I’m sitting out in my backyard right now. It’s a perfect evening in my small town. There’s not too many bugs. All I hear are birds, crickets, and the faint echoing of evening church tunes played out from the Lutheran church down the block. Occasionally some of the dozens of white children walk or bike by nicely and I wave at them.
I’m getting married in a month. I own my home. Beyond my mortgage I don’t have debt. I just picked some vegetables from my garden yesterday. I have chicken grown by my friend in my fridge.
I used to live in the city and the rest of my family and friends still do. I just stopped by to visit them last weekend. My mom tells me all about the crime in the neighborhood. My friends tell me how they just had an intervention for our buddy who was in pretty deep on fentanyl and meth.
Before I moved when the riots were happening in 2020 and people were busting up and burning places I wanted to get out and stand on rooftops with guns. I saw places I grew up with destroyed and people I loved terrorized, thinking they would be next. And I looked around and people told me “I need to understand the anger” “lives aren’t worth property”.
I don’t live there anymore. I don’t surround myself with them anymore. Now I live in a place that 150 years ago my ancestors killed and fought for. And there’s a statue in the heart of the town that honors that.
And I think that’s why it’s such a nice evening.
