The Lesson is Garbage

Content warning for childhood trauma, sexual abuse, and suicide mention.

And there’s even a dog, too.

 

When you drop everything you’ve ever known and run away to start a new life on the other side of the country, that’s bound to be a wild ride. Hooboy, has it been. The downs have been pret-ty low – loneliness, a gutting betrayal, housing insecurity, unsafe living conditions, doglessness, broken foot, PTSD – but oh man. The ups. When I fled Arizona, it wasn’t so much as a faint notion in the back of my mind that I might meet someone new and fall madly in love. I was honestly just looking for safety, independence, seasons, and the freedom to write. Last week I celebrated three years legally divorced from my abuser. And today I hold in my hand a license to marry a partner so ridiculously perfect that even at my most fantastically creative I couldn’t have custom-designed him in a lab to be this wonderful. So yeah, it’s been pretty wild.