Into the Wild

I think anyone who’s paying attention knows by now that the world is on fire. Yet, if you walk into any supermarket, corporate office, or goddess forbid corporate shopping mall around where I live, it’s disconcertingly hard to tell. I could go on ad-nauseum about the wide array of crises and catastrophes that hold up the smiling façade of western white middle class life, but I won’t. If you’re here, your heart is probably already breaking under the weight of it. And I love you for that. But at this point, as I walk through a world plastered with plastic holiday cheer–and so much fucking traffic now that government workers have been forced back to the office–most of what I feel is rage.

Like many folks during the pandemic, I had to face some very hard truths that the life I was living was slowly killing me, and, one terrifying step at a time, I committed to leaving the life I was programmed for behind. I pledged to use my energy in the best way I could muster to create a better world for our children. We know this way of life is not-so-slowly killing the planet. Hell, it is very quickly killing humans in the multiple active genocides that are happening in full view. Jump and the universe will catch you all the self-help books and podcasts and Instagram accounts love to say. So, I left my marriage. I became an insufferably vocal curmudgeon who regularly brings down the vibe at office functions with reminders of ongoing atrocities. I’ve come out as queer. I’ve yelled alone at protests and marches. I’ve read and read and read. There isn’t one among us (white people) who couldn’t be doing more, but I’m doing my damnedest to put in the work. I’m grateful to have the privilege to do so.

But the hard truth? Patriarchy is a bitch, and when you step out of line, life gets very lonely, very fast.

Perhaps because I had the luxury of pacing my steps, I was able to see the progression very clearly. The friends and family who were fully supportive when I left my unhealthy marriage, but pulled away when I started taking professional risks in advocating for robust DEI programs at work. The people who were fascinated when I started taking my daughter to drag brunch, but took it as an affront when I brought home a girlfriend. The people who put on their orange shirts every September, but who politely declined asked them to join me for a protest for the children of Gaza… and quietly stopped texting.

With every step, I’ve grown in my convictions that decolonization and climate justice are the ways toward the world I want my daughter to grow up in. However, especially after the 2024 US election, the loneliness of being both a liberation-minded individual and a single parent has been nearly crippling. I’m too much for the nice white ladies at school drop off–too much mess, too much commentary, too inconvenient for refusing to quietly look the other way while Canada politely follows the path that has been clearly laid out by the so-called-leaders to the south. Yet, even after years of trying to quietly educate myself in stolen moments between work assignments or while my daughter is sleeping, I don’t feel like I’m enough for the queer and liberatory spaces I crave–queer enough, experienced enough, available enough, vocal enough, healed enough. I completely understand any mistrust. I know who my ancestors are. I carry the script of the colonizer in my blood, but that is not the story I came here to write.

With each step away from the status quo, I feel myself stepping not into some magic community the universe has prepared to catch the folks who are brave (or dumb) enough to jump, but into the wild, unknown territory of a future that has yet to be created. One with enough resources, stability, and hope to span generations, and one that does not rely on exploitation of people or planet to obtain and distribute those resources. These ideas are not new. Tireless activists and organizers have been working as architects of these irresistible futures for many, many years. But for westerners, especially white folks, these futures will require reimagining relationships, community, work, and consumption. And in my experience, most white folks are simply not interested. Not because they don’t care, but because they’re terrified of stepping into the unknown. I can say this with certainty. I’m terrified too. But more than that, I’m angry as hell that even now, we, white middle-class people, are letting that fear keep us from making meaningful strides to protect the things in this world that are worth protecting.

And yet, I choose, day after day, to continue my steady march into the wild. It’s lonely, often destabilizing work, but even though it’s scary, it’s the only place where the freedom to explore what is truly possible exists.

Maybe one day I’ll meet you there.