- I moved from upstate New York to South Carolina in 2020. Two years later, I'm returning home.
- The humidity, massive bugs, and strict marijuana laws in South Carolina were not ideal for me.
- Even though the South is beautiful and has a strong culture, there's nothing quite like New York.
I'm a born-and-raised New Yorker who's spent most of my life upstate. But at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, I moved to South Carolina to hunker down with my immediate family for what I thought would be a relatively short period of time.
I ended up living there for two years and I just don't think the South is for me.
Before moving to South Carolina, the furthest south I'd ever lived was Las Vegas. That was only for two years after high school though, so this has been a massive adjustment.
Now that I'm departing South Carolina and returning to upstate New York, I decided to break down a few of the biggest reasons I chose to leave.
I find the intense heat and humidity to be unbearable
I'll probably get roasted for being a Northerner complaining about the heat, but it's hot down here. And not in a fun, tropical way.
No, this Southern heat feels like you're experiencing the effects of climate change happening in real-time. Sadly, I have a hunch that it's only going to get worse — and quickly.
My second summer in South Carolina felt easily twice as hot as the first, which made it almost completely unbearable to leave the house between May and October.
And when I say unbearable, I mean it. The air is so humid that it feels like someone has thrown a wet towel over my face as soon as I step outside.
My hair doesn't stay styled and my makeup doesn't stay put. I miss the concept of looking nice in the summertime instead of being a disgusting, sweaty swamp goblin.
I can't stand the heat, so I'm getting out of the proverbial kitchen.
The bugs in South Carolina are out of my weight class
I can handle the alligators, snakes, birds, bats, lizards, turtles, and frogs in the South. I even enjoy some of them.
But I cannot stand the bugs.
I've never been attacked by insects the way I've been attacked by the giant abominations I've seen in South Carolina. These bugs are huge. These bugs could take me down in a physical fight.
In South Carolina, I've encountered banana spiders, mole crickets, palmetto bugs, millipedes, and centipedes, just to name a few.
These creepy, alien-looking creatures like to do things like dive-bomb my face when I'm outside trying to mind my own business.
As someone who's lived in both New York and South Carolina, I'd take a fight with a subway rat over these bugs any day.
Going from a blue state to a red state has been rough
I grew up in a diverse, progressive city in New York, a state that generally votes Democratic in elections.
So, moving to a state governed by mostly Republican officials, many of whom have political views and morals that I vehemently disagree with, has been a bit of a culture shock.
Though a jarring amount of racism and white supremacy is disguised as "Southern Pride," I've learned that there are also huge swaths of the region that are beautifully diverse and desperately underrepresented.
And as I've spent more time in South Carolina, I've realized that its predominantly conservative elected officials aren't necessarily representative of all the people who live here.
I want to be able to buy weed, which is still illegal in many Southern states
It sucks to be a stoner in a state where cannabis is illegal.
New York finally legalized marijuana for recreational use in 2021 after taking its sweet time. Unfortunately, many Southern states still lack similarly progressive cannabis laws.
I wouldn't even mind driving to a neighboring state to buy weed, but that wasn't an option. Marijuana is generally illegal in all three of them: North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia.
The laws against buying, selling, and possessing marijuana in certain Southern states are harsh. I find them to be morally regressive and unjust, as they disproportionately affect people of color. And I don't want to live in a state that enforces them.
In South Carolina, I can still legally buy delta-8 THC, a cannabis compound that gives me a "high" but falls within a legal loophole in the US.
It's a great start, but I'd still love to see cannabis legalized for medical and recreational use throughout the South.
I miss having access to different vegan foods
It's important to preface my point by saying that access to vegan food is entirely dependent on where a person lives in the South.
I don't want to paint the entire region as a massive vegan-food desert, because there is a lot of amazing Southern vegan food that deserves recognition. But if you want access to that vegan food, you usually have to be in a big city like Atlanta, which has amazing vegan options like The Slutty Vegan and Plant-Based Pizzeria.
If you're a vegan who moves to a small Southern town, like me, you're probably out of luck.
My family's home wasn't nearly as rural as it gets down here, but there weren't many vegan options nearby.
I cooked all of my meals from home, which is fine, but I did miss the luxury of being able to order a vegan breakfast sandwich delivery on a hungover Saturday morning.
When it comes down to it, there's really no place like New York
Upstate New York is one of the most topographically, ecologically, and anthropologically diverse places in the world.
People complain about the area's harsh winters, but they're a small price to pay for the breathtaking autumns.
The Adirondaks burst with vibrant washes of red, orange, yellow, and purple. The smell of the fall air in New York is the closest thing to real magic that I've ever felt, which sounds dramatic, but if you know, you know.
The South is beautiful, too; I won't pretend that it's not.
The beauty here has been what's kept me sane over the last two years. But I am ready to go home.
I can't wait to throw on a pair of boots and a sweater, put on my headphones, and go for a walk without having to do that polite Southern wave that everyone seems to insist on doing down here.
I know it's a polite, Southern hospitality thing, and I will always do it because I have an overwhelming fear of being rude to people that will always take precedent over my overwhelming need to be left alone. But I really hate it. A lot.
I just want to walk in peace, and I can always count on my fellow New Yorkers to mind their own business.
South Carolina, it's been real — but it's time for me to go home.