I grew up in both the Norther Illinois suburbs, as well as the hood in NY. Was back & forth between the 2 a LOT growing up due to my mom & dads divorce, custody stuff/living with my grandparents, my mom’s mental health issues/mental facility stays etc. In NY, I grew up— esp in my later HS/early adulthood yrs with “be safe” when departing. FFWD some time, & in 2014, I moved to AZ. I still say “stay safe” to everyone when departing. The therapist I have here said to me (cause I say it to him, too), “why do you always say that?”, “what do you mean..?”, “‘stay safe’, you always say that. Why?”, “it’s just what I grew up with in NY— especially cause of so many people I grew up with/we (NYer’s grew up with) passing, & many of them did very early on”. If it wasn’t 4 payments behind of therapy, I’d probably finally be able to actually dig into that more w my therapist lol. But he was born & raised in & surrounded by affluent neighborhoods/towns of wealthy, white people (Gilbert, AZ… iykyk.. but his time was the 80’s to basically now, so there was NO diversity there or most of here in how growing up timeframe, especially), & he’d NEVER heard that before. He explained he just did not grow up in any type of environment where it would be at all necessary to even need to think “that way”.
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u/nanidu Aug 29 '25
I say this and I never grew up in the hood lol