Diary entry
I am no longer a resident of Muncie, Indiana.
My older brother passed away last September. It was unexpected in the way that death always is, but even more so when considering he was only 32 and had been on an upswing in his road to recovery. Alcoholism is a deeper sickness than I will ever understand, especially as someone who has been careful(ish) about drinking from fear of falling prey to that liquid addiction. My own deep-seeded addictions and habitual afflictions are far more mental than influenced by substance – dermatillomania, for one. This meant that when sleeping in the months after my brother’s death, i either wore mittens to bed (when alone) or dealt with scars on my feet and ankles from ripping open old wounds while unconscious. Only after moving away from Muncie in early December was I able to stop sleep-scratching… Just one diagnosable symptom of my oceanic, subconscious grief.
Precisely seven weeks to the day after my brother stopped breathing, I was informed that my employment at [redacted] would soon be coming to an end. It was both cruel and fair given my health and status as a disabled person; only reality can be so poignantly paradoxical. As I left the building that once felt like a home away from home, I was sorely tempted to drive to a certain green house, despite not knowing a single current resident. It was the last place my brother and I had shared air in Muncie, back in spring 2018.
Back then, I was auditioning/interviewing for several programs in the esteemed Department of Theatre & Dance. My home printer had run out of ink. I was sitting on my brother’s couch on Dicks street, handwriting my directing portfolio, drafting statements on one page and carefully copying in color on the final version. While I can’t recall if my brother had been rapping alongside Kendrick Lamar or passionately critiquing a movie, I clearly recall the joint spitting smoke being passed around. I remember his dog curled up beside me on the couch, occasionally thumping his tail in glee. I can hear my brother’s laugh as I made some forgotten quick-witted remark, a cacophony of surprise and respect. I remember being deeply grateful that I could sleep at his house instead of driving up for an 8am interview the next morning, how he offered to let me have his bed in this unfamiliar space without hesitation. He was that kind of brother, that kind of guy. Our mom once said he would give a homeless man the clothes off of his back; I won’t argue. After my school obligations, we hit up Brother’s; and walking with him through the streets of Muncie was part of what made the city so special to me. Walking side by side with my brother, back then.
I remember desperately wanting to return to any Before in the wake of my untethered reality in October 2024. Even if I was some undeveloped, unhappier version of myself, at least my brother could laugh there. If my boyfriend hadn’t picked up the phone as I drove away, I likely would have driven to this old house of my brother’s to stare, dissociating into the past and nightfall. But, lucky as I am, the love of someone living saved me from that darkness, and I was not alone for long.
No one could make me hate Muncie, Indiana. No one could turn me bitter towards that gardenbed of life and culture and hardship and joy. No amounts of gaslighting or bullying could erode the warmth and gratitude I have towards the 765 and my time there. Walking through Minnetrista in fall, writing poetry in the parks. I wish I had spent more time at the Fickle Peach before it closed. I’m glad I had so many meals at Savages, both with people who I talk to daily to those whom I’ll never share a smile or beer with again. I wish I had tried more seasonal drinks at the Caffinerery; I’m so grateful I got to attend Cuplets, even though I should have gone more. I have at least six stars at Rosebud and punches left on my Kats Crystals card, and I know I won’t be gone forever.
What I’m trying to say is that no matter how you leave the place, part of you stays everywhere you’ve ever been and been loved — so a ghost of me is in that green house on Dick’s street. And part of me lives in that haunted attic scribbled with chalk in a mish-mashed blue house off of Celia. There’s pieces of me in that purple A-framed nightmare off of Janney, in the moldy tin shack off of New York Street, in those apartments nearby that didn’t burn down, in a room I helped empty and another I helped fill with laughter. You could find constellations between those countless places where I’ve smiled in Muncie, like stars in the dark unknown. The theatres, the libraries, the flea and farmers markets. It is a community that deserves to be given a chance. It is a community I am proud to have been a part of for nearly a spetiennal, and no rejections from foolhearted men or people clinging to their power can take that away.
My brother spent several months of his final BSU semester homeless in Muncie. Not having been told this at the time, I was shocked at how skinny he was at graduation; the clarity of why he was that way came later, after I learned that his housemates (not ones I had met or broken bread with) had kicked him out after a heated misunderstanding involving a broken door. His pride must have kept him warm him those nights – our mother had begged him to come home, to make the daily round-trip for classes. He kept insisting he could couch surf, that it was all going to be okay.
In the last six months at my workplace, my conditions had been deteriorating. I developed alopecia areata and the public was quite loudly curious and opinionated on my hair loss; my work wife was dissuaded from a leadership opportunity in-house and left after finding something more suitable; my department had an interim manager for a full quarter, leaving me the only full time employee in my building’s department. I was being discussed behind closed doors and deliberately kept in the dark. I kept insisting I would be fine working in an environment that was clearly detrimental to my health, that it was all going to be okay.
After my brother died, I quietly withdrew from my classes, interests, and nearly all social elements, continuing to press onward at work as though I was not already cracked and fissured. As though my work environment was not one that had already wrung me out to dry and rewarded those who judged my husk. The relief at realizing there were folks I would never have to see or speak to again felt akin to ants crawling out of my ears. Like larvae squirming loose from my follicles, to make room for hair take root again. I had adopted a short-haired look in 2022 after an assault, but my current style is even shorter than it was after that. This mohawk I’ve found in the year of the Snake fits my face well, and is selectively maintained rather than a response. A considered option is always better than a cornered choice. Shed the old skin, begin again.
I wish I had been consistent in making choices in Muncie. Some of the things I chose were absolutely correct, and fatefully rewarding, and better than I deserved. Some of my choices were made under severe financial pressure, or emotional manipulation, or threat of violence in the home or transphobia in workplace. These wildly different scenarios affect decision making. So does access to proper medication, which I did not have for two months after my brother died – gender affirming care is a controlled substance, after all. My brother was not properly medicated for most of his life. His life was far more painful than mine, and it will be shorter than mine in just a meager two years. I once may have thought that Muncie was less kind to him — but that’s not quite true. The people in his life were less kind.
I am deeply remorseful for the ways I have been unfair and unkind, both within Muncie and outside of it. I still am learning to swallow bitterness towards those who reject me, whether they’ve been given good reason or not. I am hopeful that with the right tools, I can learn to carve the bitterness away like trimming away fat. We need not chew on the bad times. We can choose to spit out the grizzle and bone, dine only on the fruits of friendship. I am so grateful for how Muncie nourished me. How lucky am I, to see Middletown as a place to thrive, and not just a place to pass by. I may have been uprooted, but new soil can strengthen my roots. What a beautiful place to have grown.
On Valentine’s day, I awoke outside of Muncie, to the gentle paw of my cat on my cheek. (She will do this when I snooze my alarm regardless of our home base.) I thought about my brother, as I do most mornings. I thought about the Valentine’s day things I witnessed in Muncie: personalized candy bags in the break room of my old workplace; a Valentine’s date at Texas Roadhouse with a film major and his deeply respectable mustache; the “boyfriend applications” that a fellow theatre major made to inadvertently market himself to my best fried / his crush. Some of these loves lasted longer than others. Love is not foreign to Muncie, Indiana, and it is not foreign to me. I am so lucky to have lived and loved there. I am so lucky for the chance to share my life in these brief number of but lengthier entries. Thank you for reading, for your care for Muncie. Please never stop caring about this magical Middletown.