(Work In Progress)
I have always had a complicated relationship with Kansas City. I have always felt out of place, even though I have spent almost my entire life here. I find myself struggling with the question “what is home?” And I struggled even more so at a younger age as my own small world rapidly changed around me between moving 2000 miles from what I used to consider home and my parents suddenly deciding they needed a divorce. Oddly enough, I find myself realizing Kansas City has been my only constant in my ever changing world and yet, I feel so far removed from it. As a child I would proudly say that I wasn’t from here; I was from San Diego, and I still find myself giving that answer when people ask me where I’m from. Not from here, only for now. But here I am, in my early thirties and still here. As recently as 2019 I truly thought the only thing holding me back from moving away was my college degree but recently KC has been starting to feel more and more like a home and I can’t decide if it’s a trap or I’m actually starting to nurture the relationship I have with this city.
The thing about relationships (and in particular, the ones you may not have a say in, such as family,) is, they aren’t perfect, they just look that way from the outside. There’s tragedy and loneliness and things are falling apart but there’s also the feel-good stuff, too. I find a lot of photographers from Kansas City glorifying it. The sunsets, the bustling downtown area, the cute spots around town, even the places more closely tied with nature further out from Kansas City. My partner always says this thing when he sees how beautiful Kansas City can be: “don’t move here.” Those are the parts I want to show, why you can fall in love and call this city home. But I also want to nurture this relationship, like an estranged family member, and accept the parts that I hate or that make me feel like I need to run away. Part of cultivating that relationship is spending time in it, which for me means exploring as much as possible. You can’t grow to love something you don’t fully understand every facet of.
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