I made the decision today to leave my home of 6 years (postmarked 5/5/25). The house was no longer a safe space for my spirit and my practice. I fought hard for that place, for my neighbors, and for equity. The sad truth is, it did not fight back for me. I was as replaceable as the landscaping I was charged an additional $275 for due to its supposed negligence.
The place I once called home, now just a house, stands as a marker of a place that I lived during a highly transformational period of my life. It will forever be a placeholder as the catalyst for learning how to really love myself. It will forever remind me of what I no longer tolerate as acceptable forms of relationship. I will remember the heartbreak, the healing, and the every day living alongside people with entirely different belief systems than myself.
The move from this house has and continues to be a huge loss in my heart. I wonder where god wants me to go. I tried to do this once before — a hit and a miss with a partner and a lover to LA. It was a failed attempt for reasons somewhere between escapist, naive, and completely legitimate.
This house brought me a version of reality I never knew of before, even if uncertainty takes precedent in my awareness right now. The discovery of Criterion Collection — Agnes Varta and Cronenberg, Paris is Burning and The Murder of Fred Hampton. I dove into the worlds of Miyazaki as an antidote for world-building alternatives to Cop City while organizing around the forest.
I found Mary Oliver, bouldering, and non monogamy — or really it found me. I discovered the presence brought on by alcohol sobriety. I found the blissful practice of embodiment alongside an afternoon joint and the breeze from the windows overlooking Deb’s roof cats. I learned that I love living amongst community, land, and a timeline unkept by capitalist framework.
I know less than I did when I moved in. The world is unbelievably heavy; country so broken. Budgets dissipate every day for those of us who have something to say or an identity that proves too radical. It’s easy for my thinking mind, and thus my feeling body, to lead with fear and terror and rigidity. It’s easy to become absent.
Yet, I am present. I chose presence when I chose sobriety. I chose living when I found my dog. I chose myself when I decided to leave this house. Even if I don’t know where I’m headed long term, I know I must go.
This house, through the course of living here and leaving, taught me the sensations of courage and of discipline. I carry those modalities into a space more suited for this version of self — the closest version of self I’ve ever been. My time away will look, feel, and become very different than how it has in the past.
Last time I was away for several months I was 26 and my body had no idea the damage that 2020 and beyond would inflict on my nervous system. I was on a steady dose of beer and uppers, staying in hostels with somewhere between 4 and 12 strangers alongside a roommate from back home I knew for 6 months.
I found Rockaway and the rare delight of being in proximity to a car in NYC. I found some of the best Levi’s of my life in Paris. I fell in love with the Queer DIY art scene and community of canal boats in London. I found parks overrun by families until midnight, clubs with drug regulations to protects its inhabitants, and the jeans from Paris for my first Amyl and the Sniffers show in Berlin.
I’m reminded how resourceful I am and have become due to a lifetime of freelancing, of activism work, a commitment to the down-and-dirty work of communal care, and a genuine curiosity for all that I have yet to meet and understand.
It’s been less than 2 weeks since the last big push of moving took place. I lay the groundwork for the next 6 months. My landlord is still trying to pin extra penalties on me for an early move out. I continue to untether myself from the unprecedented harm of a system doing what it does best.
I’ve moved out and the only spaces I’ve moved into are a series of housesitting opportunities, a stent in NY, and exploring what it means to be rent-free for a couple of months so that I may make art on my own terms.
I applied to a bunch of residencies and didn’t get accepted into any of them. I’m reminded that I can make myself a residency anywhere I choose to go. A series of rejections may also translate as a series of openings somewhere more aligned. Who’s to say my path is fixed in one direction? I will follow the breadcrumbs of support as they come.
I dropped the keys off and said goodbye to the land that I toiled with for 4 years. It carries the remembrance of my grandmother’s hands who can no longer garden. It garners the relationship with neighbors who I will no longer see on my daily dog walks. It holds the memory of past relationship, of front porch nights in the summer, and of my bees that no longer live there.
Goodbye to everything I once knew.
Long Live Art!
Long Live People Over Profit!
Rent Strike Forever!
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