So here I am, sick with the flu. I keep telling Alexis that I’m going stir-crazy because I’ve been stuck in the house for the past few days while she’s been at work. I have absolutely no energy and so I’ve been on the couch or in bed catching up on all of the television shows I never watch. I don’t really know what it is but sitting through endless commercial breaks and advertisements for birth control never really interested me. Why can’t they just play the show through..I mean, we pay for the service and the box and the maintenance… you’d think they didn’t need all the money from advertisers. Anyways.
Lately there’s been a lot of talk between the two of us about our current living situation. We lease a townhouse in Virginia Beach and both go to school and work in the general area to where we live. It’s not that we’re not financially sound, and it’s not because we hate our schools or jobs or any of that really. I’ve just been thinking about when we met and how we were and where we’re at now. The situation is different. When we met neither of us had a job and I ran my small Etsy shop from school which I restocked whenever I got back to North Carolina to use my grandmother’s sewing machine. Alexis lived with two roommates in a condo in Norfolk and I was living in a dorm. Let’s just say, livin’ was easy.
Almost a year and a half later and here we are in this home of our own, having hopped from place to place with countless unfit roommates until landing ourselves in a one year lease at the place we now call home. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with our home. There is nothing wrong at all. The more important factor isn’t so much what is wrong but what is not right. It’s not right that Lex has to work her butt of to make sure that we’re okay because with going to school fulltime I can’t handle working more than 20 hours a week. It’s not right that we have absolutely no time for friends and in turn have had to brush off any and all pleas for social contact or parties, etc. It’s not right that most of the time we’re so stressed out, all of our creative energy dissolves or has to be used to clean or go pay a bill or spend time with each other. It’s not right that we have chosen to live above our means and give ourselves everything we want.
I don’t think we need to sell every possession we have and live out of a van travelling the world (though I did pose it as a potential option to Lex during one of our conversations). I just think that consumerism is bullshit and no wonder I don’t watch television because it’s all filled with ‘Buy, buy, buy!’ and ‘This is exactly what you need.’ I want to live life and feel that I’ve done something good. I want to help people. I want to change lives. I want to die not with people knowing my name and going on and on about how wonderful I am but rather feeling as though they witnessed a transformation of some sorts and knowing deep in their soul that they are a better person for knowing me and being part of something meaningful. I know that probably sounds ridiculous to even begin to imagine I could be any sort of person people would envy others for knowing, but I know that I have a good heart. I also have an insatiable drive to succeed and a need for something bigger than myself to stand for.
I feel like my dreams are too big for Virginia.
On a normal day I might brush the feeling aside and convince myself that everything is fine and everything will work out eventually. But I have very limited patience and do not want to wait for ‘eventually.’ I want to walk out my front door and be so flooded with color and sunshine that I laugh to myself and walk on. I need to feel a breeze blow scents of life under my nose and caress my cheeks as to laugh along with me. I want a community of people who give a damn about something other than themselves and friends who show up at my door when I refuse to let the sunlight in and want to spend the day creating. I want to go somewhere that I can wake up and be excited about exploring and living and working. I need a break from the norm. Maybe I just need to wake up in Wonderland.
And this is not just about me, though I am the one writing this post and feeling these things very deeply so I may divert a bit (or a lot…). At the beginning of our relationship, Lex and I were able to spend hours sitting in our sunny condo making t-shirt yarn and crocheting upcycled scarves and creating whatever we imagined. I was working for the theatre department at my school and we had a borrowed sewing machine that was definitely much-loved. We would spend nights up late with coffee (or margaritas!) cutting out stencils and drowning in our newfound love for xacto knives and the faint tearing sound of poster paper. Everything was simple. When a bill needed to be paid, somehow we paid it. When food needed to be bought, somehow we did it. Never once did we worry about where our next nickel was coming from or how we were going to afford that 60 inch television or that $28 new scarf from H&M. We didn’t care.
So caught up in a life that wasn’t about us, but rather the environment and the arts and of course- love. I feel like when we met, Alexis was free. She really cared about being creative and didn’t so much care about things. She worried on the inside from time to time but mainly remained happy and unstressed. She wrote things down that she felt. She took interest in things beyond herself and I’d come up the stairs to find her crocheting me a rug from recycled plastic bags or eager to tell me about some new method of stenciling she found on the internet that was sure to be simpler. And most importantly, when she looked at me I felt like she had all that she needed.
Times have most certainly changed. Now, when she looks at me she is tired. She is fed up with bullshit from her coworkers and not being appreciated for all of her hard work. She wants to stay up late and make things but she doesn’t have the energy. And I think that it is partly because of me. I could work more but I don’t. I could complain less and get a different job and spend more time cooking her dinner and providing rather than being provided for. My whole life I have had to take care of myself- down to every last detail, and she is the first woman to tell me, ‘No, sit down, let me do it.’ She is an angel and I am the most blessed person I know for having found her so young. Do I wish I found her even sooner? Of course! But not because I wouldn’t have wanted to go through all of the pain I did- because I wish that she hadn’t had to go through it.
And that brings me back to Virginia. I’m from Massachusetts. I’ve lived in MA, PA, NH, NC, SC and CA. I have been more states in the US than most and I’m a sucker for Canada. I was lucky to have a grandmother who toted me around to different places and submerged me in cultures different than my own so I would be a better, more understanding person. I know that there is more out there. Lex, on the other hand, has not been too many places outside of VA- and never to the West Coast. She is afraid that there is nothing out there for her and that if we move I will find what I’m looking for and leave her still searching. I believe strongly in the exact opposite. I think that we need to get away. We need to move somewhere that we can walk down the street holding hands and instead of being approached by ignorant fucks who don’t ‘understand’ we’re approached by another gay couple who want to know if we can hang out later. We need coffee shops with board games and open mic nights; gay bars and clubs that are actually filled with LGBT kids, not dudes who are hoping to see some chicks make out; vegan restaurants and sweet underground shows. We need a city with life.
It’s absolutely depressing for me to see her in pain and not knowing where she belongs. We’ve decided to pick a few places and go visit to see what they’re like and hopefully something clicks. I just want to be somewhere that both of us can find fulfillment. I want to be somewhere that we can be a part of something meaningful and potentially start a movement for something that brings peace. We care about animals. We care about homelessness. We care about the crap that the media is brainwashing all of our little sisters and brother with every single day. And we want change.
How to even begin to imagine what we want to do with our lives or what exactly we want to change is a subject for another post. I just know that the scenery here is getting old quick and it seems like we meet feels like life is meaningless. You’re born, you go to school, you graduate, you go to a good college so you can get a good job so you can live a ‘good’ life and buy whatever your heart desires to keep up with the jones’ who don’t even know who you are nor do they care or even want to be bothered by that sort of thing. Life is not about pleasing others- it is about pleasing the only person that matters, yourself. If you happen to be lucky enough to find someone who wants the same things and can dedicate their life to pursuing that same thing by your side then go for it. If you don’t then take care of number one. It’s more often than not that I hear people who are so caught up in the fact that they are in this world ‘alone’ say that life is meaningless and boring and non-important. Well, let me tell you something, Mr. or Ms. Alone- life IS what you make it and it doesn’t matter whether you have one person who believes in you or 1 million. It matters that you believe in yourself and can recognize when someone else is believing in you too.
I don’t know for sure whether or not we will find what we are looking for in Virginia if we stay. And I certainly don’t know for sure whether or not we’ll find it if we go. But we are 20 and 21 and life is long ahead of us and we won’t know unless we try. Permanency can wait until we are ready to plant our roots deep and swing from the bows of our sturdy trees. For now, I just think we need to float like leaves through the wind and land where we find fit.
We need to float on.
