The house in Shoreacres isn’t much. One story, siding that needs fresh paint, a yard that wants more work than I can give it. But it’s mine. Paid for with insurance and inheritance, the kind of safety net I never expected. My parents didn’t live to see me settle here. COVID took them early, before the vaccines rolled out wide. That’s a sentence I’ll never stop resenting.
Moving back to a town I knew years ago is like opening an old notebook and finding the handwriting changed. Some things are familiar — the same curve in the road, the same bait shop by the water. But the people have sharper edges now. Conversations cut quicker to politics. Neighbors don’t just talk about weather or sports; they want to know where you stand.
That’s America too. Lines are drawn faster, deeper. It’s not about persuasion anymore, it’s about sorting. Are you on the inside or the outside?
I know what it means to be outside. Harris County jail taught me that. Two years of watching doors slam, counting the clicks of locks, hearing men brag about what got them in and what they’d do next. You stop believing in redemption when you hear the same vows over and over.
I carried that skepticism into politics. So when Trump came along, I didn’t expect honesty. I expected a blunt instrument. And he was one. He smashed the polite lies, the soft edges of politics. At first, that looked like truth. Later, it turned into permission — permission for every grudge, every fantasy of payback, every fever dream of cleansing the country of enemies.
I rode that wave further than I should have. January 6 was the breaking point. Standing in the Capitol, hearing glass shatter, watching people swarm the halls like tourists in a nightmare — that was when I knew the wave had no bottom. It would carry us down until nothing was left.
So I left. Not D.C., but the whole idea that grievance could fix anything. I came back here, bought this house, and started over. Writing again, but with the pen pointed outward, not inward. Recording, not excusing.
The America I left behind is still out there, roaring at rallies, filling comment sections, planting flags in front yards. It isn’t gone. But neither am I. Shoreacres is smaller than that noise, but it’s real. And real is enough to start with.