Estimated reading time: 14 minutes, 10 seconds

I’ve been wrestling with this all day, and thanks to Maha and everyone who reads for the Twitter dialogue as well. There may be a blogpost in this later, but for now, this is a working narrative and response to Maha’s ramblings; I’m probably rambling a bit myself.

I moved to Central Appalachia in 2011 – first to Bristol, VA, to work at Virginia Intermont College – and then when that school failed, after a couple of years of a temporary job in midstate Tennessee, to Greeneville, TN to work at Tusculum College, in a job that I just accepted for August of 2016. The result of that move was to gain a new place, and to gain some new neighbors.

What’s more, I was raised in the space between Hilliard, FL and Folkston, GA – two small towns on either side of a state line on US Highway 1. I went to school on the Florida side. I went to church on the Georgia side. Both communities were so influential.

Anybody who has followed the news of the past year knows that my neighbors – both my current neighbors, and the neighbors of my childhood – took the lead on a leadership change in this country that is absolutely horrifying.

I love my neighbors – both my current neighbors and the neighbors of my childhood – and I desperately want to serve them well.

This contradiction defines my life right now.

It’s obviously frustrating living here, and feeling like everything I stand for is so completely opposed. I don’t think it’s opposed out of malice. I think there are a ton of people in these communities of rural America who have been lied to – completely, comprehensively. They believe the realities of the world are one way; the actual realities of the world are completely removed. They’ve been lied to because there are media companies – “news” organizations – that profit by being able to tell you the things “they” don’t want you to know about, and there’s this secret Gnostic knowledge about the evil Barack Obama inflicted on America, and if they know those secrets, they’ll all be saved.

Most of my neighbors are evangelical Christians, which makes their pursuit of this secret knowledge all the more ironic, and their willingness to help these media companies to record profit all the more exasperating.

I still feel compelled – even called – to love the people of this wonderful, wonderful place, to honor the graft that made such a difficult part of the country so livable, to work to make space for the great characteristics of these people to make good and not harm, to let their stories be told and heard. There may be places with greater need, but they don’t have people that I identify with so strongly – even as I viscerally feel the distrust of the outsider who’s got more brains than common sense.

Because, ultimately, that’s what I was told throughout my own childhood. The book knowledge is nice. It won’t help you in the real world. The people who made this country didn’t do it with pencil and paper; they did it with their hands. I don’t trust your words, I don’t trust your numbers. I trust your blood, and your sweat.

I at once admire that attitude and I’m alienated by it. I know where my talents lie. But using those talents in this place leaves me alone.

I love you, Appalachia. Please let me love you.