I remember re-entry being difficult the first I participated in FUI. I remember being angry about any injustice I saw and the apathy I thought I saw in everyone around me. I was very prideful, but I meant well. I also heard continued stories of people having the same reactions – hatred toward the rich and the indifferent. But this time, it was different.
After spending about three weeks living in intense community where the plumbing doesn’t always work and fridges break and you get paid very little and everyone is around you all the time – I was so thankful to be away from it all. In fact I was not repulsed by any of the overspending I saw around me. The better stores, the bigger malls, cleaner streets, and all apparent lack of diversity in the richer part of Fresno did not disturb me, but allowed me to forget about what realities were downtown. I was comfortable, and I hadn’t felt that in a long time. I could blend back in with the landscape. I could drive my car wherever I wanted because I wasn’t worried about gas. I could eat wherever I wanted because I wasn’t worried about money. I could drive by myself because it was a “safer” part of town. In short I was relaxed.
Being in the city had really broken me down it seemed. I was tired of having to care so much about the people around me. In a place where I see a lot of brokenness – I had to care. The poor aren’t hidden behind gated walls, they are right there in street for you to see and for them to be seen. When I went to North Fresno, it was all hidden beneath flowerpots and paved streets, behind large gated communities and inside mansions. I didn’t have to face anything I didn’t want to because everyone was hiding from each other.
I was tired of having to constantly be present in community. When you live with seven people and are around thirty constantly, you are always on display. Your faults are magnified to extreme degrees because they just come out in this type of environment. But on Saturday I could blend in. I could sit in a restaurant or a coffee shop and have no one talk to me if I didn’t want to talk to them. I could drive in my car and ignore people walking on the street, if I actually saw any. I could basically be whoever I wanted to be – hip, cool, trendy, studious, silent, funny, or anything else. I wasn’t forced to deal with the negative aspects of who I was that come out in living with so many people.
In North Fresno my fridge wasn’t broken, my toilet wasn’t clogged, my laundry didn’t cost money, my car wasn’t teetering on empty, my air conditioner blasted, and I sat alone to drink my coffee. I don’t know what scared me more. Was it spending a whole day in North Fresno where I blended in, became invisible, and forgot all about the poverty less that twenty minutes away? Or that I liked it?
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