You're right: it sucks. You'll come back from the suck. Why? Because you won't develop any receptors to the suck. You'll have to float for a while, but eventually there will be positive rewards.

I grew up in Utica, NY. That place messed me up badly. I'm grateful it wasn't Midwestern -- just gnarled out to heck and full of judgmental mofos.

Also: you're young. Everything sucks when you are pupating: you're not in control of anything, but there are new and crazy demands on you.

However this could have happened to you by winding up anywhere, because this is an emotional rather than logical part of your life. You could be in Tittyfuqtopia and you'd still find welling hatred for the place, because no place is your place. You can't do what adults do to get over what adults do to you: drink the good stuff, take off for a few days, buy something you can get hung up on for a while.

No, no, seriously: buying your own drinks instead of hiding from cops about it changes things. You can drink IPAs when you're buying -- skip the beer until you can get the stuff with actual flavors and brewing in it. Beer should not be carbonated malt liquor: it should taste like hard work and as-yet-unclassified wild yeast.

You'll be welling up a lot of hard emotions until you get started at college. Then you'll have a couple years of being lost. Then they hand you a degree and you realize you didn't get it. Then you'll watch a lot of Columbo and Highlander reruns... oh wait, that was me.

You're totally and empirically correct about Ohio. So yeah, go ahead and hate the ever-living jeebus outta it. Get your Hate Week on! However, just understand that hatred isn't the opposite of love: it's the result of love spurned. You wanted to give it a chance and it's just sitting on the couch of life. Understand that it can't give you what you want, so use the time to find what you like about the world.

The schmuck picks a fight with the mass of Ohio State fans by wearing a Michigan hat. The dude that wears a Parramatta Eels hat because that's his damn team or cuz the name and hat rock -- that's a personality.

You are becoming a character. Characters have interesting lives. We also get lots of stuff we weren't looking for because we went out looking and stuff found us.

Ohio has a lot of roads out of it. Once you have your own car, even the crappiest one, make it a point to try as many of those escape roots as possible. I understand that most only go to Indiana or Kentucky, but they're at least elsewhere. Louisville has food! Indiana has... ummm... Li'l Bub.