Ben, your Human is Showing

The curtain has fallen, and here stands the man

I'm moving in 6 days. Up until today, I've been remarkably calm and well adjusted about it all.

But I've also been more and more distracted lately, having a harder time focusing on my ever-growing to do list. I've been sleeping a little worse every night. My marketing efforts for pride month speeches are not traveling nearly as far as I’d hoped they would, and a feeling creeps up my neck whenever I sit down to try to get some work done before I get back to packing boxes.

Somewhere, buried in all the logistics and planning and talking about moving, I think I forgot to recognize that that also meant leaving. My body is forcing me to recognize that now.

Boxes are piling up in our little two bedroom and most surfaces are covered in stuff and I am not feeling perfectly okay about it anymore. There is nowhere left to turn that doesn't have goodbye written all over it. I have a backlog of loved ones in my phone I need to respond to to make plans to see and hug another time, I have a list of restaurants I want to taste before I get in the U-Haul. I'm taking much shallower breaths than usual.

At some point, I'll be ready to share something profound and well written about how much Missouri, the midwest, and the people here have meant to me. I may not have been born or raised here, but the version of myself that I have come to know and love was forged here. For now, though, all I really know how to say is that I'm quite sad about it.

Yesterday, I began to make the arrangements for a "going away party" next weekend. Held drop-in style at a warm local spot, the owner (and a dear friend) asked me how many people I thought would be coming. I laughed and, with sweaty palms, texted back that it was more of an ego question than a logistical one. I'd put off announcing anything until less than a week in advance in an effort to pretend to myself that I wasn't really going anywhere. After attempting to make a (surely incomplete) list of everyone who I know and love in the city of St. Louis, I am at the whims of the calendar and the weather and the amount that I am liked by others (logically, I know it is much more the first two). P.S. If you're in St. Louis, message me and I'll get you the details!

There are many things about this move that are sad and strange and hard to process, but impact and guilt are the strangest to untangle. I am proud of what I've built, the connections I've forged, the difference I've tried to make. In trying to acknowledge my impact, I feel a tremendous guilt and worry for the hole I will leave behind. In trying to calm my worry, I assure myself that everyone will be fine without me--they'll keep fighting, keep building joy and community, and keep seeing incredible victories. But in finding that comfort, I am acutely aware of my smallness, my one-person-ness. If they will be fine without me, did my work truly matter?

A picture of one of my favorite parks in the area that I’m realizing I won’t have time to go back to before I leave

I suppose the real answer, or perhaps if I'm being truly honest the morose hope, is just that it will be different without me. At least for a little while. This movement was built by so many others before me, sustained by so many around me, and will be continued after I left. No individual one of us carries change atop our heaving shoulders while we walk towards the future, but we all notice who is walking beside us. Perhaps you'll be able to tell that I've been here, and that I've gone.

Unlike what you're used to with this project of mine, I am not writing this as an author. This is not part of my plan for what I wanted to talk about this week. I am not writing this as Ben Greene the Queer Hope Guy with big dreams about what each post might mean to you and how you'll feel inspired to make a difference because of it.

m writing this as a man. I am writing this with anxiety curled up on my chest like a cat. I am writing this with rare tears prickling at the backs of my eyes. I am writing this as a reminder that all of us are just human bodies moving through the world trying to feel okay as much as we can, and even for the Queer Hope Guy that doesn't mean that every day will be an okay day.

I am also writing this to give you a look behind the curtain so you can see it is a mess back here right now. My publishing timelines, my responses to emails or my DMs, and my presence of typos may be a bit different than what you've come to expect from me.

But I have to give myself permission for that to be okay. There is no part of me that feels I'm failing by sharing this, or admitting defeat. Truthfully, I think our vulnerability is one of the most precious gifts we can give to each other. Thanks for being people I can trust with that.

With love in all my imperfect glory,

Ben