The Grass Is Greener on the Other Side Until It's Not
Content warning: Frank discussion of emotions, subtle classism, weird dreams.
After an unusually stressful day at one of my jobs yesterday, I came home a bit frazzled. Having almost zero energy and needing to decompress, I watched a Dr K interview with Primeagen, while doing some lazy yoga-like stretches, and vaguely remember somewhere in the video about dreams being mentioned as the gateway to the subconscious and showing us our fears. (It happens somewhere around 3 hours and a half in. There was also another video I started to watch but got too tired halfway through.) At that point I was getting ready for bed, thinking that it's been a while since I had a crazy dream, and "oh my gosh, it's late, why am I up this late - I thought I wanted to be a day person..."
I slept. Then it happened. I had a crazy dream/nightmare that was somewhat semi-vivid. It got unnerving towards the end, to a point where I jolted awake: I moved to Minneapolis, but it looked almost nothing like Minneapolis, and it was probably of combination of places I saw on TV that looked nice. What I vaguely remember from that dream is that I tried to move there, hoping for a better cost of living and less pollution, but when I finally found a place to rent in, it wasn't what I'd hope for and my neighbors were living in worse poverty than the previous place I lived at. That's when I jolted myself awake. Went to the bathroom, felt unrested, and slept again for a bit, waking up later than intended.
Then I started reading "I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" by Madeline Pendleton, later in the day. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm about 75 pages in and it's a fantastic read so far... There's a part where she goes into a tattoo shop where a person who works there gets confused as to why she wants a Fresno tattoo.
"I grew up here thinking it was the worst place on earth. Now, what I'm realizing is that every place is awful in its own little way. At least here, it's all on the surface so you know what you're getting. It's honest, and there's integrity in honesty. Ink it."
I didn't immediately get emotional over it, but it kind of got stuck inside my head. I checked the mailbox, which is a bit of a walk from my unit, quietly cursed the humid summer air discreetly in my head, and then took a shower when I got back. I ugly cried when taking a shower.
There are two beautiful places as a grown millennial adult to ugly-cry in without someone looking over your shoulder wondering if you're okay - maybe you just need to cry in peace, discreetly:
- The shower/bathtub. The supposed, overly-regulated shower-head that is not powerful enough to create enough water pressure according to the current administration in the oval office (seriously, what, how), but is somehow powerful enough to drown out my sobs.
- Walk-in coolers. The frosty air and aluminum cans seem to dull out the sound pretty well.
It's weird what a place does to your perception, and how your perception can influence a place. A couple of years ago, I wanted to move away from a town that I wanted nothing to do with anymore, but still living in the same DFW metroplex so it wouldn't completely feel alien to what I've gotten used to. Things got better and worse in a way, and I've wondered about relocating again but unsure if that would actually make anything easier. Nothing is 100% safer, easier, or guaranteed to induce happiness, and I have to accept that, even if there's a pull to drift somewhere. It was easy for my parents to look at America as a place of opportunity and it's easy for me to look at it as a place of hideously high healthcare costs on top of increasing cost of living, with people who increasingly have anger issues that feel almost contagious... But it's also a place where I can buy tacos and tamales when I don't feel like cooking at home, so it's not all misery and doom here.