April 26, 2025

(new post - photos, misc) in search of home: goodbye, southwest

(view on my blog site)

hi, everyone - i'm writing on here from michigan for the very first time. i've been busy adjusting and getting used to what life is gonna be like here; only now am i really slowing down enough to process the changes themselves and contextualize my life in arizona, now that it's a finalized story i have the agency to dissect and diagnose its pieces and no longer a continuing narrative that i'm pushed over by, like a tide.

i really loved taking pictures of the skies here. i grew up in the rocky mountains up north, which are incredible in their own right and will always be my anchor, but over there, you don't really get these powerful cloud formations and stunning gradients that loom over the exposed ground in this part of the world.

i've found some non-residents to arizona have either a very idyllic or very pessimistic view of the desert, here. people who mostly know it as a "snowbird" nest, for example, where a portion of the real estate is taken by well-off northerners who buy vacation homes to migrate to during the winter months - they say that it's beautiful, and the weather is perfect. a few michiganders have marveled at my girlfriend when she says that we just moved from there, saying "you gave up arizona? for This?". maybe they're mostly remembering visits to the grand canyon, or antelope canyon, or sedona and the red rocks, or horseshoe bend or tonto natural bridge or flagstaff. they remember the miracle of going outside in the middle of january without an ounce of snow or ice in sight, without needing a clunky jacket or a toque.

my favourite parts of living in arizona were, honestly, when the weather was "awful". even when i lived in neighbourhoods that were prone to flash-flooding, it says something that most of my non-kitty camera roll from my years there are of the skies, particularly whenever a storm was in sight. i don't know how to say to people who envy arizona (winter) weather that i really came to hate it. the near-constant sun and bright blue skies started to feel oppressive. a sort of icky feeling rose from my gut when i would see bright sunshine that i've still carried with me to michigan. i doubt i'll get a taste for it again anytime soon. when i smelled the rain and lightning licked the heavens and thunder crashed so close i thought i might die - i felt absolutely liberated.

another portion of people, though, have very cruel things to say about arizona and the southwest in general, whether to me or as-heard through the grapevine: that it's a "dusty shithole", or just a "big ditch". they see the lack of green (even though there's still a good amount of it, perhaps more than there should be) and somehow think that means void of life or beauty - and yes, the breath-taking tourist-y spots are obvious counterpoints - but are brown craggy mountains, stretched as far as the eye can see on the way to las vegas, not utterly humbling? are the shrubs and the palo verdes and the cacti and the lizards not fascinating, so different from the life i'm used to back home? are the clouds not awe-inspiring to behold?

just as i defend myself against a rose-tinted lens that some tourists have of arizona, i also feel compelled to not abandon it to, i guess, "green is good" dogmatists - people who see nothing of value in the desert or its communities, including and especially native nations like o'odham, pee posh, navajo, hopi, taos, apache... who have made home in these "shithole" lands for generations upon generations. i've had it out with other progressives who make blase comments about the southwest just being doomed to climate change. don't get me wrong - i missed the cold! holy shit, i'm so excited to feel the bite of below-zero air on my nose again! but that's a me thing, right? the reason it didn't work out for me is because i was a fish out of water. what do i get out of writing off an entire region based on my trauma and dislike of the heat? not everywhere needs to be, or even should be like, western washington. and tons of people even love that about the phoenix valley. i once had an uber driver who told me about how he had to move to the desert for medical reasons; he was very prone to lung infections while living on the coast, and his doctor told him he could die if he didn't relocate to an arid environment.

perhaps like a snowbird, i came to arizona with rosey eyes - not for arizona, but for a someone. i swore off my hometown, coming to view the massive mountains there as a trap that concentrated my parents' transphobia like a sedona spiritual vortex. the last thick snow i ever saw fell the day before i flew out; it felt like it might suffocate me. i was so happy to leave behind my stuffy winter clothes, and my family that i felt had left me behind long ago. at first, i revered the open dry ground, and the stubby, craggy mountains. i thought my new home would be the thing to fix me. eventually, those would feel like a psychic cage, too. i hoped for a new family, as my ex promised me; i didn't know that the cost would be a very confusing marriage where my concerns and attempts at connection were long gaslit. just as i couldn't reconcile the rose-coloured glasses, i couldn't make a home here, and when i finally smashed the lenses, the remaining pieces reflected the truth of my world into me like eternal sunshine, and my world turned upside down. i felt like i was falling into the sky. no more shadows of a doubt. i was unhappy. i was scared.

i was very lucky to have a robust, if small, support system that held me up so i could weather this storm. i had friends, in arizona and socal, who educated me about some of the natural relationships and shared their perspectives of the lands, that helped me appreciate it outside of my distaste for the sun and the heat. i'd already long gotten into sm'algya̱x language work, which helped me recall the region i was from in a positive light outside of my immediate family; and my family would come around eventually, anyway. i started to have pride in myself.

when i left my home, i felt that i was ready to live life for the first time. everything else before didn't matter. no need to tie loose ends or make things easier for a future self that may come back, because what's the point? i literally felt like i was recalling a past life, when i thought about my upbringing in canada.

after shattering the rosey glasses, i was tempted to think this way again for a long time. (i was also working out A Lot of trauma.) but it felt wrong. it felt like i was repeating history; i was too scared not to. at the last second, without getting into too many details, i was able to tie up my personal loose ends in arizona, much to my complete shock. i said amicable goodbyes to the family and friends i'd made there. i'd also travelled northern arizona some with my girlfriend, to make more memories with a lot of the sights i never knew about. i discovered that there was no ill will vortexing in the air and waiting to explode on me. i realized that things didn't have to always end this way: for all the years i spent feeling trapped and isolated and resentful, of the climate and the people and the car dependency, i had accidentally made a home, and i didn't even notice it. the home had formed around me, despite my attempts to resist.

i was struck while recently re-encountering a quote from Doctor Who, which i have not watched in many years, from an episode with matt smith, a version of the doctor i have remarkably lukewarm feelings for. it goes like this:

"The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don't always spoil the good things and make them unimportant."

— The Doctor, Vincent and the Doctor (Doctor Who S5E10)

revisiting the episode as i write this, it's a bit "mawkish", a word i literally just learned from reading the critical reception section of the wikipedia page. i just googled the definition and i'm nodding. i also have complex associations with van gogh and this episode in particular, as it was my ex's absolute favourite of doctor who, and he's their favourite artist. and good god i hate watching matt smith do literally anything in this series, he's trying so hard to be cute. despite all this, the quote has shaped my mindspace. all of this commentary is kindof a defense against the fact that these words have made a small home in my heart, even if there are aspects of it i dislike or that remind me of painful times. it itself is a pile of bad and a pile of good. even if there are piles of bad around you that you can't see past, shattered pieces and never-ending sun and roses you can't see anymore, that doesn't mean that everything here is scraps to throw away. the places you stay will shape themselves around you - even, and perhaps especially if, you struggle. clouds can take all manner of shapes.

i left my home asking if arizona would "finally" be my home, if i could finally have a "good" life there - ignoring the fact that i had lived at home for nearly two decades, and amassed quite a pile of good while i was there, despite everything. no matter what my pile of bad looks like, i still have the good. i still get to have those things and return to them and learn from them - forever. i may as well try to see it for what it is in the moment, rather than feeling like i'm not fully plugged in the entire time i'm living there, only ever viewing it as either a snowbird or a green-worshipper views a desert; fundamentally separated from the self. i was so desperate to escape arizona for so long. then, my world turned upside down, and i fell into the clouds that i didn't realize had captured me for years. now, i enter michigan asking: what i can have while i'm here that i can add to my pile of good? how can i accurately, and kindly, take stock of the bad while not losing sight of the good? in other words: how can i love the shape of the clouds here?

after separating from my ex, i was terrified that i regretted moving to arizona and had just wasted my early adulthood. i thought i might regret moving to michigan, too. somewhere needs to be home, and it needs to be perfect. i finally started to ask myself this year, why do i feel so compelled to search for a home?

i think trauma is, ultimately, confusion. it's the question that's left behind when you experience or witness something you can't reconcile: why? in my case, as someone who felt abject loneliness in childhood for many years - why was i neglected? i know now, as an adult, that it wasn't something that was destined to happen to me. even as a kid, i was angry and knew that it was wrong. i merely repressed that clarity as i lost the space to voice my upset, and the tears i used to openly shed crystallized into C-PTSD. i developed a tendency for mental rituals in pursuit of never being unhappy again; my thoughts folded into layers of sediment over that original question. but still, it animated me. i must've not actually been home, at home. i need to make sure i can run away, remain vigilant and unattached, so that i'm prepared to leave if this proves to not be home, either. i've always felt the most called to by stories of wanderers, vagabonds, a hero who is whisked away to their true purpose. the pursuit of this purpose, something that can fix me, has been my whole life. who am i, if not the search for home and purpose?

i saw this comic today that stopped me in my tracks, by tumblr user goat-boots. i really resonate with it for a number of reasons. most relevant here, though, is the perspective that life is not really actively "lived". we make big decisions sometimes, but there's an idea that life must be "taken charge" of, and if you're not doing this, then you're wasting it. it's the operating logic of FOMO, social media, and arguably i think, capitalism in general, because the means of production encourages a scarcity, zero-sum mindset - people chase the next big "thing" in search of profit, and you need to be the one to take advantage or be a part of it or you'll fall behind. part of untangling my OCD has been acknowledging that while i can't check out of this framework completely, being that we do have to seize opportunities to survive in our society, it is not a natural idea. i don't have to stake my personal satisfaction with my life on it, forever in search of perfection, complete control, or that sense that "this is it"; life is just something that happens, a series of happenings that keeps changing you. that doesn't mean i have no metric of a quality of life, or that i don't take responsibility, or don't take care of myself or others. on the contrary: it means that taking care, going slow, is the most important thing. it means being okay with being changed by life, by sunsets and imperfect exes. it means that i am (trying to be) done making ontological judgements about how, or where, i should live. it means that i am a riverbed where both pretty pebbles and shattered pieces pass over me, sometimes in unequal measure, and i will do my best to keep my eyes on both piles, and forsake neither.

this is where my home is - somewhere between the piles of good and the piles of bad. i take this home with me, wherever i go. i still have an inescapable sense that i am "journeying"; i now try to journey knowing that what's "home" is already with me. i am only in search of more. as much as we make stories of our lives, there is no point where the variables stop changing and the conflicts are over, and we're set for life. there is nothing a mountain, a desert, a life mission, or a person, can fix. but i can take from them, and try to give something back in return. hopefully what they get is in their good pile, too.¹

1. P.S.: i couldn't find a natural way of linking this in the body of the post, but this is another quick comic i found a long time ago that has been on my mind ever since, especially while i write this. it's relevant because it uses the perspective of seasonal work in nature to evoke the terror of unending change - particularly of places changing you, of the complexity and enormity of the world and how little control you have over it. yet, this is something that must be made peace with. https://foxbirdy.tumblr.com/post/713920198036668416/a-short-comic-i-made-about-my-experiences-as-a↩

(thanks for reading! leave a comment on the post directly if you like. t’oyaxsut ‘nüüsm 🧡)