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