This is Part II to Why I’m Building a Life That’s Safe From the Noise, if you haven’t read part I, I encourage you to read it first.
With that said there’s a certain kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from work or school or even parenting, it comes from being constantly surrounded by ignorance. Not the kind that’s innocent or curious, but the kind that proudly festers. The kind you run into on an ordinary afternoon, while just trying to do your laundry.
When Ignorance Shows Up in Shared Spaces
I had just wanted to wash my clothes. That’s it. But a neighbor caught me in the laundry room and launched into a rant about the building, the machines, the office manager, the windows. They were cleaning up the laundry room and talking about how they couldn’t get a straight answer about anything in the building, how the office manager doesn’t always tell the truth. They asked me questions about things happening in the building, and I said, “I don’t know, I’m in school. I don’t really pay attention to that stuff, what goes on in the building, who’s missing, who’s not, who’s been around, who hasn’t.”
Then they got to complaining about how the sixth-floor windows supposedly hadn’t been washed, and how it was a lie when the office manager said they had been. And then out of nowhere, they threw in, “And you know what, they’re Mexicans.”
I looked at them and said, That sounds very racist, John, what does that have to do with anything ”
He goes, “I’m not racist either.”
I wasn’t even trying to get into it. I usually keep things measured. I tend to calculate how I respond to people. That old saying about catching more flies with honey, I’ve lived by it, especially in the building where I sleep. But not this time. Not today.
I didn’t plan what I was going to say. It wasn’t a PR move. It was instinct. Because what he said was blatant, and it was disrespectful. Not just to an individual, but to an entire community. And frankly, I’ve had to fight too hard to unlearn those exact same prejudices to stay silent when I hear them echoed back so casually.
Legacy, Protection, and Building for the People You Love
It also makes perfect sense that this runs even deeper because of my upbringing. I was adopted and raised in a white household. I heard the coded language. I heard the jokes. I didn’t know better at the time. But I do now. I was raised in a space where whiteness had the mic, where subtle and not-so-subtle things were said about “those people.” And because I was young and trying to belong, I internalized some of it. That’s not shameful, that’s just reality. It takes incredible emotional labor to deprogram yourself from that. And I did. I took the time, the intention, the reflection to unlearn what they normalized.
So of course it enrages me when grown adults say ignorant things so proudly, like they’ve never questioned anything in their lives. I had to. I didn’t get the luxury of blind spots. I did the work, and it took time to work through that, to become someone who thinks critically, who doesn’t just inherit their worldview but actively shapes it.
So when I see adults repeating that same ignorance in broad daylight, it’s not just frustrating. It’s exhausting. And now I’m watching people who didn’t, and won’t, and I see the cost of that ignorance splashing all over my community, the shelters, the streets, my daily walk to the laundry room. It spreads. It leaks into the world. It gets passed down, often to people who don’t yet know how to resist it. And that’s what makes it dangerous.
And lately, I’ve noticed a shift in myself. I’ve been thinking about who I might spend my life with, and what kind of world I want for them, outside of myself and my son. My love language isn’t gifts or words. It’s protection. It’s building something strong and quiet where the people I love can feel safe.
These are my people. These are the loves of my life. The people I would go to bat for. And I always want them to know and feel they’re safe with me. That I’ve thought it through. That I’ve taken steps. That I’ve built the kind of environment where they can rest, thrive, and not have to be on guard every second.
What a Castle Means When You Can’t Leave Yet
That’s why I always say, build your castle. Build your world. Pull up the drawbridge when you need to. Right now, as I sit here writing this, the lights are dimmed, classical music playing in the background. It’s late. I’m in my unit. The rest of the building feels far away. I feel warm in my own intellectual bubble. But I know that in ten minutes, I’ll have to step out to the laundry room, and it’ll be different. The air shifts. The peace lifts.
Still, when I return to my unit, I return to the world I’ve built. And that matters. Because even if I haven’t yet physically left this place, I’ve outgrown it. And when I do leave, when the investments mature, when the next stage begins, I intend to leave for good. Not just geographically, but spiritually and mentally.
So this is for anyone sitting in that in-between space. You don’t have to be powerless just because you’re not ready to move yet. You don’t have to wait to build your peace. I’m not writing this from a place of reaction; I’m writing this as someone who understands structure, planning, and value. I treat peace like capital. I accumulate it with intention.
The Political Cost of Hypocrisy
Even my office manager, who doesn’t even live in this building, once said to me, “I feel really bad for the people who are going to lose their beds at the homeless shelter because the city doesn’t have the funding to keep 120 beds.” And I’m just standing there thinking, You voted for this. The same person who didn’t care when funding was frozen for cancer research.
I don’t know if it’s fake sympathy or if it’s just ignorance or just stupidity. But it’s like, do people not realize that if you vote for something where funding gets frozen, states have to make cuts? And then those cuts go down to the cities, and cities have to make cuts to services, hence the beds being taken away. Yet this person is a very MAGA person, very 2016, 2020, 2024 kind of MAGA. And it’s just one of those moments that reinforces everything I already feel about being surrounded by ignorance, even from people who act like they care.
The Burden of Awareness
This isn’t just tiredness, it’s the weight of a thousand moments like this. They don’t fade just because I’ve “processed” them. They stack. And what I’ve started to notice is the same pattern that so many of us are forced to see: the very people who benefit from systems of harm, or vote to uphold them, are often the same ones turning around with crocodile tears, pretending to care when someone else suffers.
It is cognitive dissonance, but it’s also willful ignorance. How do you claim compassion while backing policies that starve shelters? How do you not connect those dots, unless you’re completely checked out or just don’t care enough about the people it affects?
And what I said about class clusters of ignorance? There’s truth in that. Not that people in lower-income areas are inherently more ignorant, but when systemic underfunding guts education, housing, healthcare, and real opportunity, you end up with communities that are easier to manipulate through fear, propaganda, or scapegoating. Add race to the equation, and suddenly you’ve got white folks in poverty blaming immigrants instead of landlords. Blaming Black and brown communities instead of the billionaires bleeding their towns dry.
Let’s be honest, white marginalized people still have the privilege to be racist, and many are. Being marginalized in one area doesn’t cancel out privilege in another. John’s experience of being trans doesn’t mean he gets a pass for slurs or stereotyping workers. If anything, you’d think he’d get it more. But he doesn’t. And that’s where I hit the wall, surrounded by people who should know better, but refuse to be better.
And of course I’m more protective. When you’re into someone who’s also experienced this world from the margins, there’s a part of you that shifts into caretaker mode. Like, “I know what you’re up against. I’ve seen it. I’m up against it too.” Love becomes political. Ancestral. Protective. It’s not just romantic.
Maybe it’s hitting deeper right now because I’m not just looking for peace for myself anymore. I’m starting to imagine what peace could feel like with someone. And that makes the outside noise feel louder. More offensive. Less tolerable.
Yet I’m still here. Still building. Still dreaming about a quieter, truer life, because as the kind of person I am, when things get heavier for both my partner and son, I am the person they can turn to. I am the one who will pull my partner close, hold them in my arms, and tell them we will be okay, that we planned for this. They are my responsibility. That’s the castle I talked about. That’s what matters.
Quiet Power, Strategic Focus
I’ve built my portfolio during periods of silence and resistance. I’ve written through adversity. And I’ve learned that what you build while you’re waiting is often what sustains you when things really get hard.
This isn’t about surviving the next election cycle. This is about long-term positioning. If you’re surrounded by ignorance and can’t leave just yet, focus on strategy. Stack your skills. Manage your time and energy. Create internal infrastructure. That’s what I’m doing. That’s how I’ll make sure I never return to environments that don’t align with where I’m headed.
And let’s not ignore what money actually does when wielded well. Money shapes your surroundings. It lets you choose your neighbors, your street, your quality of silence. It buys you insulation from stress, from chaos, from small-mindedness. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: peace is not a luxury, it’s a health strategy. Stress is the number one contributor to illness in life. And when you’ve seen how slowly that drip can wear you down, the Chinese water torture of microaggressions, of disrespect, of casual ignorance, you start to take peace very seriously. You begin to treat it as essential. Because it is.
The Emotional Cost of Being Strategic
But even that kind of focus has a cost. There’s an emotional toll to always thinking five steps ahead. To constantly living in a state of forward planning. It’s lonely. Not because you’re antisocial, but because very few people understand the weight of future vision. Sometimes, when you’re the one charting the exit route, building the safety net, or designing the long game, it can feel like no one else even sees the gameboard.
It’s frustrating to walk through rooms where people are loud and reactive while you’re quiet and intentional. It can feel like isolation, not because you aren’t included, but because you’ve outgrown participation. And even though you know it’s necessary, it doesn’t make the distance any less real.
Still, that distance? It’s the gap between where you are and where you’re going. And that gap is where transformation lives.
The Bigger Picture
I don’t normally let things like this get to me. But for the first time, I’m thinking about what life would be like with someone as a partner, and that this partner is probably going to be a person of color, it’s important that I create this safe space even more now and speak up even more now. Even though I have spoken up. This is the first time I haven’t calculated. I wasn’t trying to get through to them. Normally, I try to get through to someone.
And I do. But this time, I didn’t have the consideration for it. I just said, that’s racist. Plain and simple. No. I don’t have it in me to coddle conversations or try to reach a certain point. I’m at the place where, if I say something to you and you don’t get it, you don’t get it. I’m not going to do this back and forth with you. I’m not going to jump through hoops. I’m good.
Maybe that’s part of being a university student at this point. I spent the last quarter in a law class arguing and defending positions, debating, doing simulations. And having to do my level 400 film class where we analyze social and political messages through the Hollywood musical.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just, if people who come from all different backgrounds can get it, there’s really no excuse why you can’t get it. I guess. Even though I know socioeconomics and education and accessibility, and also not just that, but intellectual IQ, all these things do play a part in someone’s understanding and comprehension. But that doesn’t mean you don’t get tired of it.
The world is loud right now. And it’s only going to get louder. The next two years might test us. The next ten might surprise us with ripple effects we don’t see coming. But that’s why we plan. That’s why we build.
Because some of us aren’t just investing in portfolios. We’re investing in peace. And that pays dividends no market volatility can touch.
The Broke College Student 
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