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Hi, hello.
I’m gonna throw a trigger warning in here. I’m going to be talking about intense mental health shit, eating disorders, and polarizing pandemic opinions. I should like to think that you know going into this that shit’s bout to get vulny regardless but you know, read at your own risk.
I’ve been getting a lot of confusion when I tell people who once knew me that I’m living in Iowa now. Hell, I get a lot of confusion from Iowans wondering why I would come here from Los Angeles.
I get it. I moved to LA when I was 17, lived in New York for a couple years, and went back to LA. For 13 years I gave off Echo Park vibes but on a shoestring budget, constatly limiting myself. I loved “being cool” or a hipster or whatever in a big city, it was a large part of my identity. It’s a big change from that to… moving to the Midwest without knowing anyone, no job, and no partner to bring me here. Lol, yeah, that’s a big change.
I’ve had this newsletter drafted for about two months now, seems to directly correlate to the beginning of some inconsistency in our regularly scheduled programming. Truth is, I needed the space.
I understand where I’m at now. This particular newsletter has taken many forms since its first draft. It’s gone from completely shut down and inaccessible to a dry, clinical timeline to an over-explanation of my decision. Neither were for me, all of it was for you…or the fear of what you will think, rather.
What the space has shown me is that I do, in fact, have a huge desire to tell this story. I sometimes talk about how I’m in a 12-step program. Right now I’m on the amends step, I’ve been taking my apology tour on the road haha! I see so clearly how harmful it is for me to hide myself from others. How isolation isolates both me and everyone else and we’re all just looking to connect. How when I minimize my feelings, I end up minimizing the person I’m feeling those feelings toward in the process, and how truly disrespectful that is. How underestimating those who love me in this way can be one of the worst things I can do.
So in the spirit of amends and not hiding I’m going to tell you what factors led to me making the decision to rewrite my entire life and actually find the courage to embrace what I’ve always wanted. This life I have here in Des Moines, today.
I was a girl who grew up in a small-ish town, it’s a full-blown city now, in Pennsylvania. I never felt like I fit in, like I’m sure you felt as well where you’re from. I thought that all there was for me was being in a big city, I thought that was where I would, finally, shine.
It took me 13 years, homelessness, debt, failed interpersonal relationships, failed businesses, immense shame, a pandemic, losing my job 3 times, my mom’s breast cancer, and deciding to remain unvaccinated to lead me here.
I’m shaking as I write this, a physical reminder that my body is still catching up to who I am now.
There are some stand-out moments that happened that really shaped this decision for me.
Firstly, I didn’t like or agree with pretty much anything that happened societally during the pandemic. This is the first thing I must no longer hide, no explanation is necessary.
In the middle, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and I drove home to help her through her recovery. I got the opportunity to connect with my hometown on my terms. It reminded me why I loved growing up there, outside of high school and family dynamics. I loved the feeling of being in a smaller town.
I gave myself the opportunity to drive cross country and explore what our country has to offer after my mom was good. This is when I visited Des Moines for the first time. I remember sitting in my car with my cat, parked downtown across the street from PappaJohn Sculpture Park, thinking “I could really be myself here and really, truly, be successful in the way I’ve always wanted.” I called my brother and told him that, along with the realization of “Wtf, I’m a small fish in a massive pond in LA with a bunch of other small fishes…I need a smaller pond so I can grow bigger.”
The reason why I stopped here was that there’s an installation by Andy Goldsworthy at Art Center. Andy Goldsworthy’s work is what inspired me to be an installation artist. Lol I discovered his work on one of those random website generators that were popular in like 2008. I forget what the site was called, shit. Anyway, his work is very cool and the only piece located in the U.S. that was on my route was in Des Moines. Before that, I just kind of felt this pull here, hard to explain. I only stayed for 2 or 3 days and continued on my merry way.
Going back to Los Angeles after this experience felt like I was in an alternate reality. The city existed in a state of fear that I simply did not resonate with. It was a daily battle for me to emotionally live under those conditions. I went on anxiety medication to cope and ended up gaining 80 pounds that have proven to be far more problematic to my mental health than the anxiety itself.
It wasn’t all for naught though, I highly reccommend medication to understand who you are without anxiety or depression. I recommend it when used as a tool to learn how to get back to zero without the medication.
It is also worth noting that I was learning about my anxiety disorder in cohort with an eating disorder. Both are aflictions that I deal with daily and for years prior to this had ruled my life completely. A significant part of my days were about how little food I could eat bc I was anxious while the sun was out and how much food I could binge and expell in the evenings. Ooo, rough to say.
Lol speaking of medication, it was at this time where I knew I was going to continue to remain unvaccinated. Sounds a bit contradictory but I don’t need to explain my reasoning. It was the best option for me if I wanted to live a life of integrity, which I am very dedicated to.
I had this really dope job making the most I’ve ever made and also doing something that was just the right amount of challenging. You can check out that work on my website. I thought things were looking up.
Unfortunately with how society and media were trending at the time, I lost that job with one swift mandate. I was told I was a threat to others.
Greatest fear unlocked!
I felt(and still do!) extremely betrayed. I had all the paperwork necessary for continuing to remain employed and my ability to earn was completely taken away. It sucked, it’s confusing, and I still don’t understand how that happened.
I went into debt. I couldn’t freelance anymore either. The day after the mandate I was turned away at the door to a venue, a “safe space” sign in the window. It also was hard seeing friends of mine say very polarizing shit about people who made a similar decision to me. That time was all around yucky.
I guess…A part of me enjoyed the punishment I put myself through by doing this move in this way(alone) and that’s something I didn’t even know until typing this. A part of me loved, yearned for, and created a reality where I had to prove I was the monster I always felt I had been. I’m coming out of hiding for her, for that part of me. Lol okay cool. Good to know.
So that means I no longer have to scratch this itch. I no longer need to focus attention on any of this. I don’t deserve it. I don’t need to add fuel to the fire. Okay what now, what now.
But yeah, that’s what LA was like for me at the end there.
While all this was happening I just kept on thinking of Des Moines. It didn’t make any damn sense to me, either. All I knew at the moment was I needed to really go all in on myself, and moving to Des Moines felt like the hardest but ultimately the easiest way to do it. I’m glad my instincts are proving to be right, so far.
It’s no secret to me how I isolate. Now, it’s more like building a new habit where I’m slowly, carefully, lovingly choosing to integrate into society in Des Moines. All of that aforementioned shit (as well as the traumatic situations that immediately resulted from that), really took a lot of time, care, and attention to get space from. So that I could see reality. I’m in reality right now, in this moment.
I’m grateful to be on this side of things. Grateful that I have a far more solid foundation here than I ever have had in any of the 22 places I’ve lived in my life. I’m happy that this is a place I want to stay in. My instincts chose right. I just need to carry it home.
I had a friend offer to drive me to the airport a couple weeks ago. It was the first time that’s happened to me in my life. Like. No one is ever offering to go to LAX, lol ever. What a small life to live. Where a loved one dreads seeing you simply because of the location, a gesture of love lost in traffic.
My life here in Des Moines, how I’m living it, is my amendment to an entire identity I didn’t know wasn’t working for me. Fields of Opportunities, that is truly how I see Iowa. I can really do this.
All I knew was that I needed to take a step forward and this place just happened to be one. So there’s no crazy opportunity that brought me here, but really me jumping out of the burning building of the life I had created.
There are some things that I did take with me before the drop, I’ll get into that next week. As always, thanks for processing with me dear reader. Our weird little internet connection works wonders for me, I hope it does for you too.
Thank you, you mean more to me than you know.
-Alex
I have another Self Trust Workshop on the books! I’d love to see you there!