A year ago this past week, I packed most of my life into my garage, and packed “essentials” to take with me to California to help my then boyfriend’s family for an undetermined amount of time. His brother owns and runs a construction business with their dad, and was bombarded by work, and short workers. My ex, understandably so, wanted to go home to help and try and relieve some of the stress from them both. These trips to California to help his family never went, or ended well, and I tried to remind him that while his intentions were good, he always ended up getting hurt and burned in the long run, and this time, sadly was not going to be any different. Per usual, in these kinds of discussions, my opinion was a moot point and brushed off as wrong as he was committed to going regardless of my thoughts and feelings on the situation. So, because on some occasions, I suffer from FOMO, I asked if I could go as well, as I didn’t want to be left behind in Montana with no date of return on my ex’s timeline. Once we agreed I could go with him, we decided to commit to staying in California for 6 months and decided to rent the house out to a friend of ours, who needed a new place to live, and to not have the house sitting empty and unwatched for that long.
Our first winter in Montana had been rough on us and the dogs. Weeks of -20 and colder, before windchill takes a toll on ya! Major props to people who have lived there their whole lives, they’re much tougher than I am! And as much as I don’t miss living in California, I do miss the beach and the handful of friends I keep in contact with there. I too am equally guilty of over-looking some of the hardships of going to California on these “adventures”; such as how miserable it is to live in a 5th wheel camper trailer in 100+ degree weather, and how hard it is to watch my ex and his family argue and not get along.
Our relationship had been rocky off and on for most of our time together and going “home” always amplified our problems. Per usual, and just as I had predicted things with his family went south quickly. I was never privy to firsthand information from the family source, but according to my ex, things promised financially, and work wise were not delivered as told and the butting of heads amongst the family on a work and personal level ensued almost immediately. His mood got increasingly worse, and I pulled away and became more distant. (I have never claimed to be an innocent bystander in the demise of this relationship.)
This blog post really has very little point, other than these thoughts have been tumbling around in my head the past week causing me to reflect on how different our lives can look in the span of a single year. My dog went from being able to hike 4-6 miles to barely being able to walk a mile around a city block without tripping and then needing to be carried upstairs. I went from having a house, a yard, trying to start up a business, plans for a gorgeous garden so I could start preserving and canning my own food, a partner, a child, another dog, a family, a friend group; to leaving all of that behind to move in with a friend, who in turn did not come through with plans and things assured to me to help in my transition back into single life and providing solely for myself. I went back to Montana, alone, and in the span of a few days in near single digit temperatures sorted once again through my life packed away in boxes in a dimly lit, freezing garage. I said good-bye to people I may very well never see again.
I got a job offer from an old associate of mine from 12 years prior that I turned down because I was 3 weeks into a new housing situation, 1 week back from collecting my things in Montana and just didn’t feel like I had the energy or the headspace to take on yet another move and a management position. I reconnected with some old friends, I applied for more jobs than I’ve probably applied for in my entire life, I had two interviews, and no job offers in 4 months. When my old associate reached out again mid-January to tell me the candidate they had chosen to move forward with after I declined the position had accepted a position elsewhere and that he was still in need of an assistant and even though not that much time had passed, was I at all interested? Having no prospective jobs, unhappy and uncomfortable in my new living situation, and never one to turn down a place to live I’ve never been before, I accepted the offer and the interview with the district manager. Less than one month later I again, packed my life into a small U-Haul and relocated to Utah. I’ll have been here 10 weeks on the 21st of April. And, while the peace of being in my own space is so very nice, and calming, it too comes with its own set of stressors. The biggest one being, I can’t afford all the household expenses, and paying off debts on my own, and am needing and looking for a 2nd job. I also have no one to hug me when I come home in tears after a rough day at work. But I wake up and go to bed every night with the reminder that I can do hard things. I am doing hard things. This is but a chapter in this wildly chaotic thing we call life. All I can do is work hard, and hope that this is but a short and tumultuous season in my life and things will even out.
Adventures In A Subaru 