Oct 2, 2016
By Hannah Peoples
Wonderful in the Middle of Everything
If you had told me a year ago that I’d be eating breakfast every morning while watching herds of giant bison meander around my yard, I would’ve rolled my eyes and wondered what bison looked like. If, five years ago, you had told me that I’d be living somewhere where the loudest sounds were the Meadowlarks and my eyes would see nothing but wonderful waving, golden fields in either direction- I would’ve laughed and asked for my money back.
2015 wasn’t that great of a year. In fact, neither was 2014 or 2013. In 2013, I flew back home to Portland after five years of working as hard as I could in the wonderful Fashion Industry in New York City. Every decision I had made for the past ten years was to get to my dream job. And at 27yrs, I had it. But, I was miserable. After being priced out of my apartment, I put my life in a top shelf 6ft storage unit in Flatbush, NY. Portland was supposed to be a respite. Six months, tops. I was supposed to return to NYC with a plan for happiness and success. The problem was, my parents became the best roommates I ever had. The fridge was always stocked. There was in-house laundry. And sometimes, my laundry arrived magically folded outside my door. Hangover cures waited for me in the morning. My brother had become cool. I stayed.
It’s not easy letting people know you’ve changed your mind, especially after being so ambitious and set in your New York City dreams. No mater how you spin it, it sounds like you’ve failed- it sounds like you just couldn’t make it in the Big City. And it’s certainly not easy to follow up with, “I’m living with my parents.” Or, more accurately, “’I’m living in my parents’ basement.” The years (yes, years) that followed were a yo-yo of emotions. I didn’t know what I wanted. I had devoted my life to one thing: fashion. Realizing that I hated it and no longer wanted a lifetime of it, disrupted my everything. Had I wasted the last ten years? What else was I qualified for? What else do I like? The embarrassment and confusion of not knowing what my next steps were, paralyzed any potential progress. My friends were getting raises, getting married, buying houses, having kids, divorcing, remarrying. It didn’t help that the reoccuring late night tv joke always involved a deadbeat 30yr old living in his parents’ basement.
Braided into my stasis was my grandparents’ ailing health. My grandmother, whom I was extremely close with, was in the final and most tortuous stage of Alzheimers. My grandfather, forever the optimist, spiraled through the pit of prostate cancer. Both died a week a part. And in text book fashion, various parts of the family accused and dismantled the integrity of the family. I lost two grandparents to death, and five loved ones to greed. I felt not only trapped by my own fear of wasting time but also waterlogged by sadness for the past and present.
Then, I started dating my manager. One tequila filled night, he mentioned a seasonal job, living in rural Montana; “wanna go?” “Sure,” I mumbled. Two months later we packed up our three month relationship and headed to wonderful Malta, MT. Actually, we live an hour south of Malta, but it’s too rural for a name of its own. We share everything, including our job. Our neighbors are our one-other co-worker and our boss. We have no friends here. The closest store and bar is in Malta- 54 miles away on a gravel road that’s impossible to navigate with the slightest amount of rain. Isolation is the first word that comes to mind. As I sit here, I see nothing but field and sky. Big sky. If the bison decide to walk on my vegetable garden or scratch up on the house, there’s nothing stopping them. Truly, we are in the middle of nowhere. I’ve never felt more removed and inaccessible. Strangely, I’ve also never felt this in tune and alive. I know that if I run through the fields with no direction, I’ll find my way back despite the lack of any discerning landmark. I know that if I don’t wear makeup or match my socks, the bison won’t care. The prairie dogs don’t seem to mind my aimless wandering through their towns and my life. The beauty of the American Prairie is that it takes its time cycling through peaks and valleys of growth, seasons of greenery and months of dead grass. The storms here are outrageous and when the lightning breaks the sky into electrical veins, I’m reminded that things are happening all the time, with or without a plan. As the saying goes, “the darker the night, the brighter the stars.” And here, the stars are the brightest. Here, in the middle of everything, I’m free to not know where to go.
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About the Author
Hannah Peoples
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