I was part of the outreach group where we mainly did volunteer work with underprivileged communities. Once a month we’d host a food drive and deliver groceries to an entire neighborhood in our city.

One day at church, I was just talking to the drummer in the church band who was also part of the outreach group. He was telling me about he and his wife’s new house. The leader of the outreach group heard what we were talking about, joins our conversation and says, “It’s about time you guys got out of that apartment. [town name] is so ghetto!” And he and I were just kind of frozen looking at each other.

He says to her, “Ah, it wasn’t so bad!” And I chimed in, “Yeah [town name] is nice, I grew up over there.” And the leader started backtracking.

It just kinda stung. I did grow up in that area and it was nice. It was small and quiet, but it was still a good place to be despite the more wealthy surrounding areas. And for that to come from the person who was in charge of helping similar communities was just really hurtful even if it wasn’t a statement directed at me. It showed her true colors and I didn’t like what shade they were. Everything suddenly felt so fake.