I’m not moving into my new house until the 1st, so I’ve been hanging out in Christina’s guest bedroom this week, both busily managing the business of a move — how many different places do I need to update my address? — and not at all busily recovering from a period of upheaval. It feels simultaneously relaxing and stressful, because the upheaval is not going to be over until I’m sleeping in my own bed, on my own sheets, with my own tea mug waiting to be used, but meanwhile, there’s not really a lot for me to do.

Except play ball with Sophie. And more ball with Sophie, and more ball with Sophie. In the tiny house, I always put the balls away the moment we returned from the park, because Sophie, in possession of a ball, is a persistent little monster. I can remember when she didn’t know what to do with a ball and had absolutely no interest in returning it to me one way or the other. That day has long since passed. The other day, I discovered three balls next to my leg when I finally stood up. She’d been bringing them to me hopefully, and when I ignored one, she went and found another. Riker owns a lot of balls  — and doesn’t appear to care about them at all — so Sophie has been amassing a collection of them in the guest room. We do play every day, but she would play all day, every day if she could. She needs a swimming pool! (Zelda used to play ball by herself in the pool, dropping a ball in, letting the pump current take it away, then jumping in and swimming after it.)

The big excitement, if it can be called that, has been the AirDotShow Tour. Christina mentioned it to me in a text as she was on her way out to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal. Totally casual, just:

C: FYI, there is going to be an air show in Sanford this weekend so the planes may be practicing over the next few days. Don’t worry, we aren’t at war.

Me: Lol, good to know! Probably wouldn’t have been my assumption, given that Sanford doesn’t exactly seem like a prime target for bombing runs but I guess you never know in this crazy time. 

Later,
Me: Those planes are seriously loud. 

And still later,
Me: Okay, and you were totally right. It sounds like the end of the world.

I have innumerable photos of blue sky over the house, from my failed attempt to catch a picture of the spiraling fighter jets or the team flying planes or any of the things that were making such incredible, incredible noises. This was the best I ever did.

I stopped trying after that, because this was the teeny-tiny plane that’s in that image.

The jets were bigger, but also so much faster that my little square of sky was always empty by the time my phone clicked for the photo. I wouldn’t exactly call it entertaining — at least not for those of us who got to listen to the incredible noise for four days running — but it was interesting.

Of course, I have also been trying to write. I am determined to finish Cici 2, and it’s going to happen, but it’s happening slowly. My real issue is that my daydreaming time has been taken up with worrying and ruminating, neither helpful. And really, I should be fair to myself and say “worrying” = “planning” and “ruminating” = “processing.” There are things to take care of — health insurance, driver’s license, etc. — and planning for how and when is not “worrying.” And “ruminating” — well, a lot happened and I know that letting myself feel my feelings about it is emotionally healthier than stuffing my feelings. Although it’s not even that so much as just trying to figure out my feelings.

Example: I keep laughing when I remember that one of Suzanne’s first moves was to unfollow me on Instagram and remove me from her followers. Seriously! Is that not so impressively petty? So… well, juvenile? Like we were teenagers or something. And honestly, it makes me laugh. I think I should probably feel badly about it, but I just don’t. It’s too stupid, and like a character in a bad novel.

And then I remember that my last encounter with her, presumably ever, will be her handing me legal papers kicking me out of the tiny house, when the car was already three-quarters packed and it was clear that I was almost gone. Like what is the point of that? Just throwing some salt on the wound? Gratuitously mean for the sake of being mean?

And then me saying, “Can I say good-bye to the dogs?” and her responding, “I’ll send them out. In ten minutes or so?” and me nodding. And then, honestly, I want to cry, because… we were friends for a long time. And I’m certainly grieving for those dogs that I loved, that I will never see again, but I’m grieving for the friend, too.

I guess it’s really just like a divorce — a person you cared about grew into someone that you stopped caring about, and when you say good-bye for the last time, it’s with the memories of who they once were. Impressively petty and mean is who I will have to remember her as being, but once upon a time, she was fun and cheerful and my favorite adventure buddy. I’m going to remember her that way, too, I just don’t quite know how yet.

Thus, the ruminating/processing.

Thus the not quite progressing enough on Cici.

And now I’m going to go back to writing Cici, because there are plenty of hours in the day left, and I will finish this book. Someday! Maybe even someday soon!

In my first post after leaving Arcata, I wrote that as I left I discovered that I felt a sense of relief, and I said I was going to write more about that later. I’ve debated whether I actually should or not, but given that my blog is really for me, for my memories, my future record of my own experiences, I want to. I want to remember this.

So: I was reluctant to admit to myself or anyone else how much I truly hated the way Suzanne treated Bear, and Sophie by extension.

I really did, though. I didn’t feel like there was much I could say, because she was doing all the expensive training and courses, seminars and Cesar Milan, and weekly Zoom calls, and I was doing… well, not much. Recently fun classes, of course, but I’m no expert dog trainer.

But the more time passed, the older the dogs got, the more pronounced our really different attitudes toward the proper treatment of dogs, and the proper expectations for dogs, became. The more pronounced the difference between the dogs became, too, and not in a good way.

At one point recently, Suzanne asked me something like whether I thought she was wrong in how she was training Bear, and the question was a surprise. I answered it badly, I think because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. On the spot, I said something like, “Well, you know, we have really different dogs, and if Sophie and I get into a power struggle, I will always win, because I can pick her up, and Bear’s a lot bigger, so you know, you have to negotiate power in a different way.” I’m including those “you knows” because I bet there were even more of them, and maybe some ums and ers, too.

I was avoiding the truth.

I didn’t want to recognize that the answer was, “Yes, Yes, YES,” because… that would have caused an argument? Hurt her feelings? I don’t know why. She has all this training on her side, thousands of dollars spent, to have an anxious, reactive, insecure dog who has to be on a leash in the back yard because she can’t be trusted to not try to attack the neighbor’s dogs. Yes, I think that the firm discipline, shock/prong collar, “do what I say at all times,” approach is a lousy way to treat a dog and not a successful training technique.

And I say this from the unfortunately smug position of finding Little Miss Sunshine to be truly delightful, even if she does jump on me and get excited and persists in wanting more ball time and even occasionally barks at people passing by, all of which Suzanne disapproved of. I didn’t need a perfect dog, I needed a pet, and that’s what I have, and she is awesome.

So yeah, a big chunk of my sense of relief to be leaving is because negotiating Suzanne’s attitudes toward the dogs and what they should do/should be was not much fun, and I don’t regret not having to do it anymore.

Now that I’m in Florida and hanging out with Christina, Greg, and Riker, that sense of relief is even more pronounced. I felt really sad to be taking Sophie away from her bestie. It was ending a friendship that I thought would be forever for her.

Sophie and Bear snuggle for the last time

But Suzanne never let them play. She disapproved of dogs getting excited for any reason, enthusiasm was always the enemy. As far as she was concerned, romping was “activating Bear’s prey drive,” therefore bad. Doggie wrestling was to be shut down the moment it started. Maybe she was right and Bear was dangerous to Sophie, but I felt like the way dogs learn to play together is to play together, and that if Bear hurt Sophie, Sophie would yelp, and then Bear would know better, and be more gentle the next time. Instead Suzanne would separate them. It’s been literally months since the last time they got to play at the beach together. I kept thinking that Suzanne would… well, eventually go back to who she was when she had her first dog, Buddy, which was super chill and loving, easy on everything he did, but… not so much.

Now Sophie has Riker to play with, and OMG, are they adorable together. Riker is working very hard at teaching Sophie to play the way he likes to play, which is a lot of wrestling and jumping on one another. Sophie is super confused, she keeps checking in with me to say, ‘is this okay?’ Yep, it’s okay. There is much face licking and following one another around and exchanging of toys and some occasional barking and a ton of enthusiasm. So much enthusiasm. It’s making me really happy.

Not snuggling yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s just a matter of time.

As for the rest of my relief, well, dumping my rain pants and three pairs of shoes on the free pile at the end of the driveway felt great. Before I moved into the van, Arcata was never on my list of possible places to live because I didn’t think I’d enjoy the weather. As it turned out, I really didn’t. Last winter was hard. Living in a tiny house in the perpetual rain is miserable. I spent probably twenty-two hours a day on my bed, because it was the only place to sit in Serendipity, and outside was wet. The other two hours were walking Sophie in the rain and/or playing ball with Sophie in the rain. All those extra pairs of shoes were because my feet were constantly wet.

Did Arcata have good points that mostly outweighed the weather? Absolutely.

But am I happy to be back in the land of sunshine? Also, absolutely.

The coaster Christina left on my bedside table says, “When life gives you lemons, say, ‘Fuck the lemons.’

I like it. It might be my new motto as I merrily make lemonade from my lemons.

When I was driving cross-country, I had an odd and random moment of panic about my coasters. I had three different types of coasters; two soft ones that sat on top of my fridge; two hard porcelain ones that had been tucked into a drawer for a while; and one long plastic one that I mostly used, but which had been a gift from Suzanne. When I was cleaning out, picking which of my possessions got to join me on my journey and which would be relegated to the free pile at the end of the driveway, I remember thinking that I shouldn’t get rid of all of my coasters, but I’m pretty sure I did anyway. Random panic: what would I do without a coaster for my morning tea? Then I remembered that Christina has loads of coasters and would be happy to lend me one, and probably even happier to buy me one for a Christmas present, and I relaxed.

Yes, I know it was a weird thing to be worrying about. But driving cross-country, when you are an innately anxious person, gives you so, so, so much time to worry about random things and invent imaginary problems and make mountains out of molehills.

Still, it was my 8th time driving across the country and I’ve learned a few things. First, as much as possible, pick the scenic route. I spent Thursday and Friday driving from PA to FL, and I decided to take the longer route through West Virginia in order to avoid D.C., my absolute least favorite city to drive through. (Granted, I have never driven through NYC, and LA and Houston are both extremely tedious in their own right — if I’d gone through any of those three a few more times, they might take D.C.’s place at the top.) But it was such a good decision! The fall foliage was spectacular. I was on my own so couldn’t take photos, being, you know, too busy driving the car, but day one turned into a 12-hour driving day because I couldn’t find a pet-friendly hotel and yet I have no regrets. Driving through beauty is much better for the soul than driving through traffic.

Second, it always gets harder toward the end. In the beginning, when the whole journey is before you, it’s easy to make the sensible decisions: to find healthy food, get out and stretch, take good walks, look for interesting breaks. But when the end starts to get in sight — only fifteen more hours of driving to go! — the impulse to just stay in the car, eat candy and junk food, and keep driving is hard to resist. I take a certain amount of pride in my ability to find interesting food, but we ate at Chipotle and Panera in Ohio and western PA. I just wasn’t willing to add the driving time necessary to get off the highway and go someplace better. (That said, my Panera salad was actually just as good as the similar salad I’d gotten at a much more interesting restaurant in Indianapolis earlier.)

Third, holy cow, drive a hybrid. We got to PA, unloaded the rental car, and stashed about a third of my belongings in my brother’s basement, joining my mom’s china and some Christmas ornaments I’d forgotten about, plus a slew of old photos and journals. Then I loaded up my brother’s old Prius with the rest of my stuff and headed south. With the exception of my very first cross-country trip, with my dad in my old Honda Civic back in 2006, every trip I’ve made was in the van or an SUV. I’m used to filling up the gas tank twice a day. With the Prius, I drove 800 miles on about 16 or 17 gallons of gas. And cheap gas, too! East coast gas prices are amazing compared to California.

Sophie Sunshine was a phenomenal companion. She mostly sat upright in the back seat, watching out the window. When she needed something, she’d either rest her head on my shoulder or nuzzle the side of my face. I’d get off at the next rest stop and she’d take a quick walk, maybe have a drink or some food, and off we’d go again. For such an active dog, she got an absolutely minimal amount of real exercise, but she put up with it incredibly well.

The BBE was an even better companion. On the beginning of our trip, I decreed that every day needed to include something beautiful, something funny, and something delicious. I figured beautiful would always be easy; delicious might be a matter of interpretation (we could always fall back on a sea-salt chocolate caramel from Trader Joe’s, if necessary); and funny might be challenging, given my state of mind. But when we talked about cheese varieties in Ohio the BBE laughed so hard he cried, and the Penn’s Best trucks with a very unfortunate design choice in the second N made me giggle every time. (The metal bar from the door cuts through the second N, covering the second upright line, making it easily misread as an I.) Really, it’s a mindfulness game, about paying attention to the day you’re in, noticing those things as they happen, but it meant that every day included moments of joy. As they should, in a well-lived life, but sometimes it’s hard to remember to look for them. The BBE made it easy.

I’m so grateful to have my brother. So grateful to have Christina, too! I’m ensconced in her cozy guest room typing right now, while I watch her dog, Riker, trying to convince Sophie to play. Sophie’s not quite doubtful, but she’s not quite sure about him, either. His tail is going non-stop, while she is debating whether to hide or not.

I won’t move into my new home until the first, but we visited yesterday and I unloaded the majority of my belongings into my future room. The house is cute, and the backyard is fantastic. Huge and open! Christina told me that J is excited to have a dog to play ball with in the backyard, so that’s really nice, too, because Sophie Sunshine will play with anyone willing to throw a ball for her.

This morning she and I were up early, just as the sun was rising, and we walked to the park at the end of Christina’s street and played ball for a bit, then took the same walk I used to take with Zelda. Sophie was off-leash for the vast majority of it, then spotted a cat and took off after it. Grr… she came back reasonably promptly when called, but she got to be on-leash after that. In PA, she saw her first ever squirrel and alas, I am not sexier than a squirrel. She chased it right across the road and only came back to me when it had run up a tree. Still, it was delightful to have her off-leash for most of our walk and discover that even without sidewalks, she’s pretty good at paying attention and being responsive. And my belief that nowhere in FL allows off-leash dogs has been immediately disproven — both parks on our morning walk have signs saying, “Please clean up after your dog,” but neither has a sign saying “Dogs must be on-leash.” So we played ball with the ball I had in my pocket and next time I’ll bring the chuck-it. I’m also going to explore some sniffspots with her: she may never be able to run free on a beach again, but I’ll find places where she can roam. Fuck the lemons, but you know, lemonade is nice, too. Actually, I quite like a lot of things that one can do with lemons.

So this post is feeling kinda like an incoherent mess, but it’s almost time for the farmer’s market in downtown Sanford. We won’t walk there, but it’s a quick drive. Later today, I’m going to make a to-do list: I think it’s going to be a mile long — new vet, new dentist, change address, get driver’s license, etc. etc. etc. — but one thing at a time, right? On yesterday’s long drive, so many Cici scenes were running through my head, I want to try to at least get scraps of those written down, too. So much to do! Fortunately, I have plenty of time to take care of ALL the things.

Sophie Sunshine, peacefully gazing out the car window. I kept thinking she’d be sleeping in the backseat, but almost every time I glanced back, she was wide awake and watchful.

I woke up at 4:30 in the morning in our hotel in New Castle and couldn’t fall back to sleep, because my brain just would not quit. Spin, spin, spin, with thoughts of the past and the future, destinations and days, betrayals and bizarre behavior. I was resigned to it, then annoyed with myself, then finally gave up and got my iPad out. 

Sophie, that traitor, had spent the night snuggling with the BBE, but hopped back over to my bed when I sat up, so I stroked her with one hand while I played solitaire with the other and considered my future. 

I kept telling myself that it was pointless to worry. Live in the moment you’re in, I reminded myself. I’m in the midst of an epic road trip, and there’s nothing I can do about all the things that I need to do, so why think about them?

Right? 

My brain, however, was not onboard with the live-in-the-moment plan, so I just had to keep reminding myself, over and over, that that’s what I was doing. Being mindful, taking deep breaths, admiring beauty, living in the now. Appreciating my coffee and my dog and the BBE, being grateful.  The worries or the ruminations would start and I would catch myself and remind myself to breathe. Just breathe, that’s all I needed to do. Especially because the BBE was doing all the driving. 

New Castle is almost three hours outside Denver, and there was an expo in Denver that the BBE wanted to go to, since we were in the area. He’d hoped to get there when it opened at 10, but we were running late before we even began, so it was more like 11 when we arrived. He left me in the parking lot, saying he’d be back in fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour, and I promptly called Christina. 

Sophie Sunshine, such a good dog, had had only the most basic of walks — a five minute stroll around a hotel parking lot — but she curled up in a patch of sun on the driver’s seat, while Christina and I chatted. For an hour and 21 minutes! The BBE found more at the expo to interest him than he’d expected to and Sophie was completely peaceful, so we just kept talking. I’m sure I was not particularly coherent through chunks of the call — it’s all happened so fast and Suzanne’s behavior is so profoundly weird to me — but it was a really great call. So good to hear Christina’s voice, to know of the welcome that is waiting for me, to have her say how happy she’s going to be to see me. 

Our phone call was almost over when she mentioned, almost casually, that her friend J’s roommate had moved out and there might be a room available in his house and she thought his landlady would be okay with a dog. Did I want her to check whether it was still available? 

“Yes, please,” I squeaked. 

I’ll short story the rest: yes, there was a room available in his house, and yes, his landlady is okay with dogs, and yes, I’ve already sent her the security deposit, the pet deposit, and the rent for November. So I’m still on the road and it will be days before I get to Florida, but when I do, I have a home. In fact, I have a home with a fenced-in yard for Sophie, a park down the street, a housemate I like, really good friends living within walking distance, and my dad and stepmom less than an hour away. 

Do I feel like the universe is rewarding me for my decision to take the higher road? Um, yeah, I do. 

Obviously, the rent is real rent, not the discount rent for an “awesome” friend (hahahaha), so a job/improving my cash flow is next on the agenda, but… well, first I have to make it through Kansas. And Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and a bunch more states, actually. It’s still a long way to Florida. So I’m going to return to my mindful approach, as best I can. 

But my officially homeless period is officially over. (Technically, I paid the rent on Serendipity through the month of October, and have started my new rent in Florida on November 1, so it didn’t actually exist at all, but it felt like it lasted a long… two and a half days. Ha.) 

As for road trip stories: we ate lunch at a place called JustBE Kitchen in downtown Denver, sitting outside on their patio with Sophie Sunshine watching intently. I was highly distracted, texting with my new landlady, but I had a delicious paleo burger and some outstanding lavender lemonade. Afterwards we walked around a nearby park with some running water. The weather was perfect — 60 degrees and sunny — and Denver was filled with people walking their dogs. I’ve passed through Denver before, but never walked around, and it was surprisingly appealing. It felt like a very clean city, with a lot of accessible nature. 

Mostly, though, we’re just driving. Well, the BBE is driving. I’m sitting next to him, writing. But we’re through the mountains, onto the plains, and getting close to Kansas. 

I feel like Sophie deserves some major off-leash time for being such a terrific companion this morning, so I’m going to stop writing and start looking for dog friendly parks. So far we’ve had incredible luck in finding great places for her to run around — last night’s dog park in Grand Junction was huge and she had the small dog enclosure entirely to herself — so fingers crossed, Kansas will be just as good. I’ll keep you posted!

Sophie, looking up at the BBE adoringly, at the park in Salt Lake City. I’m uploading this at a hotel in Hays, Kansas, where we’ve stopped for the night after some salty but tasty Mexican food, and she is again sleeping on his bed! I’d call her disloyal, but she has good taste — she knows an awesome person when she sees one. 🙂

So…

After Monday’s revelations, I was shaking and crying and angry and hurt and completely at a loss as to what I wanted to do. Suzanne’s spiteful unloading happened after I said that tenants have rights and I thought I maybe needed to act like a tenant instead of a friend. I was willing to compromise on my “lifetime” lease turning into a lease for a year or two, long enough to give me breathing room for a radical readjustment of my plans and maybe to find a job and housing, but apparently that was completely unacceptable and made me an evil person, taking advantage of her, etc. etc.. Oh, and I’d be hearing from her lawyer. 

Still, regardless of her opinion, I was a tenant and I did have rights. Did I want to fight for them? 

What I wanted was to breathe. 

No, what I really wanted was a bath. So I called the Finnish Hot Tubs down the street and scheduled a hot tub for an hour later. I’m going to guess I spent the intervening hour mostly crying and/or texting people to say, WTF? But in the hot tub, with occasional sprinkles of cold rain hitting my face, I had time to think about what I wanted and what I needed. Mostly I thought about how I wanted to feel. 

Going back to R, I felt horrible after the fight we had that began our long estrangement, not just because of what he said to me (bad) but because of what I said in response (also bad, arguably worse.) At one point, I told him I should have had an abortion. I immediately apologized at his gasp and clarified that it wasn’t because of him, who’d always been awesome, but because I should have known I wouldn’t be a good mother, but you know, I don’t think he heard either of those things. That was where that fight was at, though — mutual unkindness from two people who had never been unkind to one another before. I was hurt at the time, more hurt as the months went by and it became clear that he considered my behavior unforgivable, but I also had to be ashamed of my own words. 

I didn’t want to have that feeling again. 

Regardless of Suzanne’s words, I didn’t feel like I had done anything wrong. I accepted her invitation to live in the tiny house. Along the way, I helped her organize the shed (multiple times), paint her kitchen, and clean out Greg’s office. I cooked for her, took care of her animals, cleaned up cat vomit and kitty litter, drove her places when she needed a driver. Did the mile walk to the pet store and carried a 14 pound bag of dog food home when her petsitter let her know that Riley was out of food just a few weeks ago. Hell, made coffee for her on quite a few mornings. And lived in a space that had been unused, dirty, gaudy and half-finished before I moved in and did the work to turn it into an adorable home. If I wanted to wage war, I had the sense of righteous indignation that could make it happen. 

But I didn’t want to live in a state of righteous indignation. Nor did I want to live in a place of fear, worrying about the future. Nor did I want to wallow in hurt. So as I floated in the hot tub, I thought about what feelings I wanted to be living with for this next uncertain period of my life. 

And I decided that what I wanted was to feel clean. 

It felt like such an odd word choice. What does it mean to feel clean, emotionally? I wasn’t looking for literal physical cleanliness, obviously, floating in my hot tub, but some kind of spiritual cleanliness.  I decided that what it meant was not letting the negative feelings — hurt, anger, fear, that oh-so-familiar triad — stick to me. I wanted to let go of them, as quickly as possible. And I didn’t want to do anything that would keep me up at night questioning my own behavior. 

I wanted to feel clean. 

And the way to do that, I decided, was to go. 

So I got out of the hot tub, dried off on my t-shirt, having forgotten a towel, headed home, and started making plans. I checked rental car places & U-Haul, I looked at maps, I opened my cupboards and thought about all the things people own and how they accumulate. I thought about staying until I’d eaten all the food in my freshly stocked refrigerator — probably two weeks worth, including a whole slew of veggies purchased at the farmer’s market on Saturday — and rejected the idea entirely. 

On Tuesday, I borrowed the wonderful neighbor’s truck, got myself some U-Haul boxes (six of them, total, the size of my life), and started packing. 

That afternoon, I was texting with my brother, aka the BBE, and told him, ”I think I am going to bite the bullet and just rent a car for two weeks. Then I don’t have to strategize about what will fit before I have the car, can take a day to just pack it up and make sure that the things I most want to bring fit. And then I can not push like crazy on the drive, which given how sleepless I am feels like a safer choice. Means more hotel rooms on the way, of course, but I feel like spending that money is a smart choice.” 

His response boiled down to, “I’ll see you tomorrow. Pick me up at the airport at 2:30.” 

So on Wednesday, I again borrowed the wonderful neighbor’s truck, drove to the airport, drove to the car rental place, and then drove home, the BBE following me in a Ford Explorer SUV. 

To a home that would only be mine for another two hours.

Someday maybe I’ll write more about that, because it’s got enough stories for a blog post or seven, but not yet, not today.

By 5PM, we were on the road. We made it to Redding that night, crashed in a hotel that I already don’t remember the name of, and got on the road first thing in the morning. 

We stopped at a fantastic dog park in Susanville, where Sophie got to play ball for a good long time, then made it to Reno for lunch, where we ate Korean fusion food on an outside patio on a beautiful sunny fall day, Sophie at my feet. Then we went to Trader Joe’s and picked up muffins to make our mornings fast and efficient, plus candy to keep us going through the long afternoons. Then we drove. We ate dinner in Elko, poke bowls from a Japanese fast food place, sitting in the car, then stopped at the Utah border for the night. 

Today, we started with an excellent outing in Salt Lake City. Memorial Grove Park has an off-leash dog area which includes dirt trails alongside a creek. Sophie had so much fun. She ran around, exploring the undergrowth and the running water, while the BBE and I walked. The weather was fantastic, a crystal clear perfect fall day, and the air had that delightful crispness of autumn. We encountered a few other dogs, but all interactions were friendly and respectful. 

Afterwards, we stopped at a Venezuelan restaurant right down the street and had GF empanadas for lunch. Hu-u-u-uge empanadas. If I’d known how big they were going to be, I would have gotten us each one, but I thought they’d be regular empanada size, so we had two each. We did not finish. But Sophie was delighted to share the shredded pork and chicken from the leftover filling. 

Now we’re on the road, headed to Grand Junction, Colorado, and I’m writing while the BBE drives. Yesterday, when I was still in a state of… not quite functioning… he suggested that I could get in the back to lie down and try to sleep while he drove. I did and wound up not sleeping, but with Sophie on my lap snuggling with me for probably a solid hour. (She is not typically a dog that snuggles.) 

I felt so safe. So protected. I don’t think I’ve tried to sleep in the back seat of a car since I was a little kid, and I felt a little like a little kid again, but in a really good way. Not helpless, but cared for. 

When we were leaving Serendipity, I had six boxes left of my lifetime supply of tissues. I wanted to bring all six boxes, so I could cry all the way across the country, but the BBE told me I could only have two. So far, I have used approximately six tissues from the first box, and one was for a sneeze. 

Because, much to my surprise, I’m not actually feeling that bad. In fact, yesterday, when I was investigating my own feelings, I thought, “Is that — relief?” 

And it was. 

But this post is long and I am tired (– my writing moved from the car to a hotel room in New Castle, Colorado with a break in-between for some pretty good chicken tortilla soup and a visit to an impressive dog park in Grand Junction –) so I will write more about that later. I just wanted to reassure anyone worrying about me that I’m doing fine. And of course, write down all the highlights of this trip for myself, so that twenty years from now, I can be reminded of eating messy empanadas on a park bench, and Sophie splashing into the creek, and laughing with the BBE about the door-less public restrooms. Oh, and playing Find Uncle W with Sophie in the tiny riverside park in… was that Elko? I’m forgetting the details already. But it’s been a pretty intense week, so…

More soon, I hope with photos!

My general awesomeness is really not so awesome as all that. Apparently, I’m “freeloading” and “getting in the way.” Whoa.

To say I was surprised is to say a tropical storm is a drop of rain. But, but, but… so many points to argue with! I just spluttered and stared, I think. She pointed out that she’d told me that I wasn’t even paying half the utilities since prices have gone up, and I didn’t even manage to respond that I thought she was asking me to use less water, not pay more rent. And it never remotely occurred to me that between her trips to dog training in Utah and walking tours of Great Britain and visiting friends in Germany, the thought that I needed to pay another, what, $100?, in rent would be festering. But I guess it was.

(When she broke her leg, I cleaned out her cats’ litter boxes, exercised her dogs, cooked her two meals a day, drove her to all her appointments and errands… was I freeloading then? I guess so!)

It all feels very surreal.

Sometime within the past year or so, I told Suzanne that I had nightmares about someone else doing to me what R. had done. Like, suddenly, I’d wake up and discover that a friend no longer liked me, that I had somehow so grievously insulted my brother that he was no longer talking to me, that my aunt’s not responding to my emails promptly meant she was tired of listening to my struggles to be positive in the face of depression. Her response felt cold, a “why would someone do that?”, not a reassurance that I was safe, that my relationships could survive conflict and mistakes. The nightmare is part of the long-lasting damage of estrangement, I think. If the person that I loved most in the world can decide I’m not worth interacting with, anyone else can, too.

But oddly enough, I don’t feel nearly as badly about this as I did about R. Part of it, I think, is that I idealized R. I truly believed that he was just a wonderful human being, emotionally mature and loving. Discover that he was capable of being cruel was like hitting ice water when you think you’re stepping into a hot tub. I still think about reaching out to him, of course, all the time, but one of the things that stops me is this paragraph from an email of his: “I know you tried to get my address so you could send your sad little suicide note. Why do you think you never got it? That is textbook emotional abuse and you know that.” 

This line flummoxed me then, and flummoxes me now. Why in the world did he think I would be sending him a suicide note? Zelda was still alive. I would never have killed myself when I had such a beloved dog to take care of. Leave her alone? Of course not! Unthinkable. And yes, I was incredibly suicidal in the spring of 2020, I felt like life wasn’t worth living anymore if the person I loved so deeply wouldn’t even reassure me that he was alive and well in the face of a worldwide pandemic… honestly, I am pretty sure Zelda was the reason I survived. But why would R have expected that from me? I’m not exactly a person who goes through life threatening to kill myself; I mostly keep my suicidal ideation to myself. I had no intention of sending him a suicide note in any way, shape or form.

But after I get past the “What? Why would you think that?” comes the, “Seriously? You view someone else’s pain and suffering as nothing more than a weapon being used against you?” It’s such an intensely self-involved view of the world, to think that I would tell him good-bye purely as a form of manipulation. It says so clearly, “I care only about my own feelings, not at all about yours. Your pain does not matter to me.” It stops me from reaching out again. It reminds me that he is not who I thought he was.

In this case, Suzanne apparently feels no guilt over broken promises, doesn’t care that I made choices and decisions based on her, yes, generosity, and is absolutely ready to throw away a 30-year-friendship as no longer having value for her. And I am somehow a lot less shocked than I should be. I’ve joked to other people that if Suzanne and I were married and the puppies were kids, we would probably be getting divorced. Our ideas about how to treat dogs and what to embrace as normal and to-be-expected behaviors are so very different. Over the course of the last year, since Suzanne got off crutches, we’ve spent less and less time together, largely because of those differing values, I think. So, we’re not married, but we’re getting divorced, and that’s sad, but, you know, it’s not the end of the world. I feel a little battered, but not broken.

The interesting thing is, although R broke me, and the mended pieces are just taped together with duct tape, the skills I’ve gained from surviving our estrangement are absolutely still with me. Yesterday, I took Sophie to Creamery Field and we played ball, and I played my mindfulness games. What beautiful thing could I see? What could I smell? What sounds could I hear? And I felt happy. Yeah, sad about this really unexpected and startling turn of events, but also just lucky. I’ve got a terrific little dog, I’ve got enough savings to survive until I find my next way station on the path of my life, I’ve got people in my life who care about me enough to reach out and offer sympathy and help, and I’ve got stories to tell.

I have no idea what’s going to happen next in the long-term. And I’m definitely still going to be grieving for a while; there’s going to be middle-of-the night processing for probably weeks or months, if not years! Much more for Suzanne than for Serendipity or Arcata; I loved my tiny house but at the end of the day, it’s just a roof. Suzanne was my travel buddy for so many trips, and there are so many good memories. Will they all be tainted now? Maybe, but I’m going to try hard not to let them be. Last night, I was remembering a camping trip we took where we sat at a picnic table and played games, and laughed and laughed over a word game that we were playing (badly!) and the memory made me smile; I hope it always does, regardless of what has happened since.

My dad called yesterday and said his first thought was, “God still has plans for you, Wendy, and this is just those plans in action,” and I’m going to hold on to that. Life is an adventure, and this is just my next big adventure. Wherever it leads me, I will still choose to be happy.

I’ve been trying to write a blog post every day for the past two weeks and failing, failing, failing again.

So here goes.

On Monday, September 25, I was on my first day of vacationing in Oregon with my brother when Suzanne sent me a text that said she was seriously considering moving to Kanab, Utah.

What?

WHAT?

Three years ago she gave me a lease that said “because of your general awesomeness, you’ve got a lifetime lease on Serendipity.” I sold my van because I had a forever home. Now my forever home is… in question?

I was devastated. I literally didn’t sleep at all that night, lying awake until 4AM, head racing with hurt and fear and more hurt and more fear. I am obviously not going to get in her way of doing what she wants to do — not that I could really get in her way, despite said lease, which I doubt would hold up in court, even if I was remotely willing to go to court about it — but… I thought I had a home. And now maybe I don’t have a home.

I guess my “general awesomeness” was not so awesome as all that.

Fast forward through some misery and yeah, Suzanne has decided to move to Utah, and I… need to go somewhere. I don’t know where yet. It’s so weird to have spent four years looking for my forever home, think that I had found it, and now be back where I was. Except now without any form of transportation, and having wasted several years of my life in which I could have/should have been earning money, instead of hanging out with puppies and taking long walks, comfortable in the knowledge that I had an extremely affordable forever place.

My brain keeps spiraling around my choices: what do I need to do first? Find a job? But unless it was online, I need to know where I’m going to live before I can find a job. Write a resume? Well, that’s a good starting place to finding a job. Super irony — when I was looking through all my old photos a few months ago, I deleted the file of my last resume, smug in the knowledge that I would never be looking for a job again. Ha. Find some form of transportation to get the hell out of here? Oh, God, yes. But do I want to try to bring my belongings, the things I’ve purchased since I moved here? The sideboard that so perfectly matches the floors, the coat rack that is ideal for coat-heavy Arcata, the convection oven that I spent a ridiculous $250 on? Will I need it if I find a place with an actual kitchen? But how in the world am I going to find a place to live with no real income and a dog?

The spiral goes and goes and goes and goes.

I heard the Canadian geese overhead when I was playing with Sophie at the park this morning and burst into tears. I sobbed, standing in the park, trying to not to drip snot all over myself. That sound is one of my favorite things about Arcata. Well, that and the marsh and the forest and the farmer’s market and, I thought, sharing a yard and living next door to a really good friend.

But life is change.

I think the hardest thing has been how much this has triggered and renewed all of the pain of my estrangement from R. Suzanne has been clear that it’s not me, she’s just feeling stuck in Arcata and wants to go somewhere else that she will like more. And I can appreciate that, of course. I wanted to leave Winter Park for much the same reason. She was here for a job that she no longer has, and I was in Winter Park for a school for R, and sometimes it’s just time to move on. But when you think you matter, and then you discover that you don’t, actually, that you can be discarded like yesterday’s leftovers, it… well, it’s not a fun experience. I’m not blaming Suzanne for my pain; I fully understand that it’s my own brain that’s hurting me, that the rejection I feel is coming from inside, not outside. But still… I’m spending a lot of time crying.

I will figure it out, I guess. I don’t know how yet, and I don’t know where I’ll go or how I’ll get there. And I know that I need to stop wasting time regretting my choices. The past is over and done and there’s nothing that can fix it. I don’t need to be in a hurry; it’s not like she’s sold the house and I have a definite eviction date. It’s even possible that the new owners would be happy to have a clean, quiet, reliable tenant in the tiny house. But I want to be gone.

We were on the beach a while back and the puppies were playing and I said to Suzanne, I could never leave Arcata, ’cause I could never take Sophie away from Bear. It’s so strange to think that the puppies won’t grow old together, that someday all that will be left of their connection is the pictures of them playing together way back when.

I want to make it to that future. I want to get to the place where I think back on my time in Arcata with fondness, a lovely time when I shared rocking chairs on the patio with a friend, memories of gluten-free cupcakes and roses and morning fires and always making travel plans for new adventures.

But first there’s some grieving to get through.

After Long Silence