it's been a strange year, i suppose.
i've never lived alone before all this. i moved into a dorm in high school. then college, shitty punk house (nicolas cage against the machine will forever be the best and worst band i was ever in, love y'all), then finishing college.
then i moved to brooklyn and spent nearly a decade and a half with an incredible man who is and will always be great--but we are proof that you can love someone so thoroughly, but we just never quite spoke the same language. and that's okay in the end. we have lunch most wednesdays before my bar shift. i'm so lucky for that. i pray regularly that we can both find our happiness. he was before and is still my best friend.
it's a little tough but what keeps me trying and moving forward is community. i feel like this world is so different than the one i was born in; the little rural town with unpaved gravel roads that gave me permanent calluses. trees and berry bushes and grandparents down the road with chickens and rabbits; neighbors who all knew everyone and traded off caring for each other.
now I live in New Orleans and people seem so astonished that i know most of my neighbors and that we take care of each other as well. we have holidays together when we can't get to our ancestral homes. we make homes together as friends. people move from the area and still commune together and check on each other because we put the effort into community. even during covid lockdown, we made zoom groups and put in the work to remind each other that even isolated, we were never truly alone.
i'm a person who loves people and their stories and getting to experience this overwhelmingly expansive, beautiful world through others.
when i got overly lost and felt isolated and confused about where my life was going during lockdown, i was so restless and struggled with sleep and accidentally found another community of people where we all just watched a stream of final fantasy games and commiserated and laughed and made the best of it together with a lovely combination of laughter and bad jokes and escapism. it's like we were all watching a long series of stories and sharing our own interpretations of each journey while also talking about our day to day lives et al--okay we mostly talked about food (marmite can go to hell), but it was all kind of beautiful.
that community will always be just as important to me. i've made friendships and met people i value as valid relationships as much as anyone i love and am blessed to see regularly. they were there for me when i was lost and struggling; the night my dad died, i called my friend erin that i'd met there, because i knew she knew the ununderstandable pain of losing a parent, and i didn't want to talk to anyone here who could show up in person as i needed to process on my own.
then so many people from that community--seriously, people i'd never really interacted much with but showed me kindness, friends i've now even met and had drinks with, friends i've sent presents to their newborn babies, man, all the way to the dude who made/makes the whole thing happen who somehow makes time to give me thoughtful advice and keeps me in line when i'm getting too cocky. i'm endlessly grateful for all y'all.
i'm also now so grateful for my work community. being in the veterinary field can be so incredibly fulfilling and brutally sad at the same time. my coworkers are both community and family. the things we go through day to day are so hard to try and share with others. we support others and each other and cry and make jokes the best we can when confronted with the worst and celebrate together when good things happen. my coworkers have taught me how to be strong and helpful and focused and capable, no matter what the day brings. also, we remind each other that even when we have to go through heartbreaking shit yet stay strong and comforting (i'm weirdly good at that part)--we also get to hold new puppies and celebrate the circle of life beginning again.
i have so much more to say, but i ramble too much as it is. i write a lot but usually just end up deleting it and sending it into the aether before anyone can find it. i'm just going to post this without editing because i have so much gratitude and i doubt anyone will see this anyway.
if you do and take anything from this, please let it be that opening up and letting people in and building a small community for yourself can truly help you to experience how wonderful this mess of a world is--and if you need a hand to help you feel it, i'm here and i see you and I'm listening. plus i'm an inimitable hype man who has your back.
