The Time I Drove Across the Country 3 Times to Save My Life

Tuesday, December 12, 2023 - 4:55 PM

Okay, let's fuckin gooooo!!!

I'm seeing if I can do a blog post every day to try and get myself through more of that wall of awful brain garbage that's been gumming things up inside me. I have a lot of topics I've been wanting to talk about, and stories I've been wanting to record, and, yanno. The only way out is through.

It was my first day off I haven't shared with one of my mates in awhile, so that ended up shaping how I approached the day. I started a bit of a decluttering project, since we do have a lot of stuff with no homes right now. I'm not willing to mess with my mates' stuff, but in the two years since moving all the way out here my hyper pared-down stuff has grown, and I was definitely due for some re-organizing and looking it all over for stuff I don't want or need anymore. A big part of the project today was breaking down the variety of little caches I'd developed in a few spots in the apartment and keeping like things together, especially toys and art supplies. I have some big traditional media projects I've been gearing up for, and the more ready things are to get started, the more convenient I make my setups to hit the ground running, the more likely I am to actually do them.

Talking about that stuff was supposed to help me ease into writing about one of the more emotionally charged things I've been meaning to write about, ^_^;; but if I segue into talking about Otherkin stuff from decluttering, the post's kinda gonna feel uneven to me. So, okay, let's talk about, as I have it in my notes:

The Time I Drove Across the Country 3 Times to Save My Life

I feel guilty about looking at it as anything but a tragedy, millions of people died, and who knows how many more were permanently disabled, and so many could have been okay if the people in power hadn't been so eager to throw them to the mercies of an uncaring disease. But, selfishly, COVID saved my life.

My mental health still isn't great. There are always ups and downs, and I've been under a lot of financial stress that's been causing me to spiral in a lot of other ways again. But before COVID it was so, so much worse. I wasn't still living with my abusive parents at the time, but I was working for them, and still beholden to them socially and financially. And I was...loosing resiliency. Going to cons and spending time with my friends wasn't...well, if wasn't enough to offset how the rest of it was wearing on me, dealing with my abusers, doing a job I hated and where I constantly felt like I was failing, and I was losing ground. I'd been suicidal for years and years, and I didn't think I had much fight left in me. I'd also been trying to escape, with interruptions to triage myself to keep functioning, for even longer. I was tired, and I was getting desperate.

COVID bought me more time.

Everything going into shutdown was bad. And let me be perfectly clear, shutting down was the right thing to happen, there were so, so many people who should not have died. But for the first time in ten years, I got some distance from my abusive parents. I didn't have to go into a job and see them all the time, I didn't have to go over to their house and play nice and cow-tow to them every week.

For the first time in so, so long, I got a reprieve.

It was still hard, I missed my friends, and the stress of living under the threat of a pandemic was huge. But I finally started to be able to put myself back together again. Just a little bit. And that made all the difference in the world.

And then, in the heart of all this uncertainty, one of my really, really good friends who I'd fallen out of contact with a few years prior reached out, and we reconnected. We talked, and talked, and one thing led to another, and eventually we started dating.

My parents had eroded most of the COVID protections at my job by this time, having us back working in the office, opening the office to the public, and things were quickly becoming untenable for me again. My friends, in person and long distance, did their best to help. As much as I would let them see how deeply I was struggling.

Then came the Thanksgiving trip.

I'd been very resistant to flying to Florida with my family in the Thanksgiving of a pandemic. But my mom had bartered with me. If I went on this trip, they wouldn't force me into going on the Christmas trip. -_- And how could I say no to a deal like that. Look, I didn't have many options, and again, I was beholden to them. I could only fight so hard. So, I went. And it was worse than I had even expected.

Never masking in a state with abysmal infection numbers, never taking advantage of outside seating at restaurants, eating out for every meal was bad enough. The endless refrain of Fox News and fascistic dogwhistles put me over the edge. I knew they wanted who I really was dead. But...living inside it...I was done. I needed to escape, by any means necessary. My friends were alarmed and rightly so. I redoubled my efforts to find another job as means of escape, and determined I would not do this ever again. I would give myself a deadline to get out.

When my relationship started with my mate, I changed my focus to jobs in the San Jose area. And in February, I finally had an opportunity. Two jobs wanted me to come in and interview, and I'd already blocked out a long weekend for that year's virtual FurSquared con. Instead, I loaded myself and my 16-year-old kidney diseased kitty, and everything I though I couldn't do without in case I decided to simply never come back, and drove the 3,000 miles from Illinois to California in 3 days.

It was ROUGH. I didn't give myself a very reasonable timeline to get there, and driving 10-hour or more days, going from cat-friendly hotel to cat-friendly hotel was A Lot. Giving Zi her subcutaneous fluids in hotel rooms was a wild experience. But eventually, we made it. I met up with my mate, changed clothes and ran out for an interview...^_^;; which I actually missed because I'd taken too long to get there. But spending the night with my mate and their partner, feeling safe with them...they offered to let me stay, and I tearfully admitted that I didn't want to leave.

I almost just stayed. I wanted to, badly. But I still had a house to get out from under, and I needed to go back and sell it. I went to the second interview, where neither of us impressed one another, and drove Zi and myself back, escape plan in gear.

My house was a horrifically cluttered mess when I called the realtor who'd helped me buy it and asked him to help me sell, but he was still generous when he came by to talk with me. The market was good, he told me, and places were getting sold even before they were properly listed. I signed the papers, and started getting to work on paring everything down and packing.

It quickly became clear that storage or moving things or Uhauls would be prohibitively expensive for me, easily over $1,000 for the cheapest options. Since I would be moving without a job set up, and without any form of income when I left, the only reasonable option was to only bring what I could fit in my car, and donate or sell the rest. It was hard, emotional work, and I had to make a lot of hard decisions (and a lot of use of Facebook Marketplace for the first time), but I made it happen, and by mid April, I finally left.

I had a celebratory going away party the night before leaving, where we drank and had fun, and enjoyed one another's company. And then my friends came and helped me with the last of the junk I hadn't managed to get through the next morning. They held me while I had a panic attack over telling my parents I was leaving, and helped me to be able to go.

In the end, the people who really knew me, who really loved me, saved me.

Finally, I headed out with Zi, deciding to drive...less stupid hours this time. I limited myself to 8 hour driving days, and just did a few more days. Memorably, one morning when I was trying to get us out the door and checked out, I couldn't find Zi. I searched that hotel room for my kitty for a good half hour before I finally found her--she'd somehow managed to open a drawer, climb inside, and shut herself in!

I'd expected to feel freed, relieved. I'd expected to feel a weight off myself immediately. But mostly, what I'd felt at first was numb grief. I was so tired. I was glad to be going, excited to be with people I loved. But I still felt bad. Everything they would have thought of the situation echoed in my mind, and it hurt. I knew I was right to go. I knew there was no way they'd ever stop hurting me. I knew I needed to get away. But their words, of how selfish I was, echoed inside me.

It's still hard sometimes. Abuse echoes still. But I'm so, so fucking relieved to be out. And so, so fucking grateful to be with my partners.