Content advisory: I briefly talk about losing a friend and quote Guillermo del Toro where he briefly talks about death. If this doesn’t feel safe to engage with, please feel free to read the summary to get some of the main nuggets of this post.

Summary for people who are busy with a variety of other things, including maintaining their sanity: Pittsburgh and Minneapolis are where I have felt most at home. When I have lived pretty much anywhere else, it usually felt like a fight for survival. While I have learned how to survive in a variety of places, my favorite parts of my life so far have been with my safe people in safe places.

In recent weeks, I have continued to find vulnerability to be particularly terrifying and painful, even in the good moments. The vulnerability in the unknown has felt just a bit too intimidating as of late for me to comfortably make space for it without some strong boundaries. Interestingly, this has allowed for opportunities to reflect on what I have already experienced.

I moved to Minnesota a little over a year and a half ago because my intuition led me here. There wasn’t a magical job (yet!), family (yet!!), or anything super solid to go on other than the kind invitation of my friends. As I continue to settle in and make this place my home, I have been thinking a lot about “place” and how where I have been has impacted me over the years.

Photograph of the author’s cats excitedly awaiting his return home after a long day. They are curiously peering through a window, their little ears perky and excited. I would love this photograph to turn into art at some point.

Growing up in high-achieving environments in cities with seemingly infinite opportunities, I always felt pressure to be in a constant state of growth and pushing myself, whether it was athletics, martial arts, music lessons, Latin, medicine, college visits, museum visits, shopping trips, theatre shows, concerts, and new restaurants with food from all over the world, there was always something interesting to do. I am grateful for these opportunities because I was able to learn so many things about people’s ways of being, traditions, and culture, along with learning about what I liked and needed in my life.

This was especially true when I got to live in Pittsburgh, PA for a fair and formative chunk of my childhood. We lived in the COOLEST house. It is now over a hundred years old and a beautiful and kind family lives there now, which is bittersweet, as I occasionally dream of going back and buying that house. But from what I have heard, they are incredibly happy and their family is flourishing, and so I am glad they have their home.

Letting go of the past is something that has always been hard for me. Moving from Pittsburgh to upstate New York is something that I consider one of the greatest losses of my young life. We went from living in a beautiful old stain-glassed, wood-worked, stucco house to a….colonial. In it was one of the ugliest carpets (easily top five) I have ever seen in a house, not to mention an obnoxious amount of wallpaper.

Aside from the major aesthetic downgrade, moving from a major city to a smaller rust-belt town that didn’t recover as well was sad for a variety of reasons. My favorite restaurants, neighborhood walks, museums, and beloved zoo were replaced by manicured parks, still plenty of good restaurants (thank GOD), smaller and less impactful museums, and a much sadder and uglier zoo.

Living in upstate New York was always a battle for me. It always felt like I was trapped there and was fighting for survival. Many of my saddest memories happened in or around that colonial, from being hit with devastating news about the loss of a close friend to weathering horrible treatment at school, I can’t help but wonder sometimes if the whole thing was a net negative.

But then I remember my best friend Kelly. Despite the ridiculous and horrific ups and downs of elementary, middle, and high school, she was there. She stuck to me like a fungus. She has always been wild in a way that I deeply admired, but when I was struggling with my own insecurity she scared the SHIT out of me. When I was younger I never quite knew what to do with her, but she knew exactly what to do with me. She stayed. She made incredible jokes, never ceased her theatrics, always said what needed to be said whether I liked it or not. It took me far longer than I would like to admit to more fully realize how lucky I am to have her. Kelly, you are easily the best thing that happened to me in upstate New York, and despite all of the other awful things that happened there, I am infinitely grateful for you.

The range of surviving some of the worst things I have ever encountered to gaining one of my most precious people is sometimes dizzying. I am still mucking and sorting through the complex mess that living in Upstate was for me.

And, as I gain more life experience (in my vast 30 years, I know), sometimes trying to make sense of something is an unhelpful angle. Sometimes just from sitting, observing, or setting aside something and letting it exist, is all we are meant to do, and the importance, meaning, or something else we are supposed to get from it doesn’t emerge until later, if it needs to emerge at all.

Photograph of a squirrel taking a midday nap on a tree branch. They caught me during my lunch break and I took the cue from them that maybe where I was sitting was enough for that moment. They were right and they helped me settle.

I didn’t get to pick where I wanted to live until I came out in 2023. When I was younger I was living with my parents, and when I was a bit older I moved with my ex wherever it made the most sense for “us” to be, and while he claimed that was a co-operative decision, it never really felt like one because I felt like I was following him around hoping I would get a shot at my dreams at some point (gotta love cis-heteronormativity). Even that, as sad as it sounds, was a space in which I learned many things. I often felt like an observer, not an actor or a chooser, and even in the role of observer, I was still taking notes.

Photograph of a sign that says “the world’s okayest ex-husband.” I didn’t end up sending it to him because I didn’t want to, and then on further reflection realized I also just might be his world’s okayest ex-husband, and this made me chortle. But it’s my blog post so I get to tell my story, and I don’t need to worry about his.

I learned how many different ways there are to be unhappy. You can be unhappy in a school, friendship, marriage, job, career track, or even in an orchestra. Maybe there will be moments, glimmers of what you need, but there may also just be the vast expanse of someone else’s dreams and desires in which you are swimming in the middle of, trying not to drown.

After meeting people that truly helped me find myself in North Carolina, I finally realized the extent I had been trying to survive in someone else’s dream. I had tried the things that people told me would make me happy: going to school, getting married, buying a house, finding a stable job. For one year, I had all of those things. For one year, I had the level of stability I was told would finally make me feel at home. And I hated it. I loved my friends, the weather, the food, and the liveliness of NC, but something still felt very wrong. Until I came out and suddenly it all came together.

I think about the following quote by Guillermo del Toro quite a bit.

"I think the sublime confusion is from nineteen to twenty-nine. You think you are late for everything, you're a has been, nothing is happening, there's no opportunity for you, the world is closed, everything is a disaster, you wanna die. And then you're thirty. "

"You young people are in the exact age of desperation. I never felt more done and old than in my twenties. I'd say 'life has passed me and I did nothing.' But I'm here to tell you that's not true: you have a lot of fucking time."

- Guillermo del Toro

For a long time this quote resonated and I felt that was the truth for me. I was desperate and sad and frustrated and confused and often felt unsettled except for a few key moments when at least something made sense.

And, even amidst all of the pain and living in places that didn’t feel right most of the time, I remember moments that I did get to feel at home. I remember hours of practicing cello and finally feeling relaxed, meditative, and somewhat satisfied. I remember feeding ducks by the Erie Canal. I remember goofy hangouts with Kelly. I remember rehearsals and adventures with my friend Eric, who, through the cruelest twists of fate, is no longer with us. And I remember those in-between moments when no one was demanding I achieve something and nothing was exhausting me that I was actually pretty damn happy.

Do I know what to do with the crazy range and countless dichotomies of my experience? Fuck no. But maybe I don’t need to. They simply exist, and so do I. And as I am existing, I will continue to sip tea, cuddle with cats, and build a life that actually feels good for me.

Photograph of the author’s favorite ceramic mug (it has a stegosaurus on it that you can see at other angles) with a beautiful tea steeper adorned on the end of the chain with beautiful green beads in the shape of the hook and a hobbit door. The hobbit door is silver and green and actually opens! It was a gift from someone who is inviting me home.

If you feel like reflecting: what are your in-between moments that are worth living for? What gets in the way of those moments? How can you unashamedly claim more of them?