmare girl sent emails to the whole apartment on a regular basis because that was how she did her confrontations. “There is a singular knife in the sink. It has been there all night. We agreed that we would always do dishes within 24 hours of creating them, so I feel this is extremely disrespectful to the rest of us. Whoever’s knife that is, clean it.”

It quickly became clear that living up to nightmare girl’s standards was going to be impossible so I simply avoided touching anything in the common spaces. I would just stay in my own room. If I didn’t change anything, she couldn’t blame me for it. However, I still had to use our bathroom – multiple times a day, because that is life for me – and so I tried very very hard to be acceptable in that regard. I scrubbed the toilet down every time I used it. I somehow must have missed a speck on occasion however because the emails would come:

“Guys, the toilet is repulsive. Whoever is doing that is being extremely disrespectful to the rest of us by leaving such a mess. Clean up your messes, this is disgusting.”

I only had to live with her for a semester but it dragged on and on. I had multiple medical problems during that semester but I sure as hell wasn’t going to confide in my roommates. I don’t think they noticed when I went to the hospital for several days. I was starting to think I’d never be comfortable at college and would never be able to be accepted for who and what I was.

Apologies to any Cheeseheads out there, but Milwaukee was not a good fit for me. Too cold. Thankfully, I lived there only one winter.

Northern Ohio, not for me.

I’m living in it. The people are as cold as the weather and food is as tasteless as it is expensive.

I would say I have a love-hate relationship with Florida. It was wonderful to go down there in the winter and the nature – when you can find it – has a subtle beauty but the East Coast is very rushed and New Yorky for the main and the West Coast has a lot of religion and conservatism.

@janbb – a very subtle beauty. So subtle in fact, that the last three times I was in Florida, I missed it entirely.

Florida north of Gainesville/Ocala does have its charms (and history, and biological diversity).

Anywhere south of that is flat and overly-commercialized.

I don’t disagree but there are some parks on the west coast that are lovely and some of the state parks with natural springs around Ocala and Homassasa are beautiful still in their own way.

I was in St Augustine for the first time this winter and enjoyed that much more than Delray Beach.

On the whole, I prefer the Northern California coast but there is that wonderful sensation when you step off a plane in Florida in the wintertime and it is warm and green.

Metropolis, Illinois. I grew up up there and hated nearly every goddamned minute of it. I could not wait to get away from that dull-minded, right wing, “guns, Gawd, flags ‘n football”, roll-up-the-sidewalks at 7 PM, everyone-makes-it-their-business-to-know-your-business, tiny little shithole of a town. Fuck Metropolis and fuck nearly everyone in it.

@elbanditoroso I laughed out loud.

@Blackberry – which statement of mine?

I lived across the river from New Orleans when I was about 20. Didn’t like the rednecks and didn’t like the hot weather.

I probably would have been much happier in the city (except for the weather). But I didn’t have any ties there and left after 8 months.

I can’t think of any really bad places that I’ve actually signed a lease, or owned a home. I’ve spent a few months in some real hopeless shit holes, though. Communist East Germany and Haiti come to mind.

I love this Q! Thank you so much for the answers so far. I hope we get more.

Raleigh, NC was never a good fit for me. I lived there less than two years. It never felt right.

I find it interesting that someone can grow up feeling like a town or city doesn’t fit. When you’re a kid how much frame of reference do you have? I think it is incredibly intuitive to know a home town isn’t right; just isn’t the right fit.