I remember the first time I drove through Indiana.

There was so much sky. It was so flat. You can see clear across acres of corn and soybeans and wheat and tobacco.

The country roads go on forever, and if you drive too fast you miss the town at the 4 way stop where there is a small town square where daily life happens. A church, a general store with a gas station and the post office the sheriff’s office all reside under one roof that has been there over 200 years. Why fix something that ain’t broke?

I hated this place for long. I was worthless here. I lost everything to nothingness. My entire life, 41 years, gone. I was too old to start again in hostile territory, and goddamn were they hostile. You hear a lot about Hoosier hospitality, but there’s also a lot of Hoosier hostility in the forms of tribalism, nepotism, and good old fashioned racism(this is a topic for another day, though).

But then I started working, and I met people outside of the family(Ground Zero).

First, there was the high school, a truly humbling experience. It was there I met my first group of loving, kind, caring people just as irreverent as I was-you HAD to be-wrangling 2000 teenagers is NO picnic. It was a HELL of a lot of fun despite all the tragic things we endured on the daily. Like I said, humbling work.

The BMV was another amazing experience-incredibly difficult but I learned so much and got to be forward facing with the public on a daily basis. There was a LOT of ugliness in many ways, mostly from the public. I learned a lot about licenses, though, and immigration, and saw a lot of things a certain group of people say doesn’t happen in this country. Well, it actually fucking does, and I also understand why…but that’s neither here nor there.

Then when I got back into real estate two years ago, everything changed for the best. In addition to becoming a notary and getting my real estate license and other licenses, I met my radio family. Then we moved to a new town and joined the art guild and forged a whole second family through the art guild.

My radio family have become my social group and my best friends. We’re the same age, mostly, we’re all stoners, we love to party and and we’re like-minded. Then we started meeting up at live events. This led to the formation of our social club, which includes some of the radio personalities themselves. We all support each other in ways I never experienced in the Northeast – I certainly did not have friends like these, not that I was allowed to go out and have a social life outside of my home back then….but I digress.

I am filled with profound gratitude for these people, my new family. I am filled with a new sense of belonging in Indiana. I am home again, I guess.