Who are you? Who am I? | Week 22

June | Post College and Change | Week 22 | 6/4/2023

What was it like to leave Florida and live in Detroit?

There comes a day in life, which many know well, where one finally leaves home. When I say leave home I don't mean for summer camp, for a vacation with your friend's family, for an internship, or even for college. These are soft launches, they're impermanent, but they allow for a glimpse. In particular college, where understanding of this concept enters conscious awareness. But I'm talking about truly leaving home - you've graduated, you've got a job, and that job doesn't exist in the city where your parents live, perhaps not the state, or even the same country. I'm talking about really leaving home. I'm talking about, when your parents finally convert your old room to a guest room, take you off the phone plan and the insurance. I'm talking about changing your permanent mailing address. This is an important day and a rite of passage. And that day came for me in February 2019, when I finally left Florida for Detroit. I was fortunate that I spent the first 7 months out of college in Jacksonville, living with my parents. It was obviously planned that way for health reasons, a request that Amazon accommodated me with, to complete my first rotation in Jacksonville. But I had no idea where life would take me for rotations two, three and four, and especially no knowledge of what I'd do after that. What I did know was that I likely wasn't coming back to Florida any time soon, and I was finally leaving the nest. 

I can recall the weekend I left quite vividly. I packed up the car and drove to Charlotte first, the midpoint between Jacksonville and Detroit, where Connor was living. Mike met us up there and we spent the afternoon enjoying ourselves, we even met Guy Fieri that day. In the morning, I left for the remaining 10 hour drive. A few hours out from Detroit, when I made it to Ohio, it started to snow. I'd never driven in snow. By the time I checked into my hotel the grounds were so snowy that my car was slipping all over the place, fully loaded down with all that I had to my name. The next morning, I carefully navigated to the apartment I'd rented for 6 months, a student housing apartment near University of Michigan medical school in Ann Arbor. It was a quaint, very quiet 1 bedroom apartment. Rented furniture would be dropped off later, and plastic bins from target would suffice as my dresser and nightstand. It was almost 0 degrees the first few nights I got there and I was unprepared for what that felt like. Mom had gone with me to TJ Maxx a few weeks earlier and helped me pick out some heavier coats, but nothing would prepare me for getting out of a shower in 0 degree weather with no heat on. Stupid as I was, I'd decided I didn't need the heat, until day 3 when my skin was so dry it began to bleed. 

Like the story of humanity, across the eons of time and geographic migrations, I too adapted. It was merely a few days before I discovered a great gym, a favorable route to work everyday, and a good grocery store. It was only weeks before I discovered an awesome barber, a local pizza shop for Friday nights, and a good bar. It was a month later that Daniel flew in to road trip up to Toronto and Niagara Falls. It was 2 months later that I'd made it to Columbus and Cleveland. It was 3 months later that my parents came for the weekend. And it was 4 months later that I began planning my departure and next rotation.

It was a lonely existence nonetheless. The quiet Tuesday mornings getting ready for work in a cold, empty apartment alone. The early hours of Saturday morning when I wandered to bed from my couch, with whiskey on my breath. The Sunday afternoons spent driving through Ann Arbor, trying to coordinate a time to make a phone call back home. Loneliness and solitude are the price to pay for investment. I gave everything I had. I moved across the country, in a place that I didn't know anyone, in a city that I didn't particularly want to live, for a job I wasn't sure I wanted to do. But it is through hardship, through change, and through faith in the process, that we grow. And grow I did. 

Detroit is interesting. The 8 lane roads which lead into the city from all angles, the elevated tram and gothic architecture, which feels reminiscent of Gotham City. Everything downtown converges on the GM building at the center of the city on the water, a three-tower megastructure, silver, metallic and spherical like a space ship. It is a relic of a time now passed. The mostly-abandoned, failed version of central park sits quietly, awaiting guests that never arrive. Most of her inhabitants choose to frequent  the casinos instead. The whole city has a feeling that one could compare to that of the factory district in any city. The smoke stacks, wide roads and rusting metal speak to a time of abundance. The city itself felt like a museum. 

Midwesterners are funny. They're big, hardy people with gruff personalities. Not gruff like the Appalachians, the Bayou or the Great Plains, gruff like people who've weathered too many winters. There's a quiet contemplation behind their eyes. They're a people bound together by nature's brutality, somber and silent in their collective battle against the cold. Ironically, I found them to be warm and generous, a gift not bestowed upon you unless you show up day in and day out. It wasn't until month 3 that I had the first glimpse of acceptance. But by month 6, after I too had weathered the winter, I was taken in as one of their own. These are a blue-collar people - driving the same cars they built in the factories. They have a connection to the area in their sports teams, their city-pride, their unionization, and their work. I found it to be refreshing. I knew where I was when I was there - I wasn't in the Southeast or Northwest, I wasn't in the mountains or near the beach, I was in Detroit, Michigan. 

I'll always be grateful for that experience and what it taught me about myself, about the area, about the people, and about life. Everyone needs to "leave their father's tent" voluntarily and ideally on good terms. 6 months was more than a visit, but not long enough to be a true local. However, I'll always think of it as a home. I may never go back, but the experience will always be a part of who I am and who I've become.