A Place Somewhere In Between

When I first got my job at the hospital I was commuting about an hour each way on a good day.  After a commute home of 3 hours in a snowstorm on a bad day, I was fed up, I needed to live closer to work.  As a therapist dedicated to my job, I needed something both convenient and affordable due to entry level wages and horrendous student loans.

Since we are a low-income hospital that borders one of the poorest sections of the city, there is a substantial amount of affordable housing around the hospital.  That being said, it can also be a bit sketchy, and can get a little tricky finding the balance between affordability and safety.  A little too far in one direction and the rent triples, and continues to rise as you go toward increasingly more desirable neighboorhoods.  However, if you start going in the other direction, the prices fall drastically while the number of shooting fatalities listed on the police reports skyrockets.

Somehow, I was able to find my balance with an apartment I could afford, on a street that I feel safe, with a short 5-10 minute commute to work.  The point of all this being; I'm not actually "within the thick of it."  If I were within the thick of it, I would be on the other side of the hospital, afraid to leave my house at night in what some of my patients experience on a daily basis.  If I were within the thick of it, I would be doing everything in my power to kick my cocaine addiction and still not be able to turn my back on it.  But in reality, I only get to hear their filtered stories, and in that respect I am only an "outsider looking in."  I hear their stories and then return to my sheltered life and my cozy little apartment where I'm nowhere close to the thick of it.

Instead, I am in a place somewhere in between.  Geographically, I live with a primarily hispanic community directly south of me, with a less affluent black neighborhood just west of me, a gentrifying white population to the north, and another burgeoning white community to the east.  Just in my 5-unit building alone, we meet all the demographics of the community surrounding us.  Directly adjacent to me, the early 20s artistic, white, hipster roommate pair; below them the newly-wed, also employed in social services couple; in the basement, a latino couple with a baby; and below me, our token black man.

I spend my evenings in an apartment somewhere between the wide diversity.  I spend my work days amongst people below the poverty line.  And I spend my weekends socializing with other privileged white folk.  Though, because of the field I chose, I may not make enough to live in a fancy neighborhood, I am able to live comfortably enough not to have to worry about where I will get my next meal.  In that respect I am somewhere in between the rich and the poor, the minority and the majority, those turning a blind-eye and those within the thick of the poverty.  Somehow, I am able to find my balance in a place between the two.

How about you?  Are you on the front lines and within the thick of it, someplace in between and an outsider looking in, or are you turning a blind eye?