I Wasn't Taught to Stay: Part 4

Our rent was increasing too much, and my mother and I... we are just not a good match. I found a cute little duplex and had my kids and I all moved in and set up within the three days they were at their dad's. That little place gave me a brief taste of autonomy.

Again, rent went up. I found a small apartment -- turned out to be a converted garage, but it was one street from the beach. I could stand at my front door and watch dolphins.

Sure, I could also watch the homeless walk by, or the upstairs neighbor OD in the grass. And pay no mind to the cockroaches that set our stove on fire. I had dolphins.

This is where I couldn't pay for electricity and had to go to a service agency with my head down and tail tucked between my legs. This is where I started drinking every night. A big-ass bottle of cheap white wine from the liquor store 450 feet from my front door. That store knew me by name. Knew my favorites. Knew I'd be back.

This was also the tail end of my cigarette habit... but I didn't go out quietly. Still puffing a pack a day. Ten cigarettes before noon, easy, with a full pot of coffee. I'd sit on that tiny patio, chain-smoking with one eye on the ocean and the other on my regrets, watching dolphins swim by like they had no idea what rock bottom felt like. Oh, how I wished I were a dolphin.

I should have felt lucky -- beachfront, dolphins, freedom. But I felt hollow. Untethered. Alone in a way that cigarettes and pinot grigio couldn't fix. I'd light one up to silence the shame, pour another glass to keep myself from collapsing.

Work? I had it. A remote gig. Something to keep me functioning. But I'd delay it as long as I could, putting off the laptop like it was a confrontation I didn't have the strength for.

This is the place where my body started whispering: We can't live like this anymore. But I didn't know how to listen. Not yet. This is the place where the courage started to grow anyway. Not the obvious kind, not the brave kind that makes headlines. The quiet kind. The kind that lives beneath the shame and still whispers: Try anyway.

Back to the same townhouse community I had lived in with my mom a couple of years prior. This time, I came with a corporate job and a salary. I could afford it on my own.

And this is when it all became too much.

This is where I broke four bones in my foot and got stuck on the third floor for six weeks. I had no help -- besides a friend who brought a cooler of drinks and snacks once. The rest? I army-crawled across the floor. I learned how to pick myself up with just my arms to use the toilet.

This is when I knew for sure: no one was going to save me.

So I saved myself.

This move felt selfish. Necessary. But selfish. I had to kick my oldest out of the nest -- not just because she was 19, not just because she was ready, but because her boyfriend had moved in and I couldn't afford to raise another soul who wasn't mine. Already working too much. Already stretched too thin. Already unraveling.

I found a small loft in downtown San Diego, just minutes from my corporate job. After a couple of years of crawling through traffic -- an hour and a half in, two hours home -- it felt like I'd earned a sliver of relief. I could sleep a little longer. Eat dinner before 9. Maybe even start to find some hobbies. I was hoping to paint.

The bills still barely got paid. There was no "extra." No dinners out. No shopping sprees. Just the simple act of surviving in a new place all on my own.

My littles started riding the train to see me every weekend. That memory cracks me open in the best way. They were so brave. So excited. Independent before their time. I'm so glad they had that experience... to ride the rails and come find me in the city like something out of a coming-of-age movie.

During the week, I would wake up early and take my dog to the beach to run around before I left for work. I made friends with neighbors. Laughed louder than I had in years. I was living the downtown life -- something I'd once dreamed of. And it was good. Brief, but good.

It was the first time in a long time that I caught a glimpse of something more. Not success, necessarily, but something that felt like it belonged to me. A taste of self. A sliver of light. It didn't last. But for a moment, it flickered.

I didn't even let myself get comfortable in the downtown lifestyle. I knew it was killing me slowly -- death by burnout, by traffic, by pretending to be someone I no longer wanted to be.

So when the offer came... "Come to Arizona. Start fresh." I fucking ran. Ran away from everything: the city, the noise, the corporate hamster wheel, the memories, the version of me that was so used to holding her breath.

We moved into a rental tucked along one of the rare man-made lakes in the middle of the desert. I called it the lake house. And it was a portal. A soft landing after a brutal fall.

We had a little pedal boat, one paddleboard, and a shoreline that welcomed us with sunrise glimmers and goose honks every morning. The stillness, the water, the simple joy of watching ripples spread across the lake... it gave me breath again.

When lockdown hit just weeks after the move, my kids came to me. What started as an "extended spring break" became a full-circle homecoming. And this time, they didn't leave.

My house became a haven. A strange, lucky, magical little prison. If we were going to be locked in, thank the Angels it was here. Thank the Angels we were together.

I let go of the fantasy of being a high-powered corporate woman. In that house, in that season, I didn't care about meetings or KPIs. I cared that I could look outside and see my children floating on paddleboards. I cared that we were under one roof again. That we had food. That we had each other.

This was where we re-rooted. Where I finally had the chance to get quiet. To notice the stories I'd been carrying. To decide who I wanted to become. This is where I became determined to be just a little better every day. And despite everything falling apart in the outside world... inside our little lake house, a new life was beginning.

Right before the 2020 election, the lake house owner decided to sell. We crammed four of us into a two-bedroom apartment -- plus my dog and two cats. It wasn't just tight. It was stifling. And I didn't have a job. No one was hiring.

This is where I felt the pang of regret, sharp and unforgiving. What have I done?

This is where the spiral started. The full-blown what-the-fuck-did-I-just-do panic that wakes you up in the middle of the night with a chest full of fire and no way out. It still calls out to me.

This was also the moment I realized: I could no longer play the game. I had to lean fully on my partner. Something I had never done. Not like this. This was the beginning of a reckoning for us both, because the life we thought we were building no longer existed. America had changed. The illusion of freedom was cracked wide open.

The so-called American Dream? Work your entire life for a company that will shit you out faster than Taco Bell, destroy your body with glamorous toxins portrayed as lotions and makeup, give your family to strangers to raise, and then get cancer and fucking die. That was the dream now. And I wanted no part of it.

I stopped looking for jobs in Phoenix. I stopped pretending I could go back to a vision of success that looked and felt like hell. I needed a new vision. One with land. One where we could grow our own food. Build something real. Become self-sufficient. I needed to know how to take care of my family without depending on systems that would gladly let us starve.

This is the moment we decided we had to leave the city. This is why we chose Tucson. Not because it was perfect, but because it offered space. A slower life. The start of an escape route from the machine.

This move wasn't glamorous. It was gritty. Painful. Full of long nights and loaded questions and breakdowns we didn't yet have words for. But it was a turning point. The moment we stopped chasing the American Dream... and started waking up from it.

This is where you find me now. But don't confuse "now" with "forever."

This isn't the end of my story. It's the part where the main character disappears into the desert, barefoot and silent, and doesn't come out until she's burned every version of herself that was built to survive.

This is where I crumbled. Hard. Where I walked into this fixer-upper with a head full of dreams and a body full of trauma. I called it a "project" but really... I was the project.

This is where I finally had enough silence to hear myself. Not the me I thought I had to be. Not the version I kept dressing up to be palatable to others. The real me. The messy, grieving, burnt-out, brave-as-hell woman who finally stopped pretending she was okay.

This is where I sobered up. Not just from alcohol, but from every lie I'd ever swallowed. Every role I'd performed. Every illusion I'd kept alive because it kept the peace.

This is where I learned to shut up and listen. Not to the world. To myself.

I don't think he knew what he was walking into -- my partner, I mean. I barely knew myself. He moved in with someone who looked like a functioning adult but was, in many ways, not. Still spiraling internally. Still fighting shadows no one could see. I was not the girl he fell for. I was the woman I'd been hiding from.

This is where I became a trauma-informed practitioner. A Reiki master -- even though I choose not to practice. A woman who talks to plants and walks barefoot and knows how to rewire a nervous system. This is where I made healing my full-time job -- not because I had the luxury, but because I had no choice.

And yet... I still fight with my own mind. I still spiral. I still carry old habits that grip my throat when I'm tired or scared or feel too much. I am not fixed. I am not finished. But I'm finally real.

I painted these walls. I knocked some down. I learned how to plumb the bathroom and how to use a floor grinder, a table saw, a weed wacker. I grow herbs in the back and buried parts of myself in the front. I am rebuilding this house while rebuilding myself.

And still, I know... I'm not meant to stay. This house taught me how to rest. How to soften. How to be still. But I can feel the wind starting to whisper again.