Home Is Not A House

Ever since I was in high school, I wanted to leave. Ever since I was a child, I wanted to be grown. I wasn’t fond of the idea of being treated like a child until I was asked to be an adult. Having my parents, coaches, teachers and other authority figures talk down to me and treat me as though I was incapable of making my own decisions was maddening. I was determined, desperate even, to strike out on my own and make something of myself. This is the main reason why I wanted to come to college in the first place. That, and incredibly hostile environment that was (and is) my home. I come from a house of women, and to say that they have a few screws loose isn’t putting it strongly enough. My mother is volatile and foul-mouthed, and her daughters take after her. They (along with the rest of my family) also were of the belief that because I was a man, I wasn’t allowed to do anything about their abuse. My teenage years consisted of being threatened by my mother to be sent to live with my father, who stayed sober for all of 4 years and was missing for more than half my life. His shadow loomed so large over me that it almost seemed like he was still in my life. I dreaded staying with him and his now ex-wife, my then step-mother. I just didn’t want to be around them. As my father also had severe anger issues, I didn’t want to run afoul of him, nor did I want to just bite my tongue and let my feelings go unheard. As he went back to jail my senior year, I only had my mom to contend with, and my relationship with her was deteriorating rapidly. I was accepted into both Penn State and Ohio State, and I was intent on leaving and getting far away from my family In Cleveland. Little did I know, my mother decided for me that I was staying home, and I was having none of it. Police was called to our house. Our relationship was near unsalvgeable, but the bright side is I had an opportunity to do something that almost no one in my circle had done or will do: to attend a four year university, and one of the best in the country at that. For the first time in a very long time, I was happy.

The seemingly endless possibilities of the new world I was about to walk into grabbed me like a baby would a brand new toy. The danger, the city lights, the love (or the idea of it), the pageantry, I fell in love with all of it the second I moved onto to campus. Of course, as the saying goes, “the streets love no one”. As an African-American male, this phrase is gospel. It refers in particular to the hood, but the world is much bigger than a housing project. My first night on campus, I tried to choke out some bootleg security guard at a house party and got jumped by him and his friends because I didn’t like how he was talking to me. I almost got into another fight at another party just before that because I tried to buy my way back into it after leaving despite the fact that there was no re-entry. Despite that, I wanted more of the lifestyle. It was exactly what I wanted. The parties themselves were what was missing from my high school experience. Because I couldn’t get alcohol easily in Cleveland, more often than not I would have face issues head on, which almost never led to productive results. But now, with house parties everywhere one looked, I didn’t have to fight so hard all the time without a break and without hope of winning. People get tired of fighting. That’s why people settle for existing as opposed to thriving; the world, the systems that govern us, even the people in our lives, seemingly do everything possible to grind our souls and willpower into dust. I was going to get a 4.0 GPA, get a job, get my music career, finally get a girlfriend (and hook up as much as I wanted), and walk onto the Ohio State Buckeyes football team. But unfortunately life got in the way, or rather, I got distracted.

Because I was only a freshman, I didn’t know how to find house parties easily except for a group chat for black students I was in. I wasn’t the type of person who hung out with friends readily, and it could take a while before you found a house full of strangers that would except you. I also didn’t know of any bars that would allow 18-19 year olds, and I didn’t have a fake ID anyway, so I resolved to only go out every once in a while. I didn’t have a choice. That was, until, I learned. Not from my mistakes or how to act responsibly, but of another way to feel the rush of the life I so desperately wanted. A certain bar was going 18 and up, which is as illegal and as jacked up as it sounds. The bouncers stamped the hands of the underaged, but it didn’t make any kind of difference. The club was too dark to see nearly anything, and the bartenders were too self-absorbed and too overwhelmed with customers to be worried about checking ID‘s or hand stamps. Plus, it had became a unwritten rule to wash the stamps off as soon as you got to the bathroom anyway. I was in, and I was having a LOT of fun. The sheer volume of humanity packed onto this massive dance floor was a sight to behold. The girls on said dance floor were dressed skimpily enough and would flirt just enough to make a young bull think he had a chance. But this one didn’t. I got rejected. Often. And often hard. It was a harsh reality check: girls didn’t love me nearly as much as I loved them. But as long as the drink was flowing, it didn’t kill my vibe, at least not immediately. But the drink wasn’t always flowing. The bartenders who served me were......unpleasant. I had one bartender threaten to have me kicked out over my age because I wouldn’t tip. I had another bartender crush a drink in my hand because I wouldn’t tip. I had ANOTHER bartender throw a ice cube at my head because I responded to her cussing me out in kind, and then falsely accuse me of calling her a c-word. It wasn’t about the fact that I was stiffing them on purpose, because I would have tipped them if they were nice to me. The problem was that they were never nice to me. A bartender even stole my $50 bill when I gave it to her on accident while paying for a drink, then to tell a bouncer I was harassing her. They hated me! I also wasn’t rich enough to tip people every night out either. Eventually the head bartender got tired of my face and told me the bar didn’t want my business. He tossed out a few crappy excuses but I knew why I was being banned: it was because I didn’t tip the ladies who made my life a living hell in that God-forsaken bar. These experiences should have pushed me away from parties, but it didn’t. They pushed me toward them. I didn’t learn anything at all.

Your bosses are not your teachers. They don’t care about your quality of life, or your mental health. They don’t care about you at all. The one thing they are concerned with is their bottom line, and you negatively affect it in any way, it matters not if you need your job in order to survive. You will be gone, and there is nothing you will be able to do. That is what getting bounced from job after job will teach you, and sometimes it will have been totally out of your control. My job at Kroger was the straw that killed the camel. Every customer acted like a Karen, even the men. Even black people. I tried so hard to be a good employee and to help these people who were acting so difficult, but one day I was called into an office with the HR and store managers. They asked about the customers I made upset and I explained that I did everything I could to make them happy. They asked me about hour long breaks that I’d take when the limit was thirty minutes. Because I had no car and no money, I had to walk to the nearest dining hall so I could eat. Employees weren’t allowed to leave the store or buy things from it on break. These people expected me to starve. As I only had been working for three days, I didn’t even remember the rules, much less have time to adjust to them. I tried to explain this to them. I tried to tell them I wasn’t even there for a week and hadn’t a chance to get used to the rules. I tried to tell them that I needed the job so that I could eat while I stayed on campus housing. They didn’t care. The store manager, with one of the blankest expressions I had ever seen in my life, told me that the decision to let me go was made before I walked in the door, and that I was basically wasting my breath, but he definitely let me waste my breathe and let me think I had a chance to keep my job. He let me think he cared. He didn’t. He’s not unsimilar to the people I’d encounter in high school. My football coaches treated me as expendable, despite the fact that I was one of the best players. My defensive coordinator tried to replace me, in my senior year and third year as a starter, with a junior transfer who was nowhere near as good as me just because he was faster than me. When I asked him why, he didn’t even respect me enough to answer me. My teachers considered me a nuisance and barelay wanted anything to do with me before they finally warmed up to me, and even then they didn’t look out for me the same way they looked out for other student. When I tried to visit the school, I was kicked out and was told to “enjoy Columbus“.

I always had a tendency to walk the streets. There are times when I felt constrained by wherever it is I’m living. I would wander the streets, sometimes for hours, in search of nothing except peace of mind. I still do. The outside gives me more solace than the place where I lay my head. It’s so strange that I’d look for peace from the place that hates me the most. It’s somewhat symbolic, with me looking for attention from people who couldn’t care less. With all that being said......I’m not homeless. I don’t want to be, either. I’ve come close on multiple occasions. If it’s one thing I learned over the years, it’s that home is not defined by material possessions or historical landmarks. It is a feeling. It’s a feeling that is developed by everything and everyone around you. I’ve never felt at home in Cleveland, and I don’t feel at home in Columbus. Hardly anyone on my journey has tried to help me or make me feel at home. So now, I will build my own home. I will craft it and only allow people who love me and want to see me succeed. Home is not just a location. It’s where a person should feel loved and cared for.