3100 Miles
I packed two bags and took off for Boston, Massachusetts from my home in Northern California in the fall of 2009. I had just gotten out of 33 days of inpatient rehab for alcohol, and I was now tasked with finding a suitable environment to live in that wouldn’t trigger me into a relapse. Sober housing would have been ideal, but wasn’t affordable. (My mother paid $6000 for my rehab and that’s as much as she could do to help.) Among my available options in Northern California was a house with my alcoholic father, alcoholic sister, and her alcoholic pipsqueak of a boyfriend who had the gall to insult me whenever he got really drunk, a.k.a. daily. I knew me living there would not be a sustainable situation long-term. I had tried living there before and was miserable. I needed to find something else.
A sober friend of mine, Nicole, had just moved to Boston (Cambridge, to be precise) because her soon-to-be husband had been accepted to Harvard law school. She had always been super supportive of my accomplishments in sobriety, congratulating me on my milestones. She offered me her couch to crash on until I found a job and a place of my own, and the offer was like music to my ears. I couldn’t think of a better option to support me in my recovery, so that’s the option I chose.
It didn’t take me much deliberation to make up my mind about leaving. I didn’t fear leaving my home and everything I knew, for whatever reason. I am a fiercely independent and resourceful person and can get by just about anywhere. Like black mold, I am determined to survive. Nicole had tipped me off to the fact that Massachusetts has free health insurance for low-income residents, and the process to sign up for it is incredibly simple. (The quality of the care, in my experience, was not so fantastic, but I guess you get what you pay for.) Getting set up with health insurance was one big step for me toward surviving as a newly sober adult.
I had only been to Boston once before, in 2005 when I went on a cross-country roadtrip with someone I knew only through LiveJournal (yes, I was manic at the time). I just remembered there were a lot of bricks everywhere, and they didn’t have avocado when I asked for it on my BLT sandwich. Unacceptable. 😡 It seemed like a fine place to live, and unlike most weak Californians I didn’t fear the snow to come in the winter.
October 22, 2009. It would be the second time that year I had moved out of state. (I had lived in Washington state briefly with an ex-boyfriend.) After a long and arduous journey that involved me falling asleep sitting up at Chicago O’Hare airport, I arrived at my friend’s apartment in Cambridge, where they shared a wall with a Mexican restaurant. They heard Mexican music at all hours as the cooks kept themselves entertained throughout their shifts. They had just moved in themselves and furniture was a little sparse, but Nicole and her boyfriend had made a cute home for themselves. Nicole knew how exhausted I was from my journey across the continent, so she set me up immediately in their guest room. My new bed was so comfortable. When winter came, I laid in the bed and looked up at the skylight and watched snow fall. It was incredibly peaceful.
Nicole and her boyfriend were quiet, respectful people and easy to live with. I wish I could say the same about myself at the time. I don’t think they had the same sentiments about me. Having a roommate seemed to really stress Nicole out (she also suffers from bipolar disorder). I remember one time I was trying to talk on the phone and I was disturbing her. It’s just sort of a fact of life when you share a space with someone, but she was getting to her wit’s end and demanded I find another place to live.
I felt pretty abandoned, but I knew the jig would be up eventually. I would be fine — I had a plan. Someone up there was looking out for me, because I found a decently-paying job doing fundraising less than a week after setting foot in Boston. Nicole allowed me one extra week to get enough money to find my own place. I didn’t quite have the cash saved up, but had to go somewhere else, so I ended up moving in with a junkie and began my spiral into relapse.
Winter 2009 was the first time I was “homeless.” I was determined to stay in Boston, so I didn’t just move home. I was staying with this scumbag at his house rent-free because I was sleeping with him. We went to food pantries to get groceries. They have bizarre, misshapen vegetables at food pantries. And I got really sick of peanut butter. He ended up throwing me against a wall and ripping a $200 ski jacket my mom had just bought me for the harsh winters in Boston. Fuck that asshole. I had to get a police escort to gather my belongings from his place once I found an apartment of my own in January 2010.
I would eventually learn that it was mice-infested [shudder], but that first apartment of my own in Dorchester was a huge step for me. Granted, I was sleeping on an air mattress, and had my computer set up on a desk I had hauled in from the street, but I was making it on my own. Paying rent, bills, and being independent.
It took me a couple of years to forge my new identity as a cybersecurity software sales professional. I earned a good living doing that and I was proud of the work I did. I was happy and stable and doing well. For a time.
It all came to an end in 2016. I had moved into a house that, while free from the evils of roommates, I couldn’t really afford on my paltry income from doing Lyft full-time. I ended up declaring bankruptcy, and moving back home became my only option. I had spent the past seven years forming this new identity and making friendships in my new town, and now I was going to abandon it all to continue on elsewhere.
I’m back where I started, in Northern California. I wish like hell I was still back on the East Coast, but the advantage of being where I am now is the proximity to family. And it matters a lot more than I realized before I moved 3100 miles away from them. Without my family’s support, I would not be functioning at all right now. They have been instrumental in picking me up when I was down.
In my medical records from my hospital stay in Massachusetts it says that they called my sister to apprise her of my condition, but that she never called back. Fucking #DESPAIR. My sister blamed timezones when I asked her why she didn’t call. But that situation right there — being institutionalized and having absolutely no support — is why I prefer to be near my family now. They can’t offer much effective help from 3100 miles away. At least the second time I went to the hospital I was in California. My mom drove me to the facility after I called the cops on my cousin for attempted murder (I thought I heard the sound of a revolver being loaded in her room). And she visited me every day I was in there, which says a lot given the poor physical shape she’s in. I think she even brought me Carl’s Jr. 🤤 I was in a bad way, and couldn’t stop tearing up during her visits. I was just so happy she loved me so much that she was loving me through all this terrible stuff.
Boston was definitely an interesting chapter in my life, but for right now I’m pretty happy in the suburbs of the Central Valley. My town now has 200,000 people and is about 2 hours away from San Francisco. All the jobs are there which makes things incredibly hard, because you have to accept an insane commute or earn Valley wages, which are pretty damn pathetic. I even accepted a job at my local Taco Bell in 2017 — I lasted two months before quitting — just out of desperation for something to do to bring in some cash. There are certainly no tech sales jobs. Except iHeart Media. They have an office here. Whoop dee fuckin’ do. Their Account Executive job description mentions that you have to have a “professional appearance.”
Hahahahahaha
Ahahahahahaha
Probably not the best fit for me, who is disheveled at best most days. I have become far too comfortable working from home.
Right now I serve as caretaker to my mother, and I don’t mind doing it. She’s been good to me my whole life, and now it’s my opportunity to repay her for some of what she’s done for me in my life. Though, she still does my laundry. I can do my own laundry, but she just does it better. She has a knack for it that I don’t. She also tends not to leave the clothing in a pile on the floor as I am wont to do.
Family first. Always.
