A Difference Within

My husband and I first moved in together in a little town, Wadsworth, just outside of Akron, Ohio. We were 22 or 23 at the time and thought it would be a good fit for us. The rent was cheap, the house was safe and clean, and everywhere we looked, it felt just like the towns we grew up in. We both grew up not too far from Wadsworth, in slightly larger cities, with slightly different demographics. We ended up, a few years later, buying a home there.  We sold it 6 years later and moved to Cleveland.

The impetus for the move was my commute. My job was based in Akron when we bought the home, a promotion had me in our Cleveland office every day. It was a 45-mile one-way commute, a commute I did for almost 6 years. My husband can work from home, so for him, location is nearly irrelevant. We also wanted to live closer to “the action”. Wadsworth has a “nightlife” that ends promptly at 11 PM, the big event is the football game, you get the drift. It’s a nice place, it’s just not right for us. That was the second reason we moved. I had a third reason that I didn’t realize I had until after we moved.

Wadsworth is 96% white (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018), it’s small-town America, it’s homogenous. We moved to a neighborhood called Detroit-Shoreway. It’s called that because the first boundaries for the neighborhood were between Detroit Avenue and the Shoreway. Cleveland is very creative. Detroit-Shoreway is one of Cleveland’s most diverse neighborhoods, with roughly 55% white, 27% black, and 18% other and a 25% Latinx population (City of Cleveland, 2014). In the state of Ohio our zip code, 44102, is the second most diverse in the state (HometownLocator, 2018), according to the ESRI Diversity Index (HometownLocator, 2015). The neighborhoods could not be more different.

I realized that I had a latent urge to express my difference. I never felt comfortable “being gay” in Wadsworth. I’d play the part of the effeminate man for a laugh, I’d act extra butch to blend in, and I’d avoid holding hands with my husband in public. Well, he wasn’t my husband yet, because the Supreme Court hadn’t ruled yet. Anyway, after we moved up and made friends, I felt more comfortable in my own skin, I was okay “being gay”. Remembering back, I had a lot of internalized homophobia. I thought that gay pride parades were shameful and disgusting because people had the audacity to wear leather thongs in public or something like that. I’ll spare you the rest of the examples. Here’s what it comes down to: in Wadsworth, my husband and I were “the gay neighbors”, in Cleveland, we’re “some gay neighbors” or just “neighbors”. We live in what turned out to be a very gay-friendly neighborhood.

Since we moved, I have become much more liberal, much more empathetic, much more engaged.  The same holds true for my husband. I learned to respect and appreciate the differences between my experience and the experiences of others. I learned about how privileged I was to grow up in a rich ex-urban community and all the advantages I had, and some that I blew. I was exposed to new lifestyles, new cultures, and new experiences. I love where we live. I can’t look away from how my co-workers treat the city now. They come in and they leave, they treat it as a place to visit, an “other”, an outside. They go back to their suburbs and exurbs. I see what I used to be.

Living in a highly diverse environment helped me become the person I am now. It changed my worldview, it changed how I treat others, it changed how I listen. In short, navigating an environment with lots of different groups and all their differences between, made a difference within me.

References:

City of Cleveland. (2014). Detroit-Shoreway. Retrieved from: http://planning.city.cleveland.oh.us/2010census/downloads/DetroitShoreway.pdf

HometownLocator. (2018). 44102 Zip-Code map, demographics, & rankings. Retrieved from: https://ohio.hometownlocator.com/zip-codes/data,zipcode,44102.cfm

HometownLocator. (2015, July 17). Measuring diversity in America: Diversity index. HometownLocator Blog. [Web log post]. Retrieved from: https://blog.hometownlocator.com/2015/07/17/measuring-diversity-in-america-diversity-index/

U. S. Census Bureau. (2018). American fact finder – community facts. Retrieved from: https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/cf/1.0/en/place/Wadsworth city, Ohio/ALL