The Doe’s Latest Stories

It wasn’t only grief that changed me after my father’s death. For the first time in my life, I had enough money to do whatever the hell I wanted. I’m not talking millions here—in fact, I was by no account even close to being rich. I had just enough to live comfortably and splurge a little bit. The couple of months prior to my father’s death had been a living hell, and at that point, my only mantra was Tommy from Parks and Recreation’s “treat yo’ self!”Before then, I’d always had everything I needed. When it came to things I wanted, however, it was a different story. I wasn’t raised spoiled. I wasn’t handed everything on a silver platter. I grew up knowing what hard work entailed. I’d help my father out in the field; I’d help my mother around the house; and when I was old enough, I started working on my own. My first job was at an appliance store. I’d assemble fans, cabinets and all sorts of stuff. I’d organize the shop, do stock control and was also in charge of sales. I also worked in a grocery store, and later, I taught English as a foreign language. I had my fair share of experience, and I appreciated the value of every single cent I ever earned. And while my family was neither well off nor penniless, I never resented them for not providing me with the luxuries other people my age seemed to be able to afford. I never complained.

I wanted so much more than I had.

Saving Up for the Future Never Made Sense to Me

Granted, I was still jealous of the people who could have whatever they desired. And desires I had. I wanted to travel all over. I wanted to learn to play the piano. I wanted a PlayStation, a laptop and a cell phone to play Snake on (it was a while ago). I wanted so much more than I had. Yet even then, I knew those things would change once I started working. And that’s exactly what happened. When I had my own money to spend, I did everything I always felt like I was missing out on (except for the piano thing, but that’s just a matter of me being lazy).But now, I suddenly had this infusion of money. From food to clothes and random, useless things, I was buying everything I wanted. I know it might sound like I had finally given in to my materialism. And maybe that’s what happened to some extent. But really and truly, there was only one reason behind all of it, a cliche that also kinda became another mantra: “YOLO,” you only live once.My dad had spent his entire life working like a slave for what he used to call a “rainy day,” though in reality, it felt more like he was getting ready to face a hurricane. And guess what? He died without there ever being a light drizzle. All that money he saved, he never got a chance to use. He never got to reap what he sowed. I mean it. Never did he buy anything for himself that he didn’t really need. Having said that, I’m sure he had no regrets. Knowing my mom and I would be financially secure was good enough for him. But that’s not nearly how I want to live my life. I know it might sound selfish, but I could never imagine myself working all the time for something I’d never get to enjoy myself. If I had kids, I’d expect them to start fending for themselves as soon they’re old enough, as I had done myself.

I Learned How Easy It Is to Spend

So here I was, putting that money to good use. OK, not really. After a while, I realized I was squandering my inheritance. “My inheritance” quickly became a running gag with my friends. “What do you want to eat? Instant rice or lobster ravioli?” With a devilish grin, I’d declare, “Inheritance!” “Do you really need to buy two leather jackets?” Well, I didn’t really need them, but I definitely wanted them, and you know…“Inheritance!”My mother was of no help getting me to take a step back from my manic spending. If I were to be completely honest, I think she enabled me further. She’d assert that life is too short to deprive yourself, and who could blame her for saying so? She, too, had been deprived of the luxuries one would come to expect after years and years of hard work. And that helped me justify my extravagance even further. Not to mention that soon enough, I’d be a doctor. And while it’s not the highest paying job in the world, doctors aren’t really known for having to rely on social benefits. And, in any case, if a rainy day popped up, that would be a problem for Future Me.It wasn’t until I received a call from the bank about the “suspicious activity” on my account that I came to my senses. Apparently, I was spending way too much, even according to my bank’s standards. While I wasn’t burning through 30,000 euros on heroin over the course of three months, like one of our psych patients had done, I wasn’t feeling any less guilty than he did. With every unnecessary and unjustifiable purchase, I’d feel a pang of shame. Did my father really work overtime for a papier-mache elephant I bought while I was drunk? Did he miss that Christmas dinner just so I could buy two differently colored sarangis while I was in Nepal? I had no excuses.

After a while, I realized I was squandering my inheritance.

Finally, I Had to Rein It In

And so, I did some much-needed growing up. I started documenting all my expenses and income. I’d allocate money for the important stuff, such as traveling, courses and other extracurricular activities. And in no time, I was a financially responsible, boring, old adult. Before then, I used to worry that because of my financial situation, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to go on student exchanges or medical electives when the time came. I used to worry that I wouldn’t be able to travel and explore and do all the kinds of crazy things I had in mind because I’d be needing that money for food and taxes and boring adult stuff.But suddenly? Suddenly, all these things weren’t just possible. I could do so much more than what was required for my education. Plus, I could even go on long trips and have incredible adventures! Money is still one of the world’s evils, but you can have a lot of fun with it.

“Over 90 years being a family-owned, family-run company!” That’s the slogan that appears as a footnote on every social media post my family’s business makes. It sounds nice, doesn’t it? Ninety-plus years in business, building a loyal client base. Ninety-plus years of fathers handing the reins over to their sons (or daughter, in my case, although I’m the first woman in 90-plus years to hold an actual position on both the board and management rather than simply being a silent partner). I grew up at my family’s auto businesses: running around the offices, playing hide-and-seek in the repair areas (much to my grandfather’s dismay), hiding toys in the conference room and knowing every single employee’s life story—I grew up with their kids, so in a way, they were like family, too. It sounds idyllic, I know. The truth is, I’m over it. A family business doesn’t get to be almost 100 years old without its fair share of drama and heartache.

The truth is, I’m over it.

A Booming Business Creates Family Business Disputes

Back in the late 1920s, my great-grandfather bought a gas pump, a few tires and some spare car parts and went around the city helping drivers change their broken tires and refill their empty tanks. Eventually, he saved enough money to establish a small auto repair shop downtown, where all the legitimate businesses were. He secured an exclusive distribution deal with one of the biggest names in the tire industry. His business grew from one store to two, and when the opportunity to add car dealerships came along, he took it without hesitation, and the business kept growing. His sons—my grandfather and great-uncle—joined the company a few decades later. Together, they expanded it into other cities. Business boomed under their leadership, but their sibling relationship quickly deteriorated. Still, they kept going. Their sons—my father and uncles—joined the company in the ’80s and added hotels to the company’s portfolio. Once again, business was great, but family relations were always tense, to say the least. Although none of them were ever the closest of siblings, the brothers’ relationship, once cordial and somewhat friendly, quickly worsened. Typical sibling rivalry was darkened by jealousy and anger over how the business was managed, creating an irreparable rift in the family.

Family Business Fighting Has Created a Rift Between Multiple Generations of Siblings

In the early 2000s, the first big rupture happened. My grandpa and his brother could no longer handle working together. They split the business into two different companies and rarely spoke after that. History then repeated itself almost a decade later, in the mid-2010s, when my father and his brothers were forced to split the company once again. To this day, they can barely stand to be in the same room as each other.I joined the company a few years after the second split, being the first (and only) one of my generation to work in the business that we had grown up in, that put us through school and had helped us become the people we are today. It was a role that I originally took with pride—I was continuing my father’s, grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s legacies. But I soon discovered how exhausting and emotionally draining living up to nine decades of history actually is. It took me all of three years to realize I wanted out.

There Are Advantages and Disadvantages of Working in a Family Business

It's nice being part of my family's legacy. But there’s a darker side to it that most people don’t know about, one that is not spoken of nearly enough. We like to pretend we get along, that siblings haven’t directly had a hand in making each other’s lives more difficult (and maybe insulting each other’s spouses and children, or lack thereof). We act like things are fine, mostly for the sake of my grandmother, who wants her family to “get along peacefully,” but has never taken the steps to ensure every family member feels heard, included and loved the same. In the rare instance that any of this drama or concern is brought up, it ends up badly, with words like “betrayal,” “ungrateful” and “disloyal” thrown around in anger. Family businesses can be extremely toxic and detrimental to one’s mental health and even tear those families apart if they’re not handled with extreme care. I’ve seen it firsthand.Don’t get me wrong; I love the freedom that being “the owner’s kid” offers me. I get to make my own schedule, and it can be as flexible as I need it to be. I can take holidays off (the Jewish ones, at least) with no consequences, and I get as many paid days off as I ask for (just as long as I check in a few times a week when I’m out of office). I also like being known by our longtime customers. That’s opened a lot of doors for me, work-wise—“You know, your grandfather sold me my first car; of course, I’ll listen to your business pitch!” On the other hand, I wish people would take me seriously for my own achievements rather than assume it’s all just because of who my dad is. I’m nearly 30 years old, and when we meet with vendors and big clients, my co-workers will still introduce me as “the owner’s kid.” Pretty much every comment or decision I make at work is followed by, “What does your father think of this? Is he okay with it?”

There Is Never a Break: A Toxic Family Business Follows You Home

One would think that when the whole C-suite of a company all lives under the same roof, a lot of shit would get done. And it does, but it’s a ticking time bomb, too. When you work with family, work never really ends. Sunday barbecues turn into brainstorm sessions. Daily family lunches turn into heated briefings on what happened at the office that day. Post-dinner drinks with your co-workers and boss happen in the kitchen of your home. We always have our laptops, tablets or phones ready to run numbers on any new idea someone comes up with, even if this happens in the middle of the Pesach Seder or requires one of us to get out of the shower to talk something over. (Yes, both of these things have actually happened.) The boundaries are easily blurred, and it’s way too easy to get lost in a toxic hustle culture because “this is our legacy, and it’s what puts food on our table.” When I talk with my father, I wonder to myself, am I talking to my dad or to my boss right now? If things go wrong at work— as they tend to do sometimes —the criticism will inevitably include my personal life. Arguments and anxieties spill over from the office to the home and vice versa. It's a never-ending, vicious cycle of anxiety and madness. Working in the family business has put a big strain on my relationship with my parents, especially with my father. It’s not uncommon for the first thing he says to me when he gets home to be, “How did we do today?” instead of “hello.” Business takes precedence over family relationships. It’s a lot to handle, and I’m most definitely not cut out for this life.

To this day, they can barely stand to be in the same room as each other.

I’m Thankful and Proud of Our Legacy, but I’m Tired of Working for Family

I’m proud to be part of my family’s legacy, I really am. I will always be thankful for the opportunities it has given me, both personal and professional, but ultimately, it’s not for me. It’s not something I want to be a part of for much longer or something that I want to bring my future children into. I’m a creative person. I went to design school but ended up majoring in business as well because of family obligations. Despite the many liberties and economic security that working in my family’s business has given me through the years, I can't ignore how much it's taken from me, too.I’m a writer, a stylist, an illustrator. I’m whatever I feel like being. I want to explore the creative side of my abilities and use them to build the life I’ve dreamed of for myself—not the one that was planned for me even before I was born.

Retaliation is prohibited in the strongest terms in our employee manual. HR doth frown upon it sternly. The thing about retaliation in the workplace though, besides being terrible, is that it’s almost impossible to prove. Especially when it’s the head of your agency retaliating against a group of employees. If only he were to come out and say, “I’m retaliating against you because you all dared challenge me during the pandemic.” But alas, my work group won’t get our cartoonish moment where the villain monologues and reveals his whole plan, then we thwart him. We’ll just keep getting crushed under his vengeful thumb bit by bit.

Despite Having a Computer-Based Job, My Director Would Not Let Us Work From Home

Let’s go back to April 2020. This was, globally, an atrocious month. COVID-19 was spreading like wildfire, and many of us poor saps were buckling in for debilitating waves of pandemic anxiety, disruptions to our lives, long-term illness, loss of jobs and the heartbreaking deaths of over half a million of our family, friends, neighbors and colleagues. And we didn’t even fully know it. Many workplaces responded appropriately by shutting down, sending people home and increasing flexibility. On the other hand, many workplaces maintained a “business as usual” approach and insisted employees continue to report for their meager salaries, consequences be damned! My employer was such a one as this.I really like my job. I really like the people that I work with. But I’m leaving and it’s because of our leadership’s response to the pandemic. In the Before Times, I felt provided for. My government job, while paying me less than the private sector, comes with exceptional benefits, generous leave, security and a decent union. Now I can’t look past the combination of treating us as expendable while also doing everything they could to get out of providing a safe working environment.What’s my field? I work in recreation and parks, and it’s supposed to be fun. We provide high-value programs, recreation and leisure opportunities to the public who gobble up everything we offer and then ask for more. My group works closely with the public, who I remind you were out there spreading the plague. My job as a supervisor is mostly to be chained to my desk and make sure everything my large group of staff does runs smoothly across all seven days a week. In April of 2020, when it became clear the pandemic was getting worse and not going away, many county employees went home and stayed there. Many people are successfully teleworking, and their agencies consistently achieve their missions to this day. To telework, or not to telework, is at the discretion of each agency’s director. For my work group, that meant no telework. So we tried to get creative with scheduling, but that wouldn’t fly either. While the Department of Public Works put their employees on an A/B week schedule, my director would hear of no such thing. Many of us have young children who were sent home from school and daycare, and if you’ve lived through the past almost two years, you probably know what a nightmare that has been for so many families and how millions of women, in particular, left the workforce to care for their children. The economic losses, loss of job knowledge and loss of family income from this enormous exodus will continue to plague us for years. My own toddler was in the care of his grandparents a few days a week. I asked for telework, for flexible hours, for a different schedule, anything, to be able to be home more with him in conjunction with my spouse so that our elderly parents wouldn’t be exposed through us essential employees to the coronavirus. My director denied me repeatedly. In fact, he told me my job could not be done from home, though 90 percent is computer and web-based. Many months and vaccinations later, I can say my having to report to work did not kill my parents or in-laws. Not everyone can say that. One of my colleagues died of COVID after her husband brought it home from work.

I’m leaving and it’s because of our leadership’s response to the pandemic.

My Employer Refused to Provide Paid Sick Leave to Those Who Were Exposed to COVID

Throughout the summer and fall, my team did what we had to, namely, hand out disposable masks at sports tournaments to out-of-state visitors, assist with security for emergency child care centers for more essential employees than ourselves and do every single thing asked of us. Our morning staff started our days at 5:30 a.m., and our evening staff left shortly before midnight. We were stretched thin as a few employees said “fuck this shit” and quit. Sure, our department provided us with masks and hand sanitizer and told us to maintain social distance because six feet is a magical distance past which air particles can’t travel (#sarcasm). We were instructed to keep all windows and doors shut and not to use fans, as moving air around could infect others. When I pointed out that the CDC literally recommended leaving doors and windows open and running fans to improve outdoor/indoor air exchange, I was ignored. One employee was exposed to COVID by his roommate, and he quarantined until he could test negative. He requested leave reimbursement for this time, according to the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. He was denied due to this language from FFCRA: “Under the FFCRA, healthcare providers and emergency responders may be excluded by their employer from paid sick leave and/or expanded family and medical leave.”His phone conversation with HR went something like this:HR: You are not eligible for leave reimbursement because of your status as an emergency responder.Employee: So, you’re telling me someone in the Department of Finance who’s been working from home could be reimbursed for leave if they get exposed, but not me, who’s been reporting for duty every day and working in a high-risk environment?HR: That’s correct.Essentially, our employer was choosing to exclude us for leave reimbursement. It gets more fun. In December of 2020, 25 percent of our group contracted COVID, including my boss, who left me in charge. I had to submit a list of people to the administration who were exposed based on time spent around those who had tested positive. I called everyone in my office, compiled the list and sent it up. Administration sent it back and said it was too long and that I’d have to assess if everyone truly spent 15 minutes or more, closer than six feet, around the infected individuals, and were they wearing masks? In our open workspace environment where most of us sit closer than six feet to each other all day, it’s kind of hard to guarantee. I asked, “Isn’t it better to be safe than sorry and quarantine everyone who could possibly be infected until they can acquire a negative test?” Nope, came the answer. In the end, the administration opted to provide admin leave, meaning it didn’t come out of the employee’s leave balances, only to those who were actually infected. If we were exposed, it was because we hadn’t followed guidelines. The rest of us opted to use our sick leave and quarantine.

We Were Classified as Essential Workers but Not Treated as Such When It Came to Vaccine Priority

We spent last Christmas at our houses, separated from our families. My team lead constructed a plastic bubble in her basement where she stayed, to protect her very medically vulnerable father-in-law, with whom she lives. One colleague watched his 2-year-old and infant daughter on the monitor like a hawk while his partner ran out to get a COVID test because he was sick and couldn’t go near them. We Zoomed with each other almost daily, checking in and keeping each others’ spirits up. We felt an utter lack of regard from our employer but did our best to care for each other. I bore the bad news that once again, we would not get our leave reimbursed for our direct exposures. “At least the county is classifying us as emergency responders,” my team lead pointed out astutely. “That means we’ll be in a high priority group for vaccines.” Ah, my sweet summer child.We’re in a gray area as emergency responders. We are all Emergency Medical Responders (EMRs), a few classroom hours and ambulance rides short of being EMTs. We are required to carry Naloxone, first-aid/CPR supplies and AEDs. We’ve saved lives because we’ve been first on scene and got hearts beating again in people who were turning blue in cardiac arrest and stopped overdoses in progress. So when the county health department announced that it was beginning to compile lists of employees for each vaccine priority category, our collective ears perked up.Weeks passed, and we heard nothing. Groups 1A and 1B were underway with their vaccinations. We believed, as emergency responders who weren’t full-time healthcare professionals, that we would qualify for group 1C, or group 2, at least, as continuity of government employees (remember, we were forced to work throughout the pandemic because we were essential). I asked my boss where we would be placed, and he sent my question up the chain. The response from my boss’s boss’s boss was to ask the health department, so I did. The person who responded to my email was quite kind but informed me that they did not know, and it was up to the director of each agency to determine priority groups. Would you like to guess if we were placed in a priority group? If you guessed oh hell no, you are correct! You see, despite being essential and denied leave because we’re “first responders,” according to our employer, we’re also not first responders—we’re just regular employees, so we had to wait until vaccines became available for the general population. In fact, my director blew a gasket when he learned that I’d contacted the health department as directed by my superior and firmly told me that any further questions should go directly to him, and no, we are not first responders; why would I think that?Most of us got our vaccines in other ways. I signed up as a first responder in my own county, brought my certifications with me and got my first shot in January. My co-worker drove 500 miles to another state where enthusiasm for vaccines was weaker and got a shot at a FEMA site that was trying desperately to find arms to put needles in. We worked through the worst of the pandemic, took care of each other the best way we could and advocated for ourselves.

Many months and vaccinations later, I can say my having to report to work did not kill my parents or in-laws.

My Director Is Retaliating Against Us Because We Stood Up for Ourselves

There’s no putting it behind us, though. Since we had the audacity to ask questions and push back against the blame, dangerous conditions and general disregard for our lives, our work lives have been worse than ever. Our director refuses to allow us to fill our vacant positions. He’s denied position upgrades that HR would support. He’s made sure we can’t take advantage of virtual training opportunities. Other teams are able to get any overtime they need to get their jobs done. We haven’t received overtime since February of 2021. He looks over the shoulder of our timekeeper to examine our leave requests and removed our names from a security system that we’d been using for over five years. “I’ll decide who has permissions for this program,” he said. Without access, we can’t figure out who broke into the bathrooms for the umpteenth time, the license plate of a car that did a hit-and-run or what time frame the people who keep setting off fireworks are coming in, among other issues. No one else in our whole department is trained on this system, so now, no one can access its data. It’s this kind of petty thing where the sole purpose is to deny us something that is so demoralizing.We’re burned out. We’ve lost even more employees who said “fuck this shit” and got other jobs. We at least feel slightly validated in that it’s not just us who are quitting; our department is hemorrhaging employees left and right who are tired of dealing with various degrees of bullshit. Many quality employees were building careers, invested in our organization, but are now unwilling to put up with the toxic environment.I’m lucky to have survived to this point. I’m grateful to have kept my job throughout the pandemic and been able to pay our bills and support my family. I’m keenly aware of how many people have it much, much worse than I. The Great Resignation is a movement for a reason. We’re collectively tired of being cogs in the capitalist wheel of perpetual grind, tired of basic things like safety, good health and living wages being privileges and tired of spending our one life working for people and places who don’t care one iota for us just so we can afford food, shelter and a bit of joy. I decided to leave in May of 2020 when I was denied any and all flexibility. Now that I’m recently vested and pension-eligible, I’m done biding my time. I’ll truly miss my colleagues and the work that I used to enjoy. I have other opportunities in front of me, and it’s not worth the drain on my mental and emotional health to stick around. So, my good people, in the words of those who have gone on before me: Fuck this shit. I’m out.

When I turned 16, my mom told me, “I'm not giving you money anymore. If you want money, go get a job.” This guy that I liked worked at Panera Bread, so I was like, “Alright, I'll go work at Panera Bread.” Quickly, I started realizing my passions lay elsewhere, and this job was just what I had to do to make the money to be able to go to concerts and buy records and do the things that I actually wanted to do. Since then, I've been a professional dogsitter/animal caretaker and whisperer for hundreds of clients. I’ve worked in nightlife. I've been a club promoter and booker for my own party and also a hostess. (I can't say I was ever great at that, but it was fun.) And from there, I started working with bands as a tour manager, driver, merch person, make-up artist, booker—every job on a tour, I’ve done it. After I moved to L.A., that opened up a whole door of other side hustles and gigs because L.A. is just very much a gig town. I think that’s what attracted me to moving here. I've been a production assistant, a set builder, a florist and a background actor. I've worked in fashion, from screen printing to shipping to tie-dyeing to working retail. And I’m always kind of bartending in between and doing things like that. (Although I think I’ve actually moved past bartending, finally, even though it’s a good fallback to make quick money.)At no point have I ever thought I'm going to dedicate my life to just one thing. I've always been doing some sort of hustle or juggling a few different things so that I can maintain my lifestyle and go out of town if I need to or jump on a tour or be in this production or whatever. Because that's how I've always set my life up for myself. I'm never tied down to one thing.

At no point have I ever thought I'm going to dedicate my life to just one thing.

Doing One Thing Forever Doesn’t Make Sense to Me

I don't make a lot of money. It's just that I've realized that I can’t do the daily grind. Going to a nine-to-five gig for me is like fighting gravity. Even just knowing that I had to be in the same place at the same time, every single day, five days a week, that I was always going to have to do my shopping and hiking or whatever on the weekends because I was never going to have a weekday afternoon off, I just could not handle that at all.There can be overlaps between my work life and what I do for fun. I work in fields I like, where I actually enjoy the gigs—in music and TV and fashion and merchandising and things like that. But I always reach a point with things where if it becomes the only way I’m making money, then I totally lose interest. That happened to me with tie-dyeing, where I really liked to tie-dye as a hobby, but then during the pandemic, selling tie-dye masks became my only way of making any money. As soon as it became like, “Oh fuck, I have to do this batch or I'm not paying my rent this month,” I was immediately so disenchanted that I didn’t want to tie-dye anything ever again. I know some people who do what they love for work. But the concept of doing only one thing that I love for the rest of my life, and that's also the only way that I make money, is terrifying and weird to me. I’ve always seen a real distinction between the things I like to do and the things that make me money. I understand that commitment to the craft is how you can also make a lot more money than I make now. But I guess at a certain point, I just had to let that go and realize that it'll come and go when it comes and goes, and if I at least am finding some kind of joy and satisfaction in what I'm doing, that’s a lot better to me any day of the week.I’ve been working this way since around 2011, when I started dogsitting and got hired at a music venue in Chicago. Up until that point, I had really only worked regular jobs. I didn't graduate college. My mom was like, “If you're not going to go to school, we're not giving you money or health insurance, so you’d better find something that gives those to you.” So I started working at Starbucks part-time because you can work 20 hours a week there and get full health benefits. I was 20 years old, and just like, “I guess this is what you're supposed to do: have healthcare and go to your job and make money so you can do other things on the weekend. That's what normal people do.” I was obviously miserable working at Starbucks. But some people who worked at this venue in Chicago were regulars there, and one day they said, “Hey, we have an opening for a cocktail waitress. You don't even have to interview; just show up on Friday night.” I showed up for a sold-out show, and they threw me on the floor, and I realized maybe I don't need the Starbucks job anymore. I started going to shows every night, making a bunch of tip money, and then I also found this crazy dogsitting gig through a friend. That’s when I was like, “Oh, maybe I don't need a real job.” I started going out and becoming involved in queer nightlife and realized that I can pursue the things I want to be doing and also kind of turn it into a hustle so that I can just keep living and being me and not have to worry about going to a nine-to-five job every day. I knew I just didn’t have that in me.

How I Figured Out How to Live Off of What Makes Me Happy

I always try to have at least one thing that's a little bit steady. Right now, I work at a clothing brand a few days a week. It’s nice to have that, knowing that I have at least a little bit of a paycheck coming in every couple of weeks, but it’s also part-time, so it allows me to fill the rest of my time with being a merch person for local shows or production assistant on a set for a few days and then be done with it. Then, I'll do background acting in between, on off days. None of these things pay the bills on their own, so it's kind of the fun struggle I have every month, filling in each day of like, “Okay, which job can I do? What hustle can I do these days to keep it all in motion?” Because, you know, jobs are the same as anything else, where if you let it sit for too long, you forget how to use it. It becomes stagnant, and then you don't have new opportunities coming in. I guess this also applies to my general life philosophy, where it's like with your thoughts, with your space, with everything, if you don't consistently use it and keep things moving, the energy becomes stagnant, and then you close the doors to new opportunities. You never know when the next thing’s coming. I've had to quit jobs before I knew what my next gig was going to be, which is always super scary. You want to have that stability. But I knew that if I didn't get rid of this thing that was sucking up all my emotional energy, I was never going to have the energy open or the space open for the next thing to come in.Like, for example, the merch company I was working for ended up letting me go really abruptly, although I had kind of already been thinking of quitting. And I had nothing lined up, so it was super scary. I had two weeks of severance, and right on the day that it was going to run out, I got a call for a tour that was leaving literally the next day, and I was the only person who could do it because I didn't have a fucking job. And that ended up being a tour where I met some people who to this day are some of my very closest friends. That's been a common theme as well, where I trust my instincts because they usually lead to way bigger rewards and results down the line. It’s important to me to keep myself open to the possibilities of the universe. That's when I find that most of these things come my way. I get interviews, I get offered jobs, people think of me for things because I've left that space open in my life for them. I definitely enjoy the fluidity of having one thing lead to the next, where I can just hop in this van with these people at the last minute. That's literally how I started touring. This band that I had never met before pulled up in Chicago. I had a kind of a psychic vision telling me, “You have to go meet these people.” So they were kind of joking around and were like, “You want to come on tour with us?” I looked at my calendar, and I had eight days in a row off from the club where I was cocktail waitressing and I was like, “Yeah, I’ll come with you in your van with four strange men I've never met before.” And that ended up being the actual reason that I'm now on my path of touring and doing all these things—because I got on the road with them and instantly found a space where all of my talents were utilized. It was something that I'd literally never thought about doing, and it’s led to a whole bunch of other opportunities since then.

I’ve always seen a real distinction between the things I like to do and the things that make me money.

Not Having a “Real Job” Can Be Scary, but It’s Worth It

Sometimes, I have to push myself out of my comfort zone and maybe just quit all my jobs and say, “Okay, I don't know what the next step is.” Which is super scary, but what’s scarier to me is getting stuck in the same routine, where I don’t feel like I'm progressing in my life or I’m not changing anything about myself or my viewpoints or perspectives. And so, at a certain point, I always have to go do something that allows me to open that up. I feel like “what do you want to do when you grow up?” has become a very antiquated concept. I'll always be evolving and shape-shifting and changing throughout my life. And so my career, or whatever you want to call it, is going to always change along with me. I think a lot more people these days are embracing that and realizing that we all can be kind of fluid within anything. It's like our jobs can be that way too and be constantly changing with what we like to do and who we become.People always ask, “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” But if you told me 10 years ago what I’ve done by now, I never would have even believed it because it's actually been bigger than what I could even have imagined. So I think that even the concept of saying, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” limits you to just one thing, and I think that closes a lot of doors for you to find other things that you might like or be good at. If you leave those options open for yourself, the possibilities are limitless.

Sharing this is cathartic for me, purely down to the initial level of embarrassment I had from the series of events in the first place. There is some sort of comfort in subverting my emotions by running with the accidental exhibitionism and turning it into an unrepentant voice—a real story to share of my co-workers witnessing me at my most exposed. So, here we go.With lockdown lifted where I live—and liberated as a young, single woman—I’ve been living my best life. It’s gotten sloppy and messy at times, but I’ve been loving it. I work for a handful of nightclubs in my small city and generally spend my weekends between all of these places, getting tipsy and having a great time. I’m a hard worker, but I like nothing more than to let off steam at night—usually by the combination of loud music, dark rooms, few clothes and uninhibited strangers.I’ve worked for one of these clubs for over three years now. Part of my job is working on duty as a bar supervisor, but most of the time at night, I have free rein to party since the majority of my work is outside of when the events are on. The team is like my family—mostly viewing me as this fun, bouncy liability with a good aura but far too much abandon on frequent occasions. Some of them are quite protective of me, but for the most part, they understand my personality, as they work in the industry too, which makes them just as liable to carelessness—on occasion.

I remember him pulling up his trousers and we rushed off back to the dance floor again.

I Took a Guy to the Backstage Area of the Club

One weekend, I'm at the club, and I’m staying late for this one. I’m pretty inebriated but still have enough clarity to know what I’m doing with my faculties. I have this guy in tow, and he’s exactly my type: the holy trinity of tall, dark and handsome. We’ve been flirting all night, and at one point in this chaotic rush, I decide to take the plunge and drag him to the back of the club, through a door into the backstage area. Finding a little hidden nook, we start making out, and it’s getting heavy. He has his hands all over me, and I’m feeling the heat start to race. I’ve known him for a little while, and I’ve always had a bit of a crush on him—and here I am with his entire body to access. The fire pours out of me through deep pants, moans and urgent gropes as I desperately explore his body through his clothes. We’re entangled in a messy, dirty embrace, our tongues playing with each other between frantic words and erratic movements. Something switches, and without thinking, I dip down onto my knees. I look up and see his face burning from the tension as I pull out his dick. I worship it with my entire face, the adrenaline giving me life. What’s life without risk and adventure anyway? His hands grip my hair as I go down on him, and I’d be lying if I said that the next 10 minutes or so weren’t a blur. Who knows what else we got up to—but what I do know is that I did that, thinking it was this perfect, outrageous secret.I remember him pulling up his trousers and we rushed off back to the dance floor again. I also explicitly remember thinking, “Fuck, that was FILTHY…I hope nobody saw it.”We parted ways that night as I had work to do the following day.

I Don’t Know Which of My Co-Workers Saw Me

Fast-forward to three weeks later. I arrive at the club to see my work family for a brand-new night that’s kicking off and immediately bounce up to my colleagues to say hello. When I ask where one of them in particular is, I’m told that he’s in the main office, a short walk from the club. I hadn’t been there in a while since I usually have no need to be, so I head over to find him. I’m buzzed in, and the first thing that I see makes my heart fucking drop.The office has been refurbished with some fancy new equipment, and there’s one part in particular that catches my eye: a series of enormous HDTV screens. They’re all turned on to show not just the corridors of the venue, but also…backstage. Including that little hiding place. Why has the CCTV been moved to where everyone works? What the fuck? I wince, sighing internally to myself, and pray that nobody was in here that night. As I chat with my colleague, I slip in a couple of leading questions.“How have I not seen the new setup! Have you guys been hanging out here often?”He turns to face me with an open, unassuming smile from preparing me a drink.“Oh yeah, all the time! People are in and out but there are always people on duty here—particularly on nights like this.”“Do you still debrief in here?”“Of course; we have pretty much most of the whole duty team here for the last hour.”I can’t believe that last answer. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK. That’s when it all happened.Who was in here? I feel my face flush. Wow. I find some respite in the fact that these lots are super open and accepting, but…wow. They must see me in a different light if they know about this.

I wonder if it looked good.

My Embarrassment Has Turned Into Intrigue

In the time after, I’ve reflected on who might have seen me. I can’t remember exactly who was on duty, as it changes most weeks. I have more questions. Did they see me, or did they watch me? What would their reaction have been? Laughter? Intrigue? If one person was there, would they have quietly been turned on? Shocked?I’ll never know the thoughts of my audience—or of whom it comprised. But there was definitely someone who saw my inadvertent pornographic movie. Now, whenever I go back, I’ll never know who might have been watching me, moment for moment, in what was nothing less than a compromising position.I have my guesses. I wonder how they see me now. With disdain? With apprehension? Or—with curiosity? The not knowing was at once mortifying, but I’m finding my perversion in it now. We’re all adults. It’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before. By sharing this, I feel as though I’m molding it into a fantasy that I’ll look back on fondly. I can own this. I never thought that I was that much of an exhibitionist, but maybe this could be the start of something beautiful. After all, what’s the saying?Aversion can turn into perversion.I wonder if it looked good.

When I was little, my parents hunted exclusively for 70 percent sales. They were so frugal that I even gave back my dance class payment check once to my mom when I was 7, telling her, “I don’t need it,” because I thought we were poor. She rolled her eyes and gave it back to me. I took this spendthrift mindset with me, backpacking the world for eight years, trying to stretch money as thin as I could for as long as I could. My scarcity mindset is so pervasive. I watch myself choose to take a 25-minute bus over a 10-minute Uber because of the 12-times price differential. I don’t buy new things. I stay in cheap hotels. And I “HODL” my crypto. I knew a guy who did the same, and in 2012, he quit his job at Walmart and invested in Bitcoin with his last paycheck. He’s a multimillionaire today. There’s good reason for my cheap ways. I haven’t had a salary in five years. Sure, I do some contract work here and there, but over the past two years, I’ve been launching a nonprofit trying to change the world and not taking a cent for it. How can I do that?

My trust in crypto as the future is founded in a thorough understanding of the fragility of our current late-stage capitalism.

I Trust Crypto Because of Late-Stage Capitalism’s Fragility

Well, I really think part of it is mindset. I still watch myself fight moments of insecurity. But overall, I have a deep-seated trust that the financial world as we know it is ripe for massive disruption—and crypto holds the keys.I’ve been involved in the crypto space since 2014, when my town in Asia was a test site for Bitcoin vending machines, but the evolution of money is something I’ve been waiting for since the 2008 crash, when I took $10,000 cash out of the bank and stored it in a backpack in my parents’ bathtub for six months. Begrudgingly, when nothing drastic happened, I returned it to the bank. While it might not qualify to the IRS, I "retired" from normal work at age 29. I hadn’t become a millennial millionaire and didn’t even have huge savings. But I’d already been invested in crypto for a few years, and I know hope hung high on the horizon. My trust in crypto as the future is founded in a thorough understanding of the fragility of our current late-stage capitalism. We are exploring how far we can take inflation and injustice. I’m pretty sure we’ll see a major global financial collapse by April of 2022, and I’m in the process of moving all of my fiat (the crypto word for government-controlled currencies, meaning “trust”) into crypto by then. Yeah, it’s fucking unpredictable. All my friends who work deep in crypto have gone numb (including my ex-boyfriend) because of the inherent volatility. It’s a lot to handle for the human nervous system. But if you’re in it for the long haul like me—more for the ethos of decentralization, taking power away from central authority figures—then it’s less grinding. So when I think about money, I make sure I’m OK for today and a year or so of tomorrow, and I’ll let the future handle itself. This is a movement that’s going far, and we are still in the early adoption phase, so I rest calmly in my daily investments. (My early Bitcoin friends are saving their holdings for Mars.)

It’s a lot to handle for the human nervous system.

The Crypto Market Is More Valuable Than Ever

I still do some freelance work whenever I want to feel that dopamine hit from making “real” money. But something about that now feels cheap, like my value can’t even be measured in time (and I charge a pretty penny). Divorcing time from money has been my most liberating mind shift. I don't have to rely on centralized banks or other people’s value of what they’re willing to give me for my worth. And I don’t need to scramble like an Amazon rat or landlord for passive income.Yeah, yeah, Dad. I hear you. “Something more reliable would ensure a more stable future.” But really, 11 years in, I feel that crypto markets are more promising now than they’ve ever been. We’ve reached a tipping point and are heading for mass adoption. The bull run through the end of 2021 will solidify that as well as seal faith in the greater movement. The correction coming around December 30 will shake off a few flies, but nowhere as many as in 2018.My time is worth so much more than your paper money of “faith.” I’m much more interested in what we can conspire from a generative force of detached value. There’s no price tag on my worth, my ability to create or my time. And I can let go of hoarding money because as I circulate and spend, more is coming my way. (I’m talking to myself there—take the Uber, jeez.)The evolution of value gives honesty to our digitized society. Money isn’t really finite. If anything, crypto has proven that. So let’s harness this unlimited energy source (even though most coins have a finite number to be mined, and we will tokenize more) and invest in one another and projects that will change the world.

I’m Committing to Spending Again

As we depart an era of extractive economies and enter a time when money becomes a generative asset, the way we exchange (“verkner,” as Marx called it) will be through investment in one another. True belief. Support of ourselves and of our humanity. As I write this, I take a final exhale of being cheap. I commit to spending. And I commit to the embodied trust that I will be taken care of. Maybe I’m writing from privilege. But if crypto has taught us anything, it’s that the most unsuspecting of characters—with wise investment and a belief in a new tomorrow—can get rich quick without trying too hard.

The world we live in is a world of crossing paths with people.I had a job that required me to arrive by 7 a.m. and be done by 3 p.m. My wife worked from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., but her hours could be extended into the later afternoon. We had chores and our child had extracurriculars. With that came two cars, two cellphones and too few minutes in the day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were often meals grabbed quickly between destinations and often from places that served food that would be better defined as a “food-like substance.” It was the modern world that most of us lived in. My family during the week was just two other people that I got to cross paths with. I make it sound harsh—we were happy, but we didn’t know that we could be so much happier. When COVID-19 created a new normal, many struggled to adjust to its chaos. But even though lockdown implemented harsh and disruptive changes, it provided me a new perspective about work-life balance.

Life Changed Drastically Working From Home Versus the Office During the Pandemic

Before the pandemic, my day started at 6 a.m. The questions of traffic and weather greatly affected how the rest of my morning would go and whether I could eat in or needed to grab something close to work. My wife was always asleep when I awoke, asleep while I got ready and asleep when I left. It was always a rushed morning.During the pandemic, my day starts at 8 a.m. My wife and I are up around the same time. We get to talk about how good or bad we slept, what we dreamt about, the things forgotten when you only see each other later in the day. I no longer care about the weather or traffic. I have breakfast with my wife and daughter, and we are together to see her off to school. That’s the first hour of the day. Then, work commences for both of us. She has her space and I have mine.

We’re saving thousands of dollars, and we have hours more time to use as we please.

Working From Home Gives Me More Time With the People Who Matter Most in My Life

Throughout the day, we have lunch together. I often make an omelette for her and will serve afternoon tea with some biscuits. When our daughter comes home, we have a chance to talk together and see how our days are going after work. We all go for a walk, and then, I start preparing dinner. Because I’m home, I have time to thaw chicken breasts, gather ingredients and prepare a meal—and my family has the pleasure of eating a well-made meal together because I finally had the hours to make it. We can even take our time to get our daughter to her extracurriculars and be there together more often than not.That’s now our average day. My wife still has to leave the house once or twice a week in the afternoon for work and has meetings at her office every couple of weeks, but because she can work at home, she doesn’t need to rush for a 1 p.m. meeting. We get to live a whole lot more life together and share more of our existence with each other.That’s the direct social impact on our family, but there have been major financial boons as well.

There Are Other Valid Reasons to Work From Home Outside of Parenting

Since I work at home completely now, we don’t require two cars. By getting rid of one—and by extension the lease, the insurance, the maintenance and gas—we were able to save thousands of dollars between us. The car we do have is now owned rather than leased because we could afford it. Our mileage on that vehicle is significantly lower, and maintenance is further apart. What would have lasted us six to eight years may now last us up to 12 years.I no longer have a cellphone plan because my work day takes place at home—it’s replaced with Wi-Fi. When I’m with my wife, her phone can be a hotspot to mine, and when I’m not there, most places have guest Wi-Fi. I’ve never been inconvenienced by it.Neither of us have eaten out for work since the first lockdown. If I did a cost breakdown, I would probably be very uncomfortable looking at how much money we spent at fast-food restaurants, coffee shop drive-thrus and cheap pizza joints for dinner on the way home. I can imagine that I must have gotten some health advantages from this new surprise diet brought on by COVID, too. This is a new experience for us, one that had never occurred to us before. We’re saving thousands of dollars, and we have hours more time to use as we please. We eat better, and our ecological footprint has been drastically improved as well.

Working from home has been the greatest improvement in living that has occurred in my lifetime.

Is Working From Home Too Good to Be True? Not for Us

There are many reasons to go back to the office. Folks miss the camaraderie, or home life isn’t an ideal work environment. I can respect that. For me, though, I would fight having to return to the old way. Working from home has been the greatest improvement in living that has occurred in my lifetime. It’s given me a lot more time and a lot more money, and I’ve been able to invest both of those into my family.I should also note that I write this with my dog snoring at my feet and one of my cats sleeping on my lap. More time with them is a gift, too.

Earlier this month, while scrolling Reddit with my morning coffee, I came across a post that inquired about what rich people problems were like. The question naturally yielded humorous answers, such as needing several routers to get internet across the house. While I don’t normally engage much on the platform beyond my ritualistic breakfast perusing, something struck me about this question. It’s true that money makes one’s life a lot easier. But does that mean that you no longer have problems when you become rich? What about issues specifically created by wealth? However hard that might be to believe, they exist. I would know. I come from an affluent family.For context, my family’s situation is somewhat atypical. My divorced parents had an outrageous income gap between them, which wasn’t compensated for with alimony. While my father accumulated considerable capital during his lifetime, my mother always belonged to the lower-middle class. This had the effect of giving my siblings and me the monetary benefits of being wealthy without being raised under rich people's culture. We were never connected to the elite circles nor did we go to Ivy League universities. This, perhaps, makes me able to answer this question from the standpoint of someone aware of my own privilege. So, what are rich people problems like?

All My Accomplishments Are Looked at Skeptically

The first one that comes to mind is having my accomplishments routinely dismissed due solely to the fact that I have money. I haven’t had to go through half of the barriers that my peers have, so I can understand where this presumption comes from. But while hard work is important, individual effort is rarely, if ever, the only factor in a person’s social status. I tend to attribute success to a varying mix of privilege, luck and hard work. I’ve benefited from the advantages that come with being white and wealthy, while also having a few lucky strikes along the way. Regardless, I consider the last point to be something I should be able to celebrate. I’ve worked long hours to get to where I am now. That said, I’ve often come across situations where my accomplishments were passive aggressively dismissed or belittled because it was assumed everything had been handed to me on a silver platter.I’ve known my fair share of privileged folks who ended up doing nothing with their lives because they took everything for granted and expected success to happen for them all the same. In fact, many people who are born into wealth end up leading empty lives because they never had to settle for anything, learn any skill or understand the value of commitment. At least I can feel proud of not having been one of them—for having shown up to do the work.

I avoid looking for support from the people that I know because they’ll likely treat me with a reminder that most of the world has it worse than I do.

Many Men Are Intimidated by My Wealth and Breadwinning Status

Alternatively, I often get my problems dismissed as unimportant by my friends and family. Regardless of someone’s social status, everybody needs support and understanding when dealing with life’s hardships. While I’ve never had to worry about making rent or paying for groceries, some troubles can’t be bought away. For example, when I started showing symptoms of mental health issues as a teenager, no one took me seriously. It’s not as though I had any problems visible from the outside. But to this day, I avoid looking for support from the people that I know because they’ll likely treat me with a reminder that most of the world has it worse than I do. When I got stuck in an abusive relationship as a young adult, I didn’t feel much sympathy from the few friends from whom I tried to seek help. Shouldn’t it be easy for me to just walk away, considering I’m financially independent? Having money doesn’t bring wisdom to a teenager nor does it make predatory men less manipulative. I’ve since internalized that my issues can only be attributed to my own shortcomings. I’ve grown wary of sharing my problems because I’ve been invalidated more often than supported.The next common problem related to wealth is navigating relationships. After my parents got divorced, it took my father years to get over the trauma of a turbulent separation. By the time he was ready to start looking for a partner again, he had earned big money. He had to learn the hard way that dating is different when you’re rich. It’s difficult to know if a person likes you for who you are or if they stick around because having access to wealth makes their life easier. This goes for friends and family members as well. As for me, a young woman, I’ve often struggled with the opposite problem. Plenty of men still strongly identify with the role of a breadwinner. I’ve noticed that many men I’ve dated end up, sooner or later, feeling as though they have nothing to offer. When I’m the one paying for most household expenses, dinner dates and travel, they’ve all confessed to feeling like they’re burdening me. It didn’t matter that I was happy to share my wealth. As a society, we still raise men to conflate their worth with how much they can provide for their families. When those relationships withered, it made me wonder if that hadn’t been part of the reason. This is an issue I have yet to find a solution for.

The system is so rigged in my favor that this is the equivalent of putting a Band-Aid on a flesh wound.

I Don’t Blame Anyone for Seeing Me in a Negative Light

While I was not raised under rich people’s culture, I have known someone who has. My friend, who we can call Sara, grew up in the one percent elite of her home country. From the day she was born, she had it battered into her mind that she would have to become an important person. The pressure to succeed wasn’t about her parents wanting a decent life for her—it was a question of honoring the family name. She had been trained to become Mom and Dad’s child prodigy. She was never permitted to have an identity beyond what her parents had envisioned for her, and as such, Sara grew up to become a wreck.She spent most of her formative years rebelling against her culture. She traveled halfway across the world to live in a dingy apartment, far from anyone she knew as a child, with an Ivy League education and nothing to show for it. The self-loathing she carried from years of psychological abuse from her family is not canceled by the monthly checks she collects from them as a woman in her 30s. She has an eating disorder that she’ll likely never recover from because she was never allowed to be anything short of perfect. When looking at Sara’s life, I can’t say that I see much to envy or that growing up rich has helped her become a happier person.While I am thankful for being privileged, I spent a lot of time beating myself up for it when growing up. I understand why the wealthy hide in gated communities and isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Society’s income inequality is unbearable to look at. I always surrounded myself with people of various socio-economic backgrounds, but currently, I don’t know anybody who is not struggling with crippling debt, save for those who’ve been fortunate enough to have rich parents. Most of my generation is faced with the bleak prospect of a houseless future and unlikely retirement. As I approach my 30s, none of my friends are considering starting a family because they don’t have the available resources. While I know that I am not personally responsible for the system we live in, I’ve accepted that the guilt of being a rich kid would never leave me. I pay my taxes and give back to society when I can, but the system is so rigged in my favor that this is the equivalent of putting a Band-Aid on a flesh wound. While I don’t have all the answers, I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can redistribute my wealth. I like to think that I am one of the good ones. Regardless, I know I’ll always be seen negatively by a fair portion of people, and who would I be to blame them?

Being a human in America comes with all sorts of questions. It starts out innocently enough: What’s your favorite color? What grade are you in? What do you want to be when you grow up? Then, the machine ticks on and things get a little more intense as we age. Oh, do you have a boy/girl/human friend? Have you lost your virginity? Where are you going to school? What’s your major? How are you spending the summer? What will you do when you graduate? By the time this slurry of life questions calms down, we’re generally in our 20s or 30s and can expect the solid standards for the next third of our lives: What do you do? You got kids? How’s the weather down there? Somehow, I escaped the pressure of needing to have a good answer to these questions. I generally don’t care to answer them consistently, as I have found my way out of the matrix with a few key hacks.

I don’t build my identity around my career.

How I’ve Managed to Build a Life, Not a Profession

1. I don’t build my identity around my career. Or, more specifically, I do things that align with my values instead of the other way around. When people ask me what I do, I often lead with my beliefs instead of my actions—I share my values, not my job title. Sometimes, this informs a path to mutual connection where our values may intersect; other times, it allows me to identify a broad category that relates to my values on the planet instead of my productive output, and I can frame my lifestyle in those values. 2. By choosing to lead with values, I’ve realized that I can build a lifestyle first and a professional identity second or even third, after my relationships. My values are especially tied to my health, as I was diagnosed with a terminal disease a few years ago. This also means prioritizing health is a core value and that includes finding daily activities that keep me healthy, joyful and aligned with my values.3. I’ve realized what I’m good at and practice those skills in professional ways. I know I’m a pretty good artist, good at interviewing, good at writing, good at designing things and businesses. In many cases, the actual project can vary from day to day, but the joy I get from doing things I’m both good at and that keep me healthy allows for my life to feel both abundant and extremely chill. This is why I feel like a semi-retired person. I get paid as a consultant and business owner on many projects simultaneously and live without a set weekly schedule. I have a great, affordable studio office where I can bike, take walks, grab coffee, host friends and do all my projects in a creative space. When the sun begins setting, I hop back on my bike and ride home down the hill to have dinner with my partner, read and maybe do some writing or watch a show. I don’t have to go into the studio if I don’t want to. My schedule can ebb and flow.

Ultimately, we’re all facing a terminal diagnosis—death will come for us eventually.

I Hope Others Can Semi-Retire Like Me

Over the last few months, I’ve been approached getting back into full-time life and starting a company (I used to be a CEO and co-founder). I’m also about to get married and feel some external pressure, largely from the culture I was raised in, to get back into a daily grind and make the big bucks. Even the wedding gives me anxiety, as I know I’ll be meeting and catching up with folks who will ask me those same questions: How’s work? What are you doing these days? What’s your big plan for the future? Living with terminal disease is a huge factor in how I consider work and where I spend my time. Now that I’m getting married, I am choosing to prioritize my family and seeking an answer to what that looks like, all while I stay healthy and keep a high quality of life. Do I dare return to entrepreneurship, building a business and chasing money, or keep finding jobs that cover my lifestyle without selling my soul to one daily grind? What does prioritizing family mean in this consideration? I am still figuring all this out.Ultimately, we’re all facing a terminal diagnosis—death will come for us eventually. We also need to balance the responsibilities we have to ourselves while finding love and connection with others as parents, partners, family members, friends and colleagues. What if now is the perfect time for us all to step into semi-retirement? There are almost always things we can do to make our lives feel more chill. It may be taking walks outside with regularity; maybe it’s riding a bike to work; maybe it’s just reading more or meditating with the birds in the trees. Whatever you find, I hope you can discover a bit of retirement in your current state—regardless of how hectic it is—to relax and feel the bliss of life in slow motion.

Ever since I saw Tiffani Amber Thiessen, Kelly from Saved by the Bell, portray drug-using vixen Valerie on 90210, I knew I wanted to be an actor. Well, back then, I was also a 12-year-old gender-assigned boy watching shows he knew nothing about. So really, I just wanted to be a hot-ass chick who was addicted to sex and drugs. I knew Tiffani was playing a role, but it seemed so real. I started watching TV differently. I started comparing my life to theirs. I would do anything to become one of the elites in the world: a Hollywood starlet.When I finally got to Los Angeles, I would drive by sets like Warner Bros. and Universal and just dream of how I could get on a movie lot. It all looked so glittery and delicious. Hollywood is the land of dreams and I am here, baby! Let’s tear this city up the way Taylor Swift is chewing up Jake Gyllenhaal!

As an Extra, I Experienced Miserable Set Conditions

4 years later…Rain is spitting on my umbrella and some is even seeping through. So much for buying a new one. THANKS TARGET! It’s 5:30 a.m. and I am just arriving at base camp where actors, background actors (extras), crew and everyone in between get ready for the shooting day ahead of us. The crew is obviously not prepared for rain. Why would they be? The weather stations were only telling us for a week there was a bomb cyclone hitting the West Coast. Which, if you don’t know what that is, it’s a fucking hurricane!I digress. Obviously, no one understood the assignment this morning or the higher-ups don’t give a shit about crew or background. I highly suspect option B. The producers and main actors aren’t with us in the rain. They’re in their big, warm trailers where they don’t get wet at all. There are also windows from the trailers, so they just watch all us ants scurry in the storm to get ready to be on camera.I know what you’re thinking: “You’re acting!” NOPE! I am almost acting. I’m a background actor. You know, the people who are lamps in the distance that you turn off and on when needed. The production assistants (PAs) that take care of background actors are called herders. And we are the cattle. Mooooooooooo!I bet you’re also gonna ask, “Why didn’t you just leave?” Well, nosey, I asked when the first bucket of water from the one tent we had that was to cover 20-plus background actors splashed on me like a water ride your soon-to-be ex forces you on. One of the PAs begged me to stay while also promising me that we would be done before lunch. The PA wasn’t being nice to me because she liked me but because they literally can’t use anyone else due to COVID-19 protocols and being tested for work.We get to holding, which is close to the set. Holding is where all background actors wait until the important people need us. We had to take a bus about a mile away from our cars and where we got ready in the morning. I’m just grateful they didn’t make us walk. There are no chairs and no heat in holding, but we are inside. I ask for chairs and they say they’re coming. Two hours later and still no chairs, but the PA keeps insisting they’re coming. I call him a liar, and that is the first time a PA looks at me crazy. And yes, I usually stick up for myself, so I can tell this guy is already having a bad day. Like the rest of us.

They are all in the same boat as me: underpaid, underappreciated, overworked, underappreciated, never any job security, underappreciated.

There Is a Huge Divide Between How Movie Stars and Background Actors Are Treated

Set calms me down a bit because I’m doing what I love and I’m not getting wet. That’s why I came to L.A.: to be around like-minded people to act, write and be freaking merry. It’s also wonderfully warm on set because there’s heat! I’m filming with Aisha Hinds, who I don’t know anything about, but she is the only good thing of the day. Kind and funny and doesn’t seem like the average asshole movie stars that I’m usually around, who are, how do I put it: CUNTS CUNTS CUNTS.It’s almost lunchtime and we have been on set for nine hours. Because production isn’t keeping us safe from the rain, I’ve had to change my waiter costume not once, not twice but three times due to getting dirty or wet. And the people that care are no one. Why would they? They are all in the same boat as me: underpaid, underappreciated, overworked, underappreciated, never any job security, underappreciated. Honest to god, if every once in a while a producer or director said “good job,” that would be sufficient for me.We’re filming in a well-known pizzeria off of Hollywood Boulevard, and as we are being released for lunch, there’s a rush to get off of set. Probably because everyone is hangry and over it. I find myself sandwiched between the other waiter and Aisha Hinds. The other waiter asks me if we are done and my response is, “Girl, I don’t have a fucking clue what’s happening.” Aisha lets out an infectious laugh and shares my statement. So typically, no one knows anything except for the producers. We’re all hostages to the powers that be. Aisha talking to me shouldn’t be my best moment of the day. A human talking to another human without needing or wanting anything shouldn’t be the highlight of my day, but this is the time we live in.Here is where Aisha and I part, though. So many celebs have so much power and they don’t try to help the little people. They knew we were getting ready in a swamp parking lot. They knew it was cold AF outside, and if the main actors are hating their treatment, believe me when I say this: They could NEVER handle what background actors and crew go through. Now, before some of you veteran actors say you have to pay your dues, well baby, the dues are different in 2021. The world is different after the pandemic. Everything is different, so don’t measure my non-success to your success. And be grateful you got into an industry where you have to be lucky or fuck to get to the top.

I Was Fed up With the Poor Treatment of the Background Cast

So the PA (cow herder) who lied to us about the chairs (we did eventually get them) takes us down the street and to our lunch.Have you ever heard the phrase “when a bitch breaks”? Well, that happened to me.As we’re herded into the second pool parking lot, I look at the other waiter and she has a plastic bag that production gave her over her head. Normally, waiting in lines is part of this industry. You just accept it and move on with your life. But as I survey the scene of Ryan Murphy’s 9-1-1, I know this is abuse. Production doesn’t even have umbrellas for crew or background. Let me state too that if we have any symptoms of cold or flu, we can’t work. What do you think happens when it’s cold and rainy?I look at the scene as I’m at the end of the soup kitchen line. I decide I’m done. Not with just Ryan Murphy’s red-headed stepchild of a show but with all background acting. Before I started background acting nearly four years ago, I ran my own business as a hairstylist. Now I’m waiting in line as if I'm a homeless person on the streets of L.A. waiting for scraps to be thrown to me.That’s it!I turn around and walk to a transport bus. I wait and one stops for me. I ask the driver to take me back to base camp and my car. I am very polite. He tells me that no background can go anywhere without someone’s permission. I look at him and say, “I just want to go home; can you just please take me to my car?” “Listen bro, just go eat lunch and be happy,” the transport guy mansplains to me.“I’m not a bro,” I say, to which he screams at me, “Okay, person!”I can’t tell if I’m crying or if it's raining. Both.There’s an opening with security leading to the street, which then will lead me back to my car a mile away. In the rain. Fuck it—I start the trek. I feel liberated. This is like a movie scene. Waiter costume, leaving in the rain, crying. So much drama!I get halfway down the street and the same transport comes flying up next to me and the asshole PA from before gets out.“Where are you going?”“Home,” I say, and I keep walking.“You can’t leave without my permission.” Very aggressive.I’m stunned. I have never been talked to like this by anyone other than my parents at this point in life. I’ve also never been stalked by anyone. The transport guy pipes in, trying to get me back into the van and go back to the soup kitchen line.“I don’t want to be here and I’m leaving. I don’t feel safe,” I plead.“What’s your name?” the herder asks me as he takes his phone out.I laugh and start walking again up the rainy street. Like I give a shit that he’s going to call casting and tattle on me. I can hear the convo now: “We have a rogue background bitch escaping down Hollywood Boulevard; get ‘em!” I scream my name as I’m walking away and I say, “Call whoever you want; I don’t give a fuck.”Asking my name is the icing on the half-baked cake. I get it; most times on sets, we’re only there for a day, especially doing background acting, so learning new names every day would be such a pain in the ass and super difficult. The annoying thing is they always ask you numerous times what your name is on set and they never memorize it. Suggestion: STOP ASKING! Just call me what my parents used to call me…a mistake. I kid, I kid.After the cold weather, the rain, no chairs, nowhere to sit and no heat, asking me what my name is, is a kick in the pussy, and I’m not here for it.

Everyone who works in Hollywood is looking out for themselves.

You Have to Look Out for Yourself in Hollywood Because No One Else Will

I get back to my car, soaked, and I sit there for a bit. I start to hysterically cry, matching the storm. I took out loans and multiple credit cards to make this dream happen. I dog walk and still do hair on the side so I can come to sets and attempt to make it in Hollywood. And after four years and a pandemic, this is where I’m at. Having a mental breakdown in my car, defeated.If your dream has always been to be an actor, just know one thing: No one is on your side when you’re a background bitch. And you may say, “But this person is so fantastic,” and, “This person always shows me so much attention.” They don’t care. Everyone who works in Hollywood is looking out for themselves. EVERYONE. If someone is helping you, it’s benefiting them in some way, whether it’s to make them feel better or to make them look better.Hollywood will pop your cherry and throw you away like Jake did to Taylor.

I was deployed to Afghanistan in April 2011 as a communications engineer in the Royal Air Force (RAF). Through every part of my military journey so far—joining, basic training, trade training and my first posting—I had dreamed of doing exactly this, and it was finally happening.I was never much interested in playing soldier—if I were, I wouldn’t have joined the RAF. But I wanted to deploy to a war zone and do something to make some kind of difference, even if it was just a tiny impact to know that I made my mark, that I helped someone in some way. And sure, along the way, I would do something that not many people get to do: go to a warzone and experience the sights (sand), smells (sand) and sounds (sand storms).I spent half of my five months there working in casualty reporting. I worked night shifts, sitting on my own in a hangar full of desks and computer screens. Whenever a British soldier was killed or injured, I would use reports from the field, piecing together the events that happened through pictures and videos sent back to me, and then I’d send them up the chain of command. On the face of it, it was a pretty easy job. I felt like I was having an impact (even if really small), and my family back home was happy because I was relatively safe. In the military, I was known as a REMF, or a “Rear Echelon Motherfucker.” In other words, people who stayed behind the wire and didn’t get into any danger, and apart from the odd mortar or rocket lobbed at us, that was absolutely true. I was fine with that.What actually happened to me though was something very different. In reality, I was witnessing death and life-changing injuries of British troops on a nightly basis, often in some of the most horrific ways you could imagine. On some occasions, I would look out the hangar door and see a person’s body being taken off the Chinook helicopter to be taken into the hospital next door. Over this time, I guess I saw around 20 people killed and hundreds injured. I also saw a young child murdered by the Taliban and animals used as suicide bombers.I refused to accept that any of this would bother me because I saw it as my job.

I was witnessing death and life-changing injuries of British troops on a nightly basis, often in some of the most horrific ways you could imagine.

Years Later, I Was Diagnosed With PTSD

After my tour finished and I arrived back home, I didn’t speak much about any of this, but the signs were there that something wasn’t right. At times, I would completely zone out of the room. I was pissed off at the world and blamed everyone for everything (even if it was my fault). I stopped enjoying things and distanced myself from those around me. Initially, I was diagnosed with mild depression, then moderate depression, then severe depression. As time went on, I became suicidal and spent way too much time planning how I would end my life in tiny detail. By 2015, I didn’t know it but I began to show symptoms of psychosis—my perception of reality changed, and I saw it as my purpose on this earth to fly into the Middle East and take on ISIS as a one-man army. Eventually, six years after I’d returned to the U.K., I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).Frankly, that diagnosis is partly what saved my life—the other parts being my wife and my stubbornness to accept that this was it. I was now able to access the correct treatments, therapies and medications. I was able to process some of the events that happened, and I had two big realizations in the therapist’s chair:1. The only person in control of my life is me. So, if I didn’t want a shitty life, then it was up to me to do something about it.2. No matter what happened over there and how hard it was to deal with, I still made a difference over there, and that counts for something.

The Taliban’s Return Made Me Question Everything

Since then, I have lived happily, able to manage my symptoms and run a successful business with a loving family. Afghanistan was always a chapter in my life story that I would talk openly about, and it didn’t phase me. In fact, I was proud of my time there.Then I saw the news report: The Taliban had returned—and it wasn’t just a pain in the ass or a thorn in the side. They had taken over the whole fucking country in just a few days. Knowing that this would be a massive trigger, I turned the TV off and sat back. I couldn’t help but think about the women and young girls who would no longer have their education. I couldn’t help but think about the families tortured and murdered because someone wore the wrong bit of clothing or spoke to the wrong person at the wrong time. Hospitals, schools and shops wouldn’t just close down, but they’d likely be burnt to the ground. That’s when it dawned on me: The second of those two realizations I had while in therapy was now gone. Suddenly, all my time there felt like it was for nothing. And not just for me, but everyone who served there. The people that died there died for a cause, a reason? Now that reason was gone. So, what did they really die for?When I saw political “leaders” say that nothing could have been done to prevent this—that it was part of the plan all along—it felt like the final nail in the coffin.

Suddenly, all my time there felt like it was for nothing. And not just for me, but everyone who served there.

My Time Abroad Gave Many Afghan Civilians a Better Life

The next day, I called my old therapist and asked, “When are you free? We need a chat!” He was expecting my call and agreed straight away. Many of my old PTSD symptoms have now returned: the nightmares, the memory lapses, the anger, the brain fog. I’ve made a point to reach out to several military mates, some of whom served on “the front line” (not a real thing, in case you’re wondering). We’ve shared stories from years gone by, we’ve ranted, raved and even laughed at times, and together we came to an agreement that, in this really shitty time, has given me some comfort. For 20 years, we (as in all countries who played their part in Afghanistan) were able to give hundreds of thousands of civilians a better life. Girls were able to receive an education, people were able to move about and speak freely. People could get jobs or even start a business of their own.Whatever the Taliban do—and I have no doubt it’s going to be a massive shit sandwich—they can’t erase those 20 years. They happened, and people had a glimpse of a better life. I’m not talking about democracy or Western values. I don’t give a shit about any of that—and I’m not arrogant enough to think that’s what is going to happen over there. I’m talking about a sense of freedom. This is a luxury most of us in the Western world have, even if life does deal us a shit sandwich. We have the freedom to choose our response without fearing for our life.

People would kill for this.It’s something I’d kept telling myself any time something didn’t feel right inside. People would give life and limb to celebrate their birthday jetting privately between three club gigs in three cities on two continents in one epic night spanning more than 36 hours with the reverse time zone travel factored in. They’d love to call it just another day at the office. But the impossible irony is that you only need it until you have it, at which point you need more of it. If you’re paying attention, you might catch yourself in this predicament, and only then do you have a chance to transcend it—to move on to the next level instead of just doing lap after lap around the same course trying to get a better score. This is a story about coming to know yourself outside the image reflected back to you in the window of a private jet, the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of a Las Vegas suite or the lens of a camera broadcasting that image to tens of thousands around the globe. This is a story about transcending what they told us we wanted in search of ourselves.

This was supposed to be it. The dream.

Coming to Terms With the Fact I Hated My Dream Job

This was supposed to be it. The dream. A chance to work with the hottest label in the best city in the world, the one I always wanted to live in. Money, power, respect. I had only ever set two goals for myself in my life: the first was a full scholarship to a university, and the second was a self-sustaining music career in my dream city by the age of 25. I achieved the latter with a few weeks to spare, shipping my car full of stuff on a truck and hopping on a flight to Las Vegas with a laptop and a backpack. I took the train to the label’s headquarters, which had exactly two people working there at the time. My philosophy during this time was to say “yes” to everything, which was a lot considering that I had just arrived in one of the busiest music capitals in the world. A random Tuesday night might bring in a budding new act playing a boiler room in a tiny unfinished warehouse just a 10-minute walk across the train tracks.One afternoon, I came home to find a random gaggle of creepy photographers, who had stumbled in off the street, conducting a photoshoot with a half-naked and almost disturbingly young aspiring “starlet” in the living room—which I subsequently learned had been financed by the poor girl’s father. Did she like the way she looked reflected through the lens of those cameras, or later pinned up on their Instagram accounts like a trophy? I digress. I worked hard, partied about equally as hard and soon had a small squad of a dozen or so team members assisting me as the label continued to grow, blossoming our global fanbase from the thousands to the millions. I earned more and more money, accumulating savings quickly with little living expenses beyond the daily coffee, salad, tacos and weed. I also learned during this time that studies show any increase in happiness stemming from an increase in one’s earnings dissipates substantially with each increase over about $75,000 per year, the average median household income in America. The statistics tell us that money only makes you happy insofar as it can cover your basic needs—beyond that, statistically speaking, money has little bearing on happiness. As the label grew, so did my social influence and proximity to The Artist who owned it. An uneventful Monday afternoon at the office might bring an unexpected phone call imploring me to join Him in Rome for the week where He would be making a cameo in a certain sequel in a classic film series, filming during the night and sleeping during the day. I loved the way I looked in those dimly-lit mirrors at the posh Hotel De Russie overlooking the Piazza del Popolo in the heart of Rome, with its cavernous and carefully fragranced hallways emanating opulence. Life was good. So why the hell was I so depressed any second of the day I wasn’t distracted with work or women or weed? Why did it seem futile to get off the couch on a Saturday afternoon? Why was I seemingly unable to recognize myself outside of my own reflection? There had to be more. During one Coachella, my cleaning lady would confirm my suspicions. The festival fell on Easter that year, something none of us realized, insulated in our own industry bubble. I became aware of this when I phoned my cleaner, asking her to work at my place while I was away. She informed me that her family would be visiting from her native country for Easter, but despite my protestations, she insisted on cleaning my house anyway, even volunteering to bring her family to help. I was mortified at the idea of her visiting family cleaning my apartment on Easter Sunday and was embarrassed at the idea that it was even being discussed. But I was also aware she must need the money, or why would she insist? So I set off for Indio, or Palm Springs, or whatever, to hang out, have fun and support our performing label artists.

Staying in a Job That Makes You Unhappy Is Simply Not Worth It

By that point, I had become so jaded by this sort of thing that I was no longer excited about the prospect of an all-inclusive weekend at Coachella. I saw it more as something I was obligated to do. People would kill for this, I tried to remind myself. But halfway through the weekend, I could no longer bear the blathering, vacuous boasting and posturing, the social jockeying and transactional relationships and the endless requests for guestlists.You’re probably thinking “what a spoiled brat,” complaining about an experience so coveted as Coachella. It could have been much worse, indeed. Many families are without food, and there’s a never-ending war in the Middle East. But I beg of you to consider how depressed your faithful writer must have been in order to derive only misery from an experience like this. It had been years at this point, and I was no longer enamored by the glitz and glam of it all. I felt like a rudderless empty person surrounded by other similarly afflicted. I hated how I looked in the mirror of the green room at the Hilton Palm Springs, surrounded by unopened Grey Goose bottles and social climbers on the hunt for Sunday artist wristbands. I knew this couldn’t be it.

Seeing True Happiness Helped Me Understand It

So, on Easter Sunday, I bailed on Coachella early, gave my wristband to a random reveler at a pre-party a few doors down, and began the journey home. When I arrived, my cleaner, busy at work in my kitchen, greeted me joyfully with a big smile and an enthusiastic inquiry as to my time in Indio. I was caught off guard by this seemingly misplaced joy; after all, wasn’t I supposed to be the happy one? Wasn’t she, the person cleaning houses for cash on Easter Sunday, supposed to be the miserable one?The dichotomy hit me like an oversized corporate energy drink canister on wheels barreling toward the Las Vegas Speedway, and something changed in me at that moment. I saw true happiness, embodied in a woman doing nothing more than earning her living with her family by her side and a smile on her face. I saw gratitude and humility, and something else I wouldn’t recognize for years to come—the exuberant inner glow of self-love, radiating outward to all those within range. This woman wasn’t looking in the mirror at all. Her joyful existence was being reflected back to her constantly through the people she helped, the family she supported and, in a way, the glass windows she made spotless. This woman had attained the mastery of life that had eluded me—the simple solace of service to others.

I saw true happiness, embodied in a woman doing nothing more than earning her living with her family by her side and a smile on her face.

The Tour That Finally Changed the Direction of My Life

As the corporate energy drink of life barreled on into the fall of that year, I found myself on a plane to Japan for some leisure time before a string of performances in Asia. Little did I know I’d soon begin the final descent of my journey to find my real self, outside of the external constructs of any of the aforementioned accouterments. The penultimate act in this play commenced with me taking a crap in a crudely carved crater in the ground in an impossibly sweaty nightclub in Manila, just minutes before my own globally live-streamed performance on the world’s biggest event-streaming platform during the city’s busiest music weekend. Later that trip, we’d pass through Ibiza for an epic week of partying and performances, then to Mykonos to play for an extravagant birthday celebration for the son of Croatia’s wealthiest man. He’d flown 100 of his friends in on four private jets to take over the most opulent resort on the island, where everyone had their own butler. What could top that? I soon found myself so burned out and exhausted that I began to remember something a mentor had told me: “You must go to Kerala in India,” the birthplace of Ayurvedic medicine, he’d said. “It would be a great place for you to reconnect with yourself.” I started looking into traveling there and planning a much-needed vacation from this life that had, at one time, been a vacation in and of itself.

Learning How to Live Outside the Entertainment Industry

I arrived at the Ayurvedic resort in India and was disappointed by the bland food and modest accommodations. But I was blown away by the insight of the medical staff. With one look into my eye, a young doctor I’d just met recalled the sports concussion I had suffered 15 years prior, and with a gentle hand on my artery, he described with chilling accuracy the nature of my personality. How did he do it? We began discussing my lifestyle and physical and mental ailments. He knew I was a smoker because a certain spot on my forearm was tender when he gently pressed into it with his finger. Knowing my time with him would be short, I asked him to outline for me the most important pillars of a healthy lifestyle. What were the main things to focus on? He told me if I ate clean, exercised, drank water and slept adequately and in accordance with the phases of the moon, I wouldn’t have much to worry about. Oh, and there was one more thing: Meditation, he said, would bring me back to a state of inner peace and wholeness, grounding me in my own being, helping me weather the storm around me. Reflecting on his unparalleled body of knowledge, and the benefits of Eastern medicine and meditation, I resolved I would open myself to the possibilities of channeling this into the music industry, and towards artists specifically.

Finally Saying Goodbye to What I Thought Was My Dream Job

Shortly after arriving back home, I managed to get up the courage to take the ultimate leap of faith. I walked away from this dream job in this dream city with no plan other than to learn more about myself and the collective self, in pursuit of that pure inner joy my housecleaner had exhibited the year prior. I sold or gave away almost all of my possessions, bought a one-way ticket to another continent, and as I untethered myself from the social and career structures from which I had derived my self-image, I began to feel the wind whipping in my hair as I half-flew, half-free-fell off the proverbial cliff into the unknown. The next few years weren’t easy. They were undoubtedly the most difficult years of my life. Trying to find yourself with no mirrors around can be deeply, existentially unsettling. I traveled the world, spent all my savings in search of myself and ultimately wound up right back where I started. As I write this, I’m even involved with a new label—but instead of it defining me, it has provided me an outlet for creative self-expression and genuine connection to those who resonate with it. Today, while I might be living in the same city and doing the same work, my outlook and approach are completely new. The years of soul-searching, initially sparked by the apparent emptiness of a material lifestyle, taught me that everything I was looking for was within.I don’t look in the mirror as often now, because I’ve learned the face staring back at me has nothing at all to do with who I am. Mirrors only show skin and bones. When I need to remember who I am, I just sit back, close my eyes and let the bliss of meditation return me to the source.

The term “undocumented” has somehow become the typical definition of someone caught in the crosshairs of U.S. immigration. (Unfortunately, sadly, that’s often both figuratively and literally!) I prefer the term “statusless American.” I’m sure it was some well-meaning attorney (who sees people as statistics) who came up with “undocumented,” and not someone who has actually lived it. No one chooses to be undocumented. And for the record, no one chooses to be white, either. However, one is allowed to choose nationality, as long as they are wealthy and connected.

I was statusless, against my will, for 26 years.

How I Ended Up Undocumented

I was statusless, against my will, for 26 years. I was legally married to a U.S. citizen for 18 years, and I have an American-born grandfather. I’m also white.Statusless whites do exist. I’ve met a few undocumented whites and heard stories of some others being in ICE centers. When I met up with deported friends in Mexico City last year, they told me of the undocumented whites from the U.K., the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Romania and Russia. Canada has an estimated 100,000 people living in the U.S., while Germany and Ireland have the most from Western Europe. There are undocumented whites from the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America. I met a man, who was born in Switzerland, who was forced to leave his home in the U.S. where he lived for 20 years. The government wouldn’t let him renew his green card, so he was on a bus to Costa Rica like I was. He wasn’t in a position to go back to Switzerland, which was no longer his home. I felt for the guy, since my story was similar.I came to the U.S. as a teenager in 1993, escaping a dysfunctional family and bullying back home in Atlantic Canada. I came in “ack-bassward,” as they say, because I didn’t know the rules. I ended up finding a place to stay in Chicago with gifted educators who were Christian Scientists. I went back home briefly—and legally—to graduate from high school, then went back to Chicago in August of 1994. One of the educators I was staying with helped get me into Jacksonville State University in Alabama. In 1996, I transferred to Columbia College in Chicago.

Immigration Hell

While people were kind, I had to do everything by myself when it came to immigration. It was not easy, although the rules were vastly different than they are now. For instance, there were no laws blocking you from becoming legal in the United States, you were expected to get your Social Security number as one of your first steps and the average American believed that if you worked hard you would become legal. Nobody saw you as a criminal for doing so.After three years of being ping-ponged through immigration hell—while the system’s operating rules changed with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996—I became legal to stay in the U.S. for a year. I think I only got this visa—for free—because a friend of mine flirted with the officer at the airport. I met someone, graduated from film school and we married at the end of 1997. I applied for a green card in 1998. There were two reasons it didn’t go through. First, we didn’t use a lawyer, in order to save on expenses, and my application went to the bottom of the pile. It got denied sometime in the early 2000s. (I found this out when I hired an attorney in 2013.) Then, around that time, the Clinton administration bungled a huge number of green card applications, including mine. (The Legal Immigration Family Equity Act of 2000 came out perhaps as a result of this underreported mishap. I didn’t find out about LIFE until late 2016, and it was too expensive for me to make use of.) Nobody from the INS, as it was called then, came to interview us. We decided to let a few years pass, and apply again. I left the U.S. for good just after Thanksgiving for a cruise ship job in Mexico that turned out to be a sham. I survived in Latin America for 16 glorious months. I’d never felt more free and dignified. COVID-19 threw me back to Canada. I am currently in the City of Toronto homeless program.

They don't care what color we are. We don't belong.

Being White Won't Save You From the Immigration System

My biggest struggle has been to convince people that being undocumented is more of a bureaucratic and economic issue than it is a racial issue. Racism can and does exist in U.S. immigration, but there are also many privileged people of color who get through it without a problem. It feels hopeless at times when those who have not lived through the immigration experience think they know more than you. Many immigration attorneys, nonprofits and the Democratic Party all have an agenda to make immigration a race-only issue. Undocumented whites are in danger of being deported, the same way all statusless Americans are. The powers that be do not care. I especially felt in danger of being deported while Trump was in office.It’s a struggle to even get people to pay attention to our stories. You don’t hear tales like this because I think that the media likes to promote a racial agenda. It’s titillating to white people, and makes them feel safe or gets them angry. Saying that white immigrants are in danger might make the issue too close to home, and the truth does not spin well.For example, when an undocumented man from Denmark accidentally set a section of the Colorado forest in 2018, the media was full of inflammatory headlines like "Illegal Immigrant Arrested For Starting Fire in Colorado, Police Say" to start the spark of hatred toward people like us. They don't care what color we are. We don't belong. The primary reason I am making a big deal about how being undocumented is more of an economic and bureaucratic issue than a racial one—besides the fact that it’s true—is because white undocumented people are often refused help from (mostly privileged, white-run) nonprofits and attorneys. They’re told that they don’t fit the agenda, and that they will be fine because of the color of their skin. I have been told that myself. It’s a cruel thing to hear when you do not know where you’re going to sleep that night or eat that day. I also think there is a subliminal racist undercurrent to the thought that people of color need help, while white people can be self-sufficient.If all statuses and undocumented people were helped, there would be compassion for all of us. None of us will be denied because of anyone’s agenda. I hope we can change that way of thinking, so all of us can be helped.

When he first arrived at the juvenile detention center, Mr. Murphy felt all the inmates deserved to be behind bars. I didn’t think he would last a week as one of our counselors. After all, he remarked, they were just a bunch of mutts and knuckleheads that society wanted out of sight. This newest member of our team wasn’t shy about expressing his thoughts about the young people we dealt with on a daily basis. “They should be off the streets and out of our neighborhoods.” Even though they ranged in age from ten to 18, Mr. Murphy insisted they were “wannabe criminals in the making.”Clearly, this gentleman needed a tutorial and some counseling of his own.As the senior member of this social services department, it was my job to take the new recruit under my wing, show him the ropes and offer help and advice. Many nights we would discuss the residents, one by one, so as to familiarize him with each one’s unique problems, whether it be at home, at school or on the street. As the weeks went by, Mr. Murphy began to make a stunning discovery. These inmates, mutts and knuckleheads were not all bad kids. Oh, sure, there is always that one or two with no redeeming social value, unfit to be placed back into society. But for the most part, they were youngsters who were dealt a tough hand to play in this game of life.

After serving their time in our facility, these boys and girls are released back into the exact same environment that sent them to us in the first place.

Kids in Detention Centers Rarely Have Parental Support

Since we worked the evening shift at the detention center, I gave Mr. Murphy a glimpse of how visitation goes every Tuesday and Friday night between the hours of 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. He was about to see one of the biggest problems these kids faced. Although a few parents occasionally showed up to visit their offspring, fathers almost never did. Usually it was their mother or the girlfriend or boyfriend of the resident. I remember the time a father did show up on a Tuesday evening. An armed guard and I greeted him at the door. We could all tell immediately that this man reeked of alcohol. His excuse was that he had put some cooking sherry in his beef stew at dinner. Of course, he was refused entry and was told he would be welcome to visit his son when he was sober. He was never seen again.His 12-year-old boy had watched the whole thing from the holding room nearby. As I told him this story, I was beginning to see a little empathy in Mr. Murphy’s eyes. He realized that it was important to explore and understand where these youngsters were being raised and by whom. What would make a 15-year-old boy think himself to be “cool” and a “real man” because he had impregnated his girlfriend? It makes you wonder what kind of a life that little baby will have. But, you see, these boys and girls actually believe that what makes them an adult is what they see on TV and learn on the street.

The Teenagers Leave the Facility and Return to the Exact Same Environment

All inmates in the detention center are required by law to attend daily educational training. Classrooms are set up with qualified teachers, but there is always that ever-present guard at the door. Whether they learn or not is another matter. Some, with help and individualized tutoring, will receive their GED with hopes that this will pave a path to a stint in the Army or Navy, and perhaps a chance at a decent future. They find that someone really does care about them and are willing to help them. Others, however, won’t learn that lesson as quickly. After serving their time in our facility, these boys and girls are released back into the exact same environment that sent them to us in the first place. Lack of parenting, drugs and poverty are all culprits that make up their lifestyle and practically guarantee that they will be sent back to us. It continues generation after generation. This cycle must be broken.

As we pass through and leave this world, we can and must make it a better place than we found it.

Leaders Must Provide More Resources for Children Who Need Help

All children deserve a bill of rights that includes food, shelter and clothing. But another right should be that they all have someone, preferably an adult, who truly loves them and cares for them, and who helps them get on the right track in life. Mr. Murphy and I, and yes, even you, have an obligation to these kids to save them from themselves and their environment. The very fabric of our society is fraying and it is up to all of us to demand from our leaders help, action and recognition of this horrendous problem. Political leaders must help with economic issues. Religious leaders must stress the need to strengthen the family unit and our teachers must be given the means to educate and empower our young people. There needs to be more guidance from our counselors and role models. These are our children and they deserve better. As we pass through and leave this world, we can and must make it a better place than we found it. Mr. Murphy has, and you can, too.

If you had a friend who said they hadn’t slept with their partner for 18 months but they were as happy as ever, would you believe them? Me neither.Yet I am that friend. And my partner and I are as happy as ever.After seven years together, my fiancée and I are very much in love and we still fancy each other now as much as when we first met. If not more (I asked her). We’re both physically active. We’re happy and we’re healthy. We have two young children. We live under the same roof. We share the same bed. It’s just that we haven’t had sex in it since July of 2019. If I were you reading this, I’d probably be expecting a twist. “My partner and I have decided to take a vow of chastity to become more focused parents.” Or: “As a couple, we have just grown into friends and decided to platonically co-parent under the same sexless roof for the sake of the kids.” And I’d be wrong. (Actually, just wait there while I go and check that last one. Writer runs downstairs. Chats with fiancée. Fiancée kisses writer. Writer runs back upstairs. Yes, I’d be wrong.)So why, then, are two people who are attracted to each other, and as in love as I am professing we are, not having sex?

We share the same bed. It’s just that we haven’t had sex in it since July of 2019.

Our Sex Life Resumed After Nurturing Our Firstborn

Our first child was born in July of 2017 and, as anyone who has kids knows, it changes everything. It’s the best thing but it’s a whole new act in life.Throughout that first pregnancy, my partner was exhausted. Then when our son was born, we were both exhausted. (OK, I can see now that my partner was still far more exhausted than me. If I could breastfeed, I would.) After a couple of months, when our son began sleeping a bit more, and when my partner suggested it, our love life took off again.The first-time post-baby felt like losing my virginity all over again, except I had more of an idea what I was doing. I was nervous because I didn’t want my partner to feel any discomfort. Despite trying to understand, I have no idea what it feels like to be a woman; even less of an idea about how it feels to be a woman who has birthed a nine-pound child.My partner was nervous, too. Despite actually knowing what it feels like to be a woman, this was going to be the first time she’d ever had sex after giving birth. We wanted our first time together after our baby to be special—candles flickering around the room, lilies draped off the silken-sheeted bed, soft music dancing on the waves of the breeze flowing in through the satin drapes, lightly veiling the views of the ocean outside our beach house paradise.Of course, it was never going to be that. Instead, we were sharing a caravan on a rainy holiday with my partner’s sister and her husband. They ran over to the campsite shop—our son was having a short nap in the next room—and we quickly fumbled out of our pajamas. It may not have been soft-focus movie magic, but it was a moment we shared together: two devoted parents who were still one sexual couple.

We Stopped Having Sex After My Second Child Was Born

After deciding that we were ready to have a second child, we got really lucky. After just the second time of trying, we found out we were pregnant, and our daughter was conceived in July of 2019. The first time around, I’d based my understanding of pregnancy on that episode of Friends, where a pregnant Rachel is very horny all the time. This time, I’d learned that wasn’t the case. To understand it more concretely, I’d imagine how I felt just after eating a Big Mac meal. A large one.Our daughter was born in March of 2020. Healthy, happy and beautiful. Just like her mom. I fully expected everything to follow the same pattern as it had with our son. It didn’t. It hasn’t. But that’s OK. OK, I’ll come clean. I miss it. Of course, I do.My partner is hot. Aside from the physical attraction, she is the love of my life. I enjoy sex with her. I love the intimacy, the feeling, the laughing and the togetherness of it. But it takes two not to tango and I would be lying if I said it’s not a little frustrating. This is the longest I have ever gone without having sex. And it’s hard. But this isn’t just about having sex. It’s about that closeness, and, yes, the horniness. Because who sees their partner for the first time and thinks, “Wow! I would love to not have sex with her one day?”I don’t want to sound like I’m some high school jock who’s trash-talking in the locker room, and I am sorry if this sounds selfish. I hope by not putting pressure on my partner, I’m not being selfish. I don’t even know how long other couples go without sex. Fifteen months may be the norm. That said, Fif. Teen. Months!To help with context, here are some things you may remember from July of 2019:1) The U.S. won the FIFA Women’s World Cup in France.2) The world celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landings.3) Greta Thunberg became the face of global climate change protests.What were you doing then? Having sex? Yeah, me too. What have you been doing since? Having sex? Well, there’s no need to show off.

I suppose this situation can’t go on forever.

Sex Is on My Mind

The reason I am telling you now is because of how I’m telling you now. Anonymously. Aside from me and my partner, you’re the only other person who knows about this. There’s been no cliched “my partner doesn’t show me attention” chat with a lonely colleague or stranger, as there would be in the opening scenes of a Michael Douglas film. There’s no sleeping in separate rooms. It’s even become a stock joke between us: “Shall we have sex now, while the kids are watching Toy Story?” We laugh and shake our heads at the absurdity of such a suggestion. Then we’ll get on with whatever we’re doing before we put the kids to bed and decide what to watch on Netflix.It’s on my mind. I have a soulmate and two healthy, happy children. We are in love and we are strong and we are happy. And I am lucky. But I suppose this situation can’t go on forever. It’s inevitable. I hope that we get to the bottom of it. Or any part of the anatomy for that matter. So, if you do have a friend who tells you they haven’t slept with their partner for 18 months, but are as happy as ever, believe them. Just don’t talk about your own sex life. That’s cruel.

I fell hard for the myth of the American Dream. I believed that if I worked hard enough I could write my own destiny, and if I didn’t succeed it was my fault. So, when I didn’t achieve the things I wanted to, I blamed myself. The shame that accompanies this is compounded by the knowledge that, as a Black person in America, my failures are seen as my own doing, even when they’re not. Disadvantaged, marginalized and oppressed people in this country share this burden. When the pandemic hit, exposing the inequalities that make the American Dream impossible, the finger of the nation still pointed at us.

My Relationship With Injustice in America

I’m normally an easygoing person, but the thing that has always infuriated me is pervasive injustice in America. It especially bothers me that the general opinion of people with power is that people without power are to blame for their circumstances. I was raised upper middle class in America by immigrants who came from the kind of poverty that’s often associated with life in a developing country. Because of this, I was taught that as simple as a flip of a coin, one could be born into a life of wealth or a life of want, and that while you should work hard, that isn’t the only route to success. My family worked very hard to get to this country, but by no means was that all it took. Being in the right place at the right time and accepting the kindness of others came into play. As a young adult, I noticed that many people believed the false premise that victims can be blamed for the actions of their perpetrators. Whether it’s pertaining to sexual assault, intimate partner violence, housing inequalities, police brutality or the failing justice system, it’s acceptable in many circles to criticize the powerless for circumstances being the way they are. It incenses me that those in powerful positions and those who benefit from injustice operate under these assumptions. The most blatant example is that if people of color, like myself, don’t achieve success, there’s an unspoken, racist assumption that it’s because of something inherent in us, whether it’s laziness, incompetence or lack of skill.This was why I wanted to go to law school. I wanted the power to stand up, use my voice and fight for those who no one would listen to. As an attorney, I could change the narrative.

In America, there aren’t enough dreams to go around.

Trying—and Failing—to Succeed

Today, I am an attorney, but I have yet to find my American Dream. I’m ashamed that I haven’t been able to dedicate my career to helping other people obtain their American Dream either. Because my family achieved this dream, and because I was a hard worker, I believed that it was possible for me, too. But, in America, there aren’t enough dreams to go around, especially if you’re not born into generational wealth or you’re not white, able-bodied, straight or cisgender. The systems that built this country to be what it is today aren’t designed to support everyone’s success. If they did, that would take away from those that the systems were created to protect. Of course, there are exceptions, people who slip through the cracks, but a few people who have “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps” are insignificant compared to the millions who aren’t able to. Many times, even those anomalies are not what they seem. I am one such anomaly. At first glance, my story would appear to support the notion that hard work will garner a person success, even if they are part of one or several marginalized groups. I worked hard and furthered my education just to get closer to my American Dream, while being Black, queer, a child of immigrants and learning disabled. But the following is also true: I’m unemployed, and this isn’t the first time. I was laid off due to COVID-19 from the first permanent job I’ve had in almost ten years. I moved across the country for this job and was only employed for five months. I’m in a quarter of a million dollars in debt from the very degree I can’t leverage to find a permanent job. I’m scared every day that I will never own a house or make enough money to retire.Graduating from law school was one of my proudest accomplishments. Sometimes I’m not even sure how I managed it. Finding a job afterward, though, proved to be much harder. I graduated during the financial crisis in 2008, and my struggles with ADD, resulting from a lack of health insurance, greatly affected my GPA, which in turn affected my ability to get a job with a well-paying private firm. After a few bumps in the road, I earned a couple of positions working in the public sector, but they were unpaid. I had to shift gears so that I could pay my bills, including my growing student loans. For years, I used my undergrad degree and worked hourly jobs. A couple of times, opportunities opened up, but they soon fizzled out. All the while, I amassed more debt because I simply wasn’t making enough money to survive.I shifted gears again and started working temporary, contract positions in financial compliance. Thankfully, the pay was decent, but they didn’t provide health insurance, and there wasn’t much room for growth or job security. In addition, these jobs didn’t involve the practice of law, so if I attempted to find a job practicing law again, I’d only be eligible for entry-level compensation. Entry-level salaries are low, but acceptable when you’re a recent grad—not for someone who has been out of school for years and certainly not for someone with debt.Instead of giving myself a break because I was doing the best I could, I blamed myself for my inability to obtain my American Dream. I was working for the very banks that helped make my ideal legal career impossible. The same banks that, though they were responsible for the economic crash, were swiftly bailed out by the government, instead of having to deal with the consequences—unlike the rest of us who had nothing to do with it. I hated that, in exchange for a paycheck that would only temporarily cover my bills, I had aligned myself with these institutions instead of the people I was supposed to be advocating for.

Longstanding Inequality Meets Global Pandemic

America’s unfair policies and discriminatory government practices function only to improve the lives of the wealthy, while making everyone else’s lives more difficult. While this has been going on since the birth of this nation, the consequences have been critical during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though the pandemic has taken a stranglehold of the economy, student debt still looms and we still have bills to pay. Yet, for months the government nursed (and continues to nurse) a debate over whether those who are unemployed deserve unemployment assistance because it supposedly discourages work. Huge corporations, however, have once again been bailed out.For me and so many others, unemployment doesn’t mean that we stop working. More than 12 hours a day, including weekends, I look for jobs while trying to expand my once part-time freelance career. I started a very part-time retail job, putting my health at risk so that I can support myself until a full-time job materializes. The state I live in miscalculated my unemployment benefits and the only way I was able to barely stay afloat was the $600 per week COVID-19 unemployment benefit. Three months later, I was still unemployed, the $600 benefit was eliminated and my unemployment claim ran out. The truth is, unemployment benefits (particularly with the COVID-19 add-on) are often more than what people make at a job no matter how hard or how many hours they work. The issue isn’t whether benefits discourage work—the issue is that most people in America do not make a living wage. For those of us who do, or have the potential to, the pay is rarely enough to dig ourselves out of our student loan debt. The fact that the government is unwilling to bail out its citizens the way it bails out big corporations—while pointing the finger at us for being unable to pay our bills—is appalling.

Three months later, I was still unemployed, the $600 benefit was eliminated and my unemployment claim ran out.

COVID-19 Is One More Injustice That Isn’t Going Anywhere

America’s citizens are struggling with this pandemic as Congress continues to argue about whether or not it will approve another stimulus check. The already severely flawed education system is now riddled with complications due to the pandemic and lack of government support. The pandemic still rages on in much of the country, but some people feel so entitled that they don’t wear masks to protect themselves or other people. Medical professionals and essential workers are on the front lines to save our lives and make our existence as normal as possible, while naysayers claim the pandemic is a hoax. Racial disparity is only now becoming apparent to everyone but people of color—because everyone is home with nothing to do but watch the news. Instead of truly working to eradicate racism and white supremacy, many are simply capitalizing on America’s sudden “wokeness.” I’m still trying to unlearn the fallacy of the American Dream today. Being blamed for not having a steady job or having massive debt turns into internalized shame for even the most seemingly upwardly mobile people. The rhetoric that we must pull ourselves up from our bootstraps—and that hard work is the only key to surviving in this country—is a false narrative that harms us even when we know it's a lie. That myth created the fabric of this country.Thanks to racism, capitalism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and xenophobia (to name just a few), this is not the American Dream—it’s a nightmare. My hope for tomorrow is for the powers that be to acknowledge reality and stop gaslighting us into believing that the responsibility for our success or failure rests only on us. Only then will we be able to work toward justice and parity. But I fear that, at least during my lifetime, that day will never come.

I am a gender nonconforming organizer who spent over 15 years in prison at the Central California Women’s Facility, and I never knew that when I got out I’d be able to be an advocate. I fight for #MeTooBehindBars, so queer, GNC and trans people who face ongoing harassment in prison and on the streets don’t have to battle alone.When I was incarcerated, I was constantly abused by the guards.Everyone who looks like me was. Torture, harassment and threats of rape became a part of my daily life. I didn’t even tell my family what I was going through, because I didn’t want them to have to live with the pain of knowing I was being tormented that way.

I Was Tortured for Being Gender Nonconforming; It Almost Killed Me

The most violent incident came during the 14th year of my sentence.Some friends and I were tortured by guards for 11 hours. They stripped us down to make fun of our naked bodies. Once we were naked, they made us grab our ankles and cough. It got so bad that I hung myself to make it stop.They did this to us because by then we had started keeping track of their harassment, trying to log everything. The guards caught wind of our efforts to stand up for each other and came after us.After this incident, I finally decided to tell my family what was going on. They called a friend of mine, who called someone from the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. Right away, I got notice that someone was coming to visit me. I hadn’t even been able to see a doctor yet to get my injuries from the assault checked out. CCWP got funds together so my family could fly up from Los Angeles and see me. I had a visit three times a month after that. Before that, I’d probably only had 10 visits in 15 years.

It got so bad that I hung myself to make it stop.

The Prison Found New Ways to Punish Me, Year After Year

For five years I couldn’t have visitors at all, as punishment for a criminal charge the prison put on me. Masculine-looking people like me catch more cases in women’s prison than anyone else. I was always accused of something, and they always had new ways of punishing me. Isolation and deprivation were only part of it. On top of having visits taken away, I also had my access to the law library suspended, and had phone calls and other privileges revoked.One of the guards’ favorite torments was to put us in dresses and walk us across the yard because they knew we were uncomfortable in dresses and would be humiliated. They wanted to show you that in their eyes you’re only a woman. They bent us over and said things like, “So you think you’re a man? I’ll show you what a real man is.”That prison is very powerful. They tried to control every aspect of our lives. They mocked us and cursed us out. It’s almost like part of their job description is to make you feel small. They were always watching us, too. If you stepped out of line, they got you.When a friend of mine lost her son, I reached out to hug her and was accused of overfamiliarity, which is prison terminology for being intimate or romantic. I just wanted to comfort my friend, and was sexualized and criminalized as a result.If you fight back, they told you to calm down, and said stuff like, “Do you really think you could get my dick hard?” It may sound extreme, but it happened to all of us.There are so many people suffering, but we can’t help them all. There are 4,000 people in the Central California Women’s Facility alone. Hundreds of them are trans or gender nonconforming.

The Abuse Doesn’t End When Your Sentence Does

We experienced violence at the hands of authorities before we were in prison, while we were in prison and after we’re out. Parole officers do it and so do cops. They can pull us over at gunpoint whenever they want to, just because of what we look like and who we are. My whole life it feels like I’ve been surveilled.And we are. They’re always watching us.Outside, those of us who went through violence in prison try to meet up and have our own healing circle. We talk about what happened to us inside that place. It’s hard. Some people aren’t ready to say it out loud. It still helps to listen, though, and to be around each other.What we want more than anything is for more people to actually care about what we’ve been through. We know we aren’t going to change the culture of that place: It’s prison and we know there’s no fixing it.But we hope the #MeTooBehindBars movement can be the beginning of something. Because when you’re alone in there, and you’ve come forward or made the choice to be a whistleblower, the retaliation can be unbearable. It feels like you aren’t going get out, like you’re either going to die inside or stay forever.I thought I’d never leave. I did finally make it out, though. And I want folks living through what I did to know that they can too.

How would you feel if your neighbor was the president? Would you feel safer? Would you fall asleep more soundly knowing that high-level security surrounds your neighborhood day and night?For my family and me, living next to the president is a hazard. I live in Nicaragua home to volcanoes, lagoons and an ongoing sociopolitical crisis. The incumbent president, Daniel Ortega, has ruled the country for over ten years, with no regard for the rule of law. Once a revolutionary against Anastasio Somoza Debayle's bloody dictatorship, Ortega won the elections in 2007 only to become a dictator himself.Since then, he’s managed to acquire full control of executive, legislative, judiciary and electoral powers, allowing him to change the constitution's articles against reelection. On top of that, in the last election, his wife won the vice presidency (allegedly), raising troubling concerns about nepotism and corruption due to the lack of international observation during the vote.

What Life Is Like in a Dictatorship

In my country, checks and balances do not exist. Ortega has full control over the police department and the military. This was confirmed when protests broke out in April of 2018. The government had announced social security reforms aimed to raise payroll taxes and cut retirement benefits. Let it be known the average retirement stipend ranges between 120 and 150 U.S. dollars, which doesn't even cover the cost of essential consumer goods.I thought the reform was a slap in the face for the majority of Nicaraguans who survive on less than a dollar a day. Peaceful protests began as a form of dissent. Over time, though, demonstrators started to demand the dictator step down from office. Suppression of the protests at the command of the government resulted in 328 deaths, 100 thousand exiles and over 700 political prisoners.My neighbor is still in power, and the number of perished freedom fighters is likely to increase.Paramilitary forces have terrorized, kidnapped and tortured journalists and dissenters. The perpetrators of these crimes are puppets of the government who have yet to be punished. I have seen some of them leave, armed, in the middle of the night in their quest for terror, on motorcycles without license plates. Until now, I have been a witness who had just stood by and watched them ride away.Before 2018, my neighborhood used to be a normal one, where I could go for long walks in the park, invite friends over, order food and come and go as I pleased. Now it feels like a prison. After the horrific events of 2018, Ortega and Vice President Murillo increased security measures, implementing three security rings with over ten checkpoints. There are at least five policemen armed with AK-47s at every security point, monitoring each person who comes in and out.These extreme measures alarmed me. I had to accept this new way of living because moving was not an option. The majority of our neighbors are strong supporters of the regime; their pride is evident in the pro-government flags hanging from their roofs. Within less than a few weeks, the military bought a house right across the street from me as their shelter. Since then, hundreds of men in uniforms have occupied my street—protection in case of civil unrest.

Having my rights suppressed only highlighted how important they are to me.

The President Used the Military and Police to Crush Protests

The military was there not only to safeguard the dictator but also to watch his neighbors. It became clear that any sort of dissent would put myself and my family in harm's way, so joining the protests was altogether impossible. As the outcry continued to increase throughout the country, the military stepped up the security around our neighborhood, installing barricades at every checkpoint, conducting daily inspections of the sewage systems with trained dogs to verify foes had not made their way in and poking the trash to rule out insurgents.My neighbor’s paranoia extended to approving a draconian law where dissent could be tried in courts as terrorism and punished with jail time. It became evident that the government was weaponizing fear. Consequently, several protesters became political prisoners. Some of them were my acquaintances. Because of my address, I couldn’t visit them. I refused to stay silent, sharing my consternation on social media.Even that could be dangerous. My mother feared I would be kidnapped because of my comments. After some of her friends began getting death threats for their antigovernment posts, she begged me to delete everything. As a political science graduate, I had learned about injustices in the classroom. I never thought I would have to experience it in my country. Corruption did not surprise me. I consider it a rather shameful element present in many democracies.My graduation collided with the beginning of the sociopolitical crisis. It felt wrong to celebrate while many mothers had lost sons who protested against the regime. My country was still mourning hundreds of students whose ideals of freedom led them wrongly to prison or, even worse, sudden death.Many of my fellow classmates fled the country. The government was targeting university students for being freedom fighters. Upon graduation, I got a job as a bank teller. I remember a different protest would take place almost every day, some only a block away from where I worked. What began as a movement to protect social security benefits quickly escalated to demand the exit of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.Every morning while getting ready for work, I would turn on the TV and watch the news. Daily, I learned how civilians perished at the hands of the police who had sworn to protect them. The fact that my neighbor was responsible for those horrifying acts terrorized me. At times, I used to cry myself to sleep while my mind played back the sound of the guns fired by the police. I felt I could have done more to help. I felt guilty. I cursed at my textbooks—neither John Locke nor Thomas Hobbes could help.

Choosing My Battles Showed Me the Right Way to Fight

Although I wanted to help, I did not want my name to end up on a list of the missing and deceased. I feel guilty for saying this, but I was aware that my death would not be the catalyst for change. In fact, it would be just one of many. Maybe my face would have been in a remembrance mural along with the others. Call me selfish, but I did not aim to die to free a country with a long dictatorial history that seemed doomed to repeat itself again and again. Nonetheless, I admired the bravery of others who conquered their fears to sacrifice their liberty in pursuit of the greater good for all.During the two years of the crisis, I’ve experienced more street harassment, courtesy of hundreds of men in military uniforms. I am too afraid to walk to my car alone, particularly at night. I'm worried I could be raped.Imminent change for Nicaragua seems distant, for permanent change takes time. The fight began only two years ago. The episodes leading to this new revolution touched the hearts and minds of millions of Nicaraguans. It changed me. I resigned from my job at the bank. Having my rights suppressed only highlighted how important they are to me. Now I’m working remotely for a nonprofit organization that fights relentlessly to protect human rights.The silver lining of this experience is that I have found my way to help. Although fear has not dissipated, I have learned to control it. My fear no longer stops me from taking action. Most of my work has been anonymous. As for my neighbor, his days in power are going to end. All dictators' regimes eventually do, and he is no exception. As Kofi Annan once said, “In the end, repression is not stability. Down the line, it explodes." Daniel Ortega is my neighbor, but not my president.

I’d been stranded on the side of the mountain highway for more than two hours before anyone stopped to help me. The snow was falling heavily, I was soaked to the bone and my numb hands were unable to secure the chains on my tires.I was terrified of driving through the twists and turns of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the snow. I hated taking time off work, paying for a motel and the five-hour drive in my 12-year-old car with a broken heater.But it was the only way I could see my loved one since his arrest.For seven years I lived my life this way, as a woman with an incarcerated mate: a woman who sacrificed my time, money, relationships and emotional well-being to support someone in jail. And the whole time I felt invisible.Invisible.That’s always the first word that comes to mind when I reflect on my experience. The stigma of loving a person in prison erases us from society. Gender roles and expectations obscure our emotional labor. Judgment from our close friends and family cloud our pain.

There Are Emotional and Financial Costs of Supporting an Incarcerated Loved One

One in four women in the United States has an incarcerated loved one. Most of us suffer in silence. We all hold the weight of stigma and isolation that comes with having a family member or partner in prison, but the resources to support us are virtually nonexistent. Rather, women with incarcerated loved ones are the support systems, for their loved ones and themselves.When you’re a woman with someone you love in prison, you face your own kind of imprisonment. Although we live our lives in the free world, we face isolation, shame and economic marginalization the same way as the people we love in prison. We pay for phone calls, visits, commissary and legal fees, often finding ourselves shackled by debt.For the first year of his incarceration, I paid more for collect phone calls each month than I did for rent. Each weekend visit cost me between $250 and $500. I managed to stay out of debt, for which I’m fortunate, but in the process I depleted my savings and barely kept my head above water.Over the span of seven years, having a loved one in prison cost me around $45,000.The costs to our emotional well-being are just as steep. According to a survey conducted by Essie Justice Group, 86 percent of women with incarcerated loved ones face “significant or extreme” strain on their mental health. That number increases to 94 percent when the incarcerated person is a romantic partner.Like so many women in this situation, I suffered from depression and anxiety. Many days I woke up without the strength or motivation to get out of bed. Often I felt hopeless, like I wanted to end my life. Preparing for every weekend visit—the thought of facing the long drives and humiliation from correctional officers—made me tense and angry. The isolation and loneliness of missing my loved one caused deep sadness, and even after he was released I still carried PTSD from the experience. I was filled with anger and resentment.

How To Cope With a Family Member in Jail As a Woman

Gender roles inform us that women are supposed to be nurturers, so caring for a loved one in prison is seen as an obligation rather than an admirable act of self-sacrifice. Gender roles inform us that women must put our needs to the side, so we don’t ask for the emotional support we need. Gender roles inform us that we must downplay our pain, so we center the pain of our loved ones in prison and suffer silently.I won’t pretend there aren’t individuals in my life who see me and affirm my experience, but for the most part, women with incarcerated loved ones play the role of caregiver and provider without the recognition we deserve or the support we need. Pure love and compassion motivate so many of us to care for our incarcerated companions the way that we do, but sexism and shame still relegate us to the margins of society.Political activist Angela Davis famously said, “Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings.” She was referring to incarcerated people, but the truth is, the women who love people in prison also disappear. More often than not, our experience is not validated or seen.If you know a woman with an incarcerated loved one, take a moment to let her know she is valued and her pain is valid. If you are a woman with an incarcerated family member or partner, know that there is no shame in the love and compassion you have to offer, and that you are worthy of love and support in return. Although you may be on a long journey on a cold and lonely road, the snow will stop falling eventually—and you will be okay.

“Take off your clothes and throw them in the bin. Now show me your hands. Raise your arms. Open your mouth. Turn around. Show me the bottoms of your feet. Now squat and cough three times.”This well-worn mantra is the welcome that greets all inmates upon their woeful arrival at a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reception center. The institution’s drab walls and razor-wire fences reflect an atmosphere of spirit-crushing control and mechanical efficiency—a stark reminder that one’s freedom has been surrendered.After this first of many such dances that will be conducted in the interest of “safety and security,” a stoic correctional officer will pose the incoming inmate a simple question: “Who do you run with?”This query is the crude byproduct of inmate-imposed segregation that the CDCR has honed into a conflict management tool. It pumps the lifeblood of an insidious system of antisocial rules that govern how thousands of people with different-colored skin and contrasting gang affiliations, inhabiting just a few shared acres of land, will live with each other.Established by convicts from decades past and dogmatically followed by those who lack the vision to consider new possibilities, these rules leave the air of most prison yards thick with a texture of suspicion, anger, hostility and despair. Sadly, for those who give themselves over to this atmosphere, there is a genuine feeling of having no choice in their day-to-day survival. Their low expectations for living a purposeful life result from their resignation to “how it is.”Unbeknownst to these prison creatures, however, is that what they see as a lack of choice is itself a decision that they have made.

We Were Like Brothers, but Race Put Us on Two Different Paths

In December of 1999, my best friend Ted and I made the worst decision of our short lives. We committed a horrific crime that resulted in the murder of a man, the devastation of several families and life terms in prison. Ted was a 22-year-old white man, I was a 20-year-old Black man and together we entered a prison culture that did not look kindly upon interracial codefendants. While housed at one of the most notorious prisons in California, Ted and I spent seven years walking the same yards without ever feeling like we were in there together.It didn’t matter that we went to the same high school, played on the same teams and shared the same fond memories. It didn’t matter that he lived with my family for a time, went with us on trips to amusement parks and shared our holiday meals. The fact that I’d been his best man at his wedding, that I was like an uncle to his two sons, that I viewed him as the only brother I ever had—these all became threats hanging over us, with dangerous consequences. Both of us had given ourselves to the status quo that Blacks and whites were enemies. We gave ourselves over to the lie of “how it is” in prison.Ted and I took different paths during those early years of our incarceration. Having a lengthier sentence than me, Ted decided that by engaging in prison politics, he could avoid being used by others. On the other hand, I decided to immerse myself in education to avoid the gangs’ powerful pull, but I also remained carefully observant of the rules of “how it is.” Both of us decided that it was more important to respect those antisocial rules than to honor our friendship. As a result, we minimized our encounters—a head nod here, or a few short words there, as we crossed paths each day on a small plot of land.It wasn’t until Ted and I had been in prison for over a decade that we found the courage to break through that toxic Black-and-white mentality.Both of us had demonstrated enough good behavior to warrant our transfer to a lower-security prison. I arrived at CTF-Soledad in 2009, and providentially, Ted arrived at the same prison a year later. When I first saw Ted in the yard, I felt a conflicting barrage of emotions. I was happy to see my childhood friend, but I was also uncertain and cautious about his motivations. Had the years of living under oppressive, antisocial prison politics changed him forever? Were there any vestiges left of the young man I once called my brother as we sat at my family’s table and shared Thanksgiving dinner?

Racial Lines Keep Prisoners Divided; We Reached Across

Fortunately, the answer was that my brother had remained himself, and something new had developed that I’d never seen in him before. Ted had transformed his thinking as he discovered an insatiable desire to add value to the prison culture and community in substantial ways. After teaming up with our brothers Richard and Matt, we created a think tank to support a vision that would transform prison culture.For the last ten years, we have been nearly inseparable. We’ve worked tirelessly to address our issues, create programs that give back to the community (in prison and out) and facilitate conversations that matter for the people who need them the most. We’ve spent countless hours enrolling other men with remarkable commitment from different backgrounds to spread the word about the lie of “how it is,” and fan the transformative flame of “how it could be.”Most importantly to me, Ted and I redefined what it meant to be friends.As criminals, we wrongly believed that friendship meant blind loyalty. Since then, our work has shown us that true friendship means being committed to the essential things in one another’s lives. Today we stand for one another’s commitment to God, our families and service to others.Our team has benefited from the talents of numerous thinkers, visionaries, collaborators and scrupulously committed workers, many of whom have contributed to our accomplishments. Our team typifies what the old adherents to the status quo would call an “odd group.” Living within an environment where people with different skin color or criminal factions are divided by lines of neatly manicured grass plots, it’s exceedingly uncommon to see two whites, a Black, and a Hispanic walking the track together, laughing together, eating together and planning a future together.

Harming the Community Got Us Sent to Prison; Helping It Got Us Out

For ten years, our team has worked hard to achieve some remarkable milestones. From creating and successfully launching an alcohol and drugs counseling certification program (which now has 30 state-certified AOD inmate counselors), to delivering scores of transformational leadership seminars to prisoners, college students and college administrators, our team has toiled steadily to affect change. When we won an award with for our work in the recovery community, the warden of the institution remarked, “Inmates don’t get things like this.”He was right. Our calling to contribute, and our commitment to each other, had produced truly unprecedented outcomes—and that was just the beginning.In March, Ted and I were ordered by the Governor of California to be immediately released from prison. We were both commuted for our hard work while incarcerated and our willingness to contribute to others’ lives positively.Richard and Matt had earned their freedom the year before, so now the four of us are in the community, working together in a new way. Today we’re directors of a nonprofit with the mission to transform the culture of restorative institutions and to help redefine the purpose of correctional facilities in America. Between the four of us, we have amassed over 80 years of lived experience within the belly of the proverbial beast known as CDCR. Now we’ll be using the same expertise to help improve the lives of incarcerated men and women, while equipping them to reenter the community as productive and thriving citizens. As newly free people who live with authentic contrition for our poor choices of the past, we look to the future with excitement, as we seek out ways to add value to the restorative justice movement.