I was ten years old when my family moved from California to Montana. When my father announced that we were moving to Montana, I only had the vaguest understanding that it was even a state. When we first arrived I was filled with optimism and curiosity. Those first few years were hard on me, though, and by the time I was a teenager I supposed I ought to hate Montana like every other angst-filled outsider at my high school.
When I graduated from high school I spent a semester at Brigham Young University - Idaho (which was then still known as Ricks College). That fall was my first taste of Rexburg, Idaho, and probably the lowest point of my life. I was depressed, friendless, and had absolutely no motivation to do much of anything. All through my adolescence I wanted to hate Montana, but now that I was in a new place it felt adulterous to speak badly of her behind her back. Rexburg, Idaho just seemed a million times worse to me.
After flunking out of that freshman year, I was called to serve as a missionary to New York City. When I arrived there I found myself with hundreds of other missionaries. Almost all of them were from places like Utah, Idaho, California, Oregon... I was different from them, and I started to view my home state as a symbol of that difference. I was a young Mormon male raised in the west, but I was not like any of them. I was from somewhere different. I was from a place nobody had ever heard of. It almost felt mythical to speak of it in the midst of the city.
I soon realized what millions had figured out before me; we all wanted to escape to the big city and now that we were there we realized what a miserable place it truly was. When I returned to Montana two years later, my eyes had opened a little and I no longer thought it uncool to call it my home.
BYU-Idaho graciously accepted me back and I returned to Rexburg. I lived there for four years on and off, spending my semesters off at home in Montana and returning to Idaho every spring. Towards the end of my college career I had developed a deep and unabiding hatred for Idaho and especially Rexburg. I vowed never to return, accepted my diploma, and was on my way.
I taught English at a local high school in Great Falls for three years. At the end of my third year, I was told that I was being laid off due to budgetary concerns. They had more than enough English teachers and they had a tenured teacher returning from a leave of absence. Since I was one of the few un-tenured teachers there I was the first to go. My wife and I decided we'd make the best of it and got her enrolled at BYU-Idaho. We chose BYU-I because the tuition is very inexpensive for Mormon students. I also have a younger brother and sister who will be attending the school, as well as another sister teaching in Idaho Falls.
From the moment we returned here I started seeing Rexburg in a different light. I still missed Montana, but I no longer hated Rexburg. It really became more of a mystery to me, and I actually find it kind of fascinating. No, I definitely do not want to settle down and raise my children here... But it does give me interesting things to rant and write about. I think I'm mostly doing this for my own sanity, to be honest.
