We tend to mythologize the places (and people) we leave behind. 

Maybe it’s the dive bar where you caught your first glance across the room. Or the uneven sidewalk in front of your old house where you cried your eyes out after a breakup. 

For us queer people, hometowns carry a complicated weight. Sometimes unsafe. Sometimes sacred. Often both. And yet, when we speak of them, we soften the edges. We remember what mattered, and rewrite the ending a little. 

But there’s a deeper reason queers hold tight to the places that made us, even if we had to get out in order to survive: They’re where we started the long, slow work of becoming. 

It doesn’t matter how hard we fought to leave, part of us still longs for what might have been had we stayed. 

The Geography of Identity

For many in the LGBTQ+ community, hometowns are more than coordinates on a map. They’re battlegrounds of early identity. They’re where we first whispered truths in the dark, stumbled into our first crush, or learned to make ourselves smaller to stay safe. 

Advocate.com recently reported on the national survey by The Trevor Project. Findings show that LGBTQ+ youth struggle with anxiety and depression not because of who they are as much as where they are. Notable places include the South and rural areas. 

This is just one example of how queerness is experienced differently depending on where you live. Rural vs urban, red vs blue, and being out vs staying safe. Our identities aren’t shaped by, but in reaction to, our environments. 

Still, we remember the smell of summer nights and who we might’ve been if things were different. That tension between longing and leaving is what lives in every queer person who’s ever mapped their life against a backdrop of a place that didn’t always map back. 

Chronic Illness, Queer Bodies, and the Places We Call Home

Chronic illness rates among LGBTQ individuals are disproportionately high, and rarely acknowledged. The National Institutes for Health found that queer adults face significantly higher odds of asthma, chronic pain, and long-term fatigue. Major contributors were stress, discrimination, and limited access to care. 

This is the added layer to feeling unsafe in places we’re supposed to call home. Aside from the emotional stakes of being bullied, feeling erased, or forced into living a closeted life, we have to face off with threats to our health as well. 

Neighborhoods around industrial areas, specifically sterilization plants and processing facilities, constantly expose people to toxic air. For example, the ethylene oxide lawsuit draws attention to harmful EtO emissions leading to serious health risks. 

TruLaw states that ethylene oxide exposure is linked to conditions including reproductive disorders, respiratory issues, lymphoma, and breast cancer. It’s a harsh reality check, the betrayal of realizing the place you once loved was literally poisoning you. 

When your childhood bedroom sits in the shadow of a facility now facing federal scrutiny, nostalgia gets complicated. 

Why We Cling to Queer Nostalgia Anyway

Despite the health data, trauma, and bigotry, many of us still romanticize where we came from.

Why?

Because survival doesn’t cancel love. 

We remember the first kiss behind the 7-Eleven. The one teacher who slipped us a queer book. The bus ride home with our best friend before we had words for what we were feeling. 

We cling to these shards because they matter. Because they’re ours. 

Nostalgia is a form of resistance. In a world that told us we didn’t belong, our memories often say otherwise. Even if we had to leave, we lived there. We loved it there. 

When Found Family Makes a Place Worth It

For many of us, what makes a place livable isn’t policy, but people. Chosen family turns towns into sanctuaries. Shared apartments, queer bars, community gardens, book clubs… These are the maps we draw when the official ones fail us. 

Places become sacred not because they’re safe, but because we make them so.

That’s why queer people can return to toxic places (figuratively and literally) and still feel that ache. Not for the town itself, but for the potential we glimpsed there. 

Looking Forward Without Forgetting

As climate injustice and public health crises unfold, we need to pay attention to who’s affected and who’s ignored. Many ethylene oxide lawsuit plaintiffs are just now being heard after years of illness and unanswered questions. 

For LGBTQ people, especially those in working-class or rural spaces, these issues intersect with our already precarious hold on healthcare and safety. That said, our connection to places is complicated, but it’s also powerful. 

The towns that hurt us are still part of us. And sometimes, the act of remembering is itself an act of justice.