Finding Myself in ... Michigan

        Funny how time runs out long and slow in front of us, but then when looked back upon, it scrunches together and overlaps in short layers of memory. My time in Michigan spent with my family stretched out for a very long six weeks. The weekends were punctuated by ragers with my brother, where we would microdose ecstasy, shrooms, acid, marijuana, cocaine, and then drown it all in gallons of Redbull for 3 day bangers in which we slept for 1 to 2 hours a night. On Sunday we would float on our backs in his pool, strung out but still too wired to sleep. Our eyes focused hazily into the distance and a hard-cider in hand. We were clever and never drank too much, and stayed hydrated through it all so that by the time Monday came around, he was able to go back to work and I could sleep a solid 9 hours and wake up in my mother’s empty house to binge-eat on the couch while watching old episodes of Mom (a comedy-sitcom about alcohol and drug addiction) and wonder if I was making the right choices at 32 years of age. The answer was always yes, of course, for I never intended to make it a permanent routine. But on Tuesday, when I would leave a morning yoga class and sit in a coffee shop in Royal Oak - begging my mind to come up with something creative to put down on the page, or swapping back and forth between flight plans to Mexico, or LA, or here or there - I was overcome with how slowly time moved if you weren’t filling it with things to keep you active or entertained. 

Oh, what a sad place Michigan is; for me, at least. Everyone else seems to be doing just fine, but it is a peculiar place. Most of my family is hard to face and be with for extended periods of time, but I still feel guilty when I spend more time with others. So I spread myself thin and end up miserable in the end anyhow. Clearly, Michigan is not exempt from my anxieties and shortcomings, nor should it be, as it's where they were born and raised. Being back home usually dumps a plethora of predisposed problems onto most people's laps. I wish I could say where my problems come from. My childhood was relatively easy, compared to most. It actually went somewhat in reverse: eased into a loving family who raised me openly and freely, tossing me from one accepting family member to the next, weekend by weekend. And then as I aged into my teen years and early adulthood, shit started to hit the fan and the blinders came off. My family, like almost everyone else’s, is fucked. This is something that flares upon my return and then is pressed to my palms as I hold my hands up in defense. I wake in the morning with blisters on my fingers, showing the damage that has been done. The heat slithers off the sores and reminds me that I am here. I am a Michigander. But instead of sitting in my family's homes and sinking further into the couch and childhood-based depression, I choose to take a night out in the gayest places I could find. Which is harder than you would think. But I found myself in Ferndale and Royal Oak, on a slow, rainy, Thursday, hoping to do something other than being lonely, and in the meantime, I couldn’t help but fall head-first into the melancholy that surrounded me on the visit. Yet eventually, I was looking forward to the coming weekend, plans of raging through the night with my brother and his friends. 

Other than the reminder of my past, those weekends with my brother are what will stick with me. While I’ve never been estranged from my younger sibling - like I have from my older brother whom I haven’t seen in 15 years - we never had quite the connection we did as children. Four years apart in age is just the right number to make things grow distant between two siblings, once you hit the age of 18-21. By the time he was coming into young adulthood, I was already gone and living in NYC, rebelling from my Goody Two-Shoes adolescence and making 3 years of my life flash by in a drunken blur. Trips back home and a few family vacations here and there always kept our bond tethered, but never strong. It wasn’t until this past December of 2020, when I followed along on his annual trip to Mexico, that we took our relationship to another level entirely. And now, after the near 2 months we spent rolling from one live music event to another - many of which included his own band playing - and spending god knows how many hours in the car with him and his girlfriend - who deserves her own entry into this journey of Michigan, as we may have connected harder than anyone else in the last 10 years of my friendships - and exploring the hidden gems that Detroit has polished and exposed to the community, I can confidently say that the time visiting my home town was well worth the trip, because of the connection I strengthened with that man whom I share blood with.