Status [Handoff]

[Audio transcription]

I don’t have a template for resignation. I don’t even own a white flag. But if I did, I’d be liable to burn it.

I happen to notice when something repeats. I will almost never trust why it does, but I will keep track of how it does.

It seems like once my writing dispels my frustration, I come to understand better, and the navigation instructions come back online.

I’ve made so many appeals for help over the course of my life. The answer generally comes from me, and thus it becomes another branch in the exploration of what the human condition knows on its own.

And so I must ask you a question:

Is stressing self-sufficiency in an individual a cover for neglect?

I’m back with you again for an audio update. It seems everything is moving faster than it usually does, and I am fighting with a little bit of indecision — also for the sake of asking: how do I make sure that I am being intelligent about my decisions while also not giving up the ghost?

So, my Mishigami hopes are still alive.

I have gotten into a more comfortable state on the bike. We’re still a little bit broken, still a little bit rusty, but I think that as long as nothing breaks within the next four weeks — at least not catastrophically — I could pull this together.

Unfortunately, operating on the margins is something that I’m familiar with, but it does seem to increase my pressure every time I try it.

And so that’s what we’re here to discuss tonight: being an individual that is so independent that I get compliments for it, and yet I feel like I’m always operating at the end of a thread.

And I think that I might not be the only one that experiences that, if I have a hunch.

So, I was raised on the expectation that I needed to learn to work for myself, to cover my own needs, to be independent — which I think we can probably agree has worked.

But what that turned me into is a person that feels very strict about that independence and has never been able to really rely on consistent outside support.

And so it came to the degree that I moved into a van so that I could support my dreams on the bike.

A lot of that attitude from adults in my life when I was a minor can be boiled down to one quote from my dad.

I was dealing with a van breakdown and was trying to relocate from one city to another to pick it up after the only mechanic within several states that was willing to install an entirely new engine did so.

I needed a ride to go get it, and I was going to get as creative as I possibly could to make that happen while also trying to ask as little as possible from anybody else.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t really happening.

And so I called my dad and said, ‘Hey, if I cover the cost of fuel and lunch, can you drive from southern Indiana to St. Louis — about a four-hour drive — pick me up, and take me back to pick the van up and drive it home?’

I thought that as long as I made sure that this didn’t cost him anything except time with me, this would be workable.

And his response was:

‘I don’t think I can do that, because I don’t get anything out of it.’

And so I think you can probably understand where my sensitivity to transactional relationships comes from.

But it wasn’t until recently that I realized that there’s a significant part of the population that isn’t operating on that understanding.

And so when they see me feeling like I have to compensate for asking anybody for anything, they get a little uncomfortable with it.

This sort of individual ruggedness that is implied through parts of culture is revealing itself as not nearly as widespread as I thought it was.

And I’ve been applying an expectation to myself that is holding me back.

Now, I don’t necessarily have a whole lot of choices. I’ve been pretty open about this on the blog — although I haven’t necessarily put it all in one place — that I consistently face transportation, housing, and financial precarity, all in sort of a cyclical pattern, as well as not necessarily having the social backing to call for help if I need it.

If you can bear with me for a second:

Imagine the one or two people that, in an emergency — or even just a ‘Hey, I’m on the brink of something that could be really good for me, but I need help crossing this financial gap’ situation — you would call.

And then imagine they suddenly do not exist.

And I’m bringing you into a thought that might be very, very uncomfortable, because that is the reality that people like myself have to grapple with every single time we wake up in the morning.

And I am a person that has consistently grappled with the fact that the things I dream of doing with my life are incompatible with the support structures that I have had throughout it.

And yet I keep persisting.

And that’s why you continuously see this sort of unfortunate chain of events that tends to fall out from that: me picking myself up, dusting myself off, and — to a degree that could be perceived as obsessive — going at it again.

And a point was raised to me recently that I had actually considered:

Maybe the example that I’m setting is one of, ‘Genna’s really good about coming back and fighting for things. She doesn’t actually need any support.’

Even when I’m asking for it.

It creates a little bit of tension in another person sometimes to see somebody that is resilient also talking about all the ways that they fall short.

And it becomes a potential success story that people like to watch and observe from a distance, but not necessarily ever step into.

And that is a pretty complex thing for me to consider — that maybe the very act of being hard to kill, in a sense, might be perpetuating this loop of scarcity.

And I’ve also come to learn that there is a societal reality that the inverse is also true:

A person who is willing to show themselves being helpless, and needing other people, and not necessarily having that rigid independence, is more likely to attract community support.

I have observed that myself.

And that is something that provokes profound jealousy in me.

And I don’t attach that to the individual that is being supported, because if you have that opportunity or that backing, you might as well take it.

But as is the concurrent theme of my blog, I wonder what I could possibly accomplish if so much of my energy wasn’t just trying to keep things from falling apart.

Now, I want to pause here for a second and openly acknowledge that I do have people that kind of come in and out of my life, seeing the things that I’m trying to do despite everything that’s historically worked against me.

By name, Julie and Alex are my primary support system right now.

And they’re actually very different from the people that I even had this time last year.

Because I have observed — through a little bit of a naive lens, up until recently — that there are people who like the idea of being part of a story and part of a project that they find inspiring.

But then there is a little bit of a conflict in themselves about needing to control it in a sense, or needing it to constantly reinforce how important they are for the project to continue.

And in doing so, they take a little bit of my autonomy away — which is something that I simply cannot do.

I have been wired through the environment that I was raised in to believe that it is fundamentally unsafe and unreliable for me to assign responsibility to another person.

And so if they are going to step in and support me, they are going to have to do that in a way that doesn’t take my independence away.

They have to be able to cohabitate. They have to work with me.

And I didn’t realize how much I was actually asking by expecting that.

I am really lucky now that I’m in a relationship where we are two very independent people that do not need to reinforce each other to feel secure.

And to be quite honest with you, I’m not sure how I got to a point where I am that way.

There has been so much conflict in my relationships — with my parents, with my extended family, romantic relationships, jobs, you name it — that logically you would think those things would make me far more unstable.

But instead, they just made me more rigid in self-reliance.

And now I’m kind of meeting those people that are okay just saying, ‘What do you need from me?’ helping me with that, and then — and this is going to sound a little bit harsh here — getting out of the way.

And the fact that I both need the community that I am still clawing for while also needing my path unobstructed is the most complicated thing that I’ve ever had to go up against.

And so while I really put my head down and try to grind toward making Mishigami feel like less of a reach for me again, I’m trying to figure out something that I’m not even sure I have words for.

But it’s something like:

How do I set some of this weight elsewhere without letting go of it completely?