I am a woman who has always suffered from Wanderlust. Blame my Sagittarian birth or my need to connect with something greater in my life, but I always want to go places. I'm not a big every-weekend day-tripper, though. I will admit, I have severe general anxiety and general social anxiety, so being out in the world and having to engage in general-required-adult-life-experiences can really empty my tank. I usually like small once-a-month road trips or a larger yearly family vacation. If I can have a little bit of both, that'd be a stellar year in my book. I, though, have a vacationally-challenged family who also have extreme anxiety, ADD, and severe-hermit-uh-gitis. Add on two pets to board or find sitters for and it makes sense why maybe my Wanderlust simmers and simmers until finally the pot feels like it's going to simmer straight to the ugly, scorched bottom.
So let me fill you in on how I got to the point where I am doing a solo13-day road trip to New England and back with my furbestie. In 2021/2022, I suffered a terrible mental and emotional breakdown. It was heavily brought on by the death of my mother, but it was also that I released myself from my decade-long toxic work environment. I was burdened with the unwilling care of my incarcerated, felon brother, who I have never had a relationship with at all in my life (we are adopted and lived almost separate lives from around the age of 10). Additionally, I've been fighting against my daughter's school district and how teachers have been treating my daughter who had undiagnosed ADD (undiagnosed due to their poor reporting and lack of engagement with parents) and my daughter's severe anxiety brought on by 4-years of a gang of boys bullying her physically, emotionally, and psychologically. All these things took their toll on me and made my mental health worse and worse and worse, despite my battle to trend upwards.
Slowly, though, I have been pulling myself out of the darkness. I am not one to let the "bad guy" win when I can do something about it. So I started to turn my life around. I started from the bottom by looking for the things that make me happy. I knew all the things that used to make me happy or I thought made me happy, but here was my chance to build a new me without the influence of a narcissistic parent or a strange need to make others around me happy. Selfish might feel like a bad word, but I wasn't being selfish about the cookies or the couch. I was using a lense to examine where the real me had gone. For example, I had labeled myself a tabletop game addict and I realized, while I enjoy the occasional game, that's not my passion (unlike my husband who plays tabletop games constantly). I, though, realized I had lost my passion for reading and now it fills my happiness bucket often! The same with watchings movies, but specifically going to the movie theater to watch movies. Slowly I was finding more and more of what makes me the person I am, so that I can be happy and therefore be happier for others in my life. You can't fill another's bucket from your own empty bucket.
When my daughter started high school, though, my happiness train derailed hardcore. She was having a really hard time, which was making it difficult for me to get my daily routines in line. Her daily frustrations and, honestly, abuse from the bullies (yes it continued) and now one specific teacher was also breaking my heart and was causing my husband and I to drift further away from each other. My husband and I, though, have been living together 24/7 since 2020, so it's been a bit of pressure. And, as I mentioned earlier, he is a hardcore hermit and never leaves the house.
All the bad feelings started to consume me. And I mean bad feelings. But unlike ten years ago, I didn't feel like my existence was what needed to be adjusted. I felt like I was wanting so many things that I was never going to get with the people I loved. I needed to take a leap, fly as close to the sun as I can, and hope the fallout isn't the worst.
So I am leaving the day after the election results from in. It'll give me a distraction is something goes wrong. Or if the whole world ends, I will be prepared to Daryl-Dixon my way home with my dog in the aftermath. Or maybe I'll be able to flee to Canada to seek asylum! Who knows! But I'll be able to make it through on my own. I am ready for whatever life has to throw at me.
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