Where Do We Go From Here?

The sky is overcast and the general bleariness so familiar to Ohio sets the mood. Brandon and I have packed the car with trash we’ve accumulated over the past five years living together and we can’t for the lives of us figure out what to do with it. Where does one abandon the things they no longer want from a life they no longer have?

For a while now we have been standing in between two worlds. On one side, there was the life we had built in Wooster and the other, a life we were leaning towards in Cleveland. One expressed our development and served us in the ways we needed at the time. On the other was the future, which felt so bright.

It’s obvious at this point that we’re in a time of transition. Neither one of us knows where we’re going to be or who we might become but we’re leaning into this nebulous unknown with the understanding that it’s time for us to move forward with our lives and become who we were meant to be.

So we’re driving through Wooster with a car full of trash trying to figure out where to dispense of it. We pass through The College of Wooster, which was so important for our formative years and was so comfortable and safe that we never left. We see Brandon’s old apartment building. There used to be a building next to it that was owned by the same landlord and was burned down years ago for some strange unknown reason. My old apartment emerges soon after and we toss some of the trash in the dumpsters outside and I can’t believe it was ever acceptable that we lived in either place. It’s funny how your priorities change. At the time I was keenly aware of how miserable it felt to walk to Save-A-Lot to buy my groceries but I was thrilled to have a place of my own, which would allow me to fully own my autonomy.

We have come so far. Tossing out trash is like shedding a second skin, freeing yourself of what you had built for yourself to transform into how the hell do I know? I was so scared before to express myself and I’ve grown past the things I saw as barriers. I’ve decided to own my strength and own the person that I’m going to be. So much of my twenties I spent with my head down trying to do the things I was told to do by people that built a world for me that I didn’t want. I was so young and naive and stupid and I allowed people to take advantage of me, take away my confidence, and treat me poorly because I worked at the bottom of a hierarchy and didn’t know how to advocate for myself. I will never forget how small people made me feel or how they treated me differently after my perceived status had improved. For those who care about wealth and privilege and use it to lord their status over others: make a better effort in how you treat people because you never know where they might end up in life.

I’m not that quiet person anymore. I’ve decided I’m going to embrace who I’m supposed to be. You get so distracted with work, school, and the things happening in your life that you completely forget the point of what you were meaning to do in the first place. I’ve decided to own my power and embrace the freedom of choice and rid those things in my life that don’t make me feel good about myself. Now’s the time to set boundaries and lean in and step up and speak out. I’m going to make people uncomfortable and that’s okay. Do we want to live our lives with the default setting on, acknowledging the systems that exist are shitty and promote poor behavior or do we want to try and create something better, no matter how challenging that is or how impossible it might seem?

I don’t want to sit by and allow the world to move around me. I’ve decided to pick my head up and find ways to make life better, one small incremental step at a time. I want to feel rooted; deeply connected and embraced by those around me as if we were the same force. Evolving, learning, changing, and transforming.

So, where do we go from here?