Growing up, it was all about where you were from. Your friends, your tastes for food, your sports teams, your religion. Everything was largely homogenous with the people you grew up with.

Now that I’m grown up and out into the world, people ask me questions about who I am and what I like and where I’m from and I’m less sure of how to answer. I try to talk to any of my experiences based on I’m with and what they’re most familiar with.

So much chaos inside my soul, had I not been born into the basic, safe life of the plains and homogeneity, I might have lost it too soon. With my Kansan base, I can lose it carefully, consistently, and still always return afterwards to a static set of rules and sense of identity, then set up to take off again.