A fork in the road.
Where I talk about class, homelessness, letting go of shit (in more ways than one), fear, embracing change, and tackling Mount Everest. This could be much longer and more involved than it is, but for the sake of brevity right now, I’m really just skimming the surface.
The uncertainty over my future employment when I move to NYC is just as interesting as it is alarming to me. It is forcing me to re-examine some of my fears, and re-evaluate certain things.
As of right now, I don’t have a guaranteed job in NYC in August. I have one or two prospects, but nothing set in stone yet. I feel a little like this move is the high-wire act at the circus and that, frankly, is terrifying.
You see, my family struggled on and off with homelessness (sometimes by choice, sometimes not) when I was a little kid. We finally moved into a house when I was 8 years old, thanks to the government — and between that and selling art, we managed to establish a relatively nice lower-middle-class existence. My childhood was very much “feast or famine,” as my mom would put it.
When I first moved to California, I was essentially homeless. I had amazing friends who let me sleep on a futon in their living room for months on end, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go if not for that. I had a bike I picked up for cheap, I would use my friend’s car on occasion, I walked, and sometimes when I could afford it (thanks to school money), I took the bus. I ate a lot of ramen and other cheap food, and paid a couple of hundred bucks towards rent when I could.
I’ve now established a very nice middle-class existence for myself over the last 5 years and I’ll admit it — I’m scared of losing that. But it’s not even losing that middle-class existence, so much as I’m scared that losing it will mean I lose this opportunity to go to school. If I can’t do it on my own, then I can’t do it.
There are a lot of what if’s, and in all likelihood things will work out. I’ll be able to support myself and I’ll find a way to afford school. But it’s hard to face those what if’s when you’ve already experienced them first-hand. And it’s weird to believe in a system, but not trust it to work for you because as often as you see it working, you still see it breaking down and you don’t want to be the person that falls through the cracks.
I’ve been letting go of a lot of stuff that I’ve collected over the past few years. Stuff I thought I needed, but now have realized I don’t. Stuff that used to comfort me, but for some reason, now it just weighs me down. But it’s not just physical stuff either — books and DVDs and t-shirts and stuff — it’s also emotional.
That fear of instability and uncertainty and the unknown is completely natural — though those things are also most familiar to me. It’s that strange dichotomy I find myself wrestling with these days, now that according to established society, I have stability in my life. And despite my best efforts to pretend I wasn’t carrying around all this extra baggage with me, I’m finally starting to realize how heavy my pack is, and that maybe I need to leave some of it behind.
The one truth in life that I keep coming back to is that change is not only inevitable, it is the only constant. You will never be the person you were yesterday, and the person you are tomorrow will never be the person you are today. But as humans, we can be incredibly resistant to this. Even those of us who swear they thrive on change and embrace it — there are still always mountains we won’t consider scaling.
These are our own personal Mount Everests. We don’t necessarily need to tackle them — we can live life happily without making the attempt, sometimes — but what might we gain if we do? I wanted a change. I wanted something big and bold and drastic to happen. Maybe it’s not quite what I expected or planned, but maybe it’s what I need.
And more importantly — if I don’t do this, where does that leave me? In a job that has the illusion of security, doing something I don’t really believe in at the end of the day? Or do I strike out on a trail unknown, a trail that might be dangerous, but could be amazing and lead somewhere else entirely?
To quote Kerouac: “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”
