My Bio - Part 35

Note: This section was written in 2005 and edited in 2024 for sharing.

With tears streaming down my face, we left the mountain on September 7th. I felt beaten, helpless, and hopeless. It seemed like the more we wanted something, the more fate turned against us. I began to wonder if we would ever escape the past. We went to Oregon to save money, yet we ended up more broke than ever. We went to get away from people, but there we were, back in the city we had tried to escape, forced to face the chaos of civilization all over again. Though it was a small city, I was once again subjected to the blare of loud, obnoxious car stereos, barking dogs, and all the sounds that come with living close to others. I watched with anger, frustration, and sorrow as so many of the things we had run from began creeping back into our lives.

We started out at the Townhouse Motel, one of the noisiest places we stayed. It was owned by an older couple.

I sank into a deep depression and became incredibly emotional, feeling completely disconnected from reality. Crying spells came frequently, and I truly believed we would never live in a house again, much less own one. I hadn’t wanted to die as badly as I did that day since getting legally shit on. Though I knew this crisis wasn’t as severe as others I had survived, it’s always the one you’re going through that feels the worst at the time, and this one felt plenty bad enough.

To make matters worse, Tom and I were constantly worried about him being laid off. The small, family-owned company he worked for was struggling financially, and since he was new to the area, we knew he would be the first to go if they started cutting jobs.

I thought back to when Tom had asked me how it felt to be jobless and homeless on the first night of our journey to Oregon.

“It makes me nervous,” I had told him. “What about you? How do you feel?”

“Excited,” he had replied.

But that excitement had definitely worn off by now. We weren’t jobless anymore, but being homeless and living in motels was no fun at all.

After a week of enduring constant door-slamming at the Townhouse Motel, we moved to The Klamath Inn, owned by a Muslim family. The father wasn’t particularly friendly, but his son Shelvin was outgoing and said his father was like that with everyone.

By mid-September, the weather had started getting colder, making me regret our decision to come to Oregon. The chill reminded me too much of New England. Once the snow arrived in late October, I didn’t know which I hated more: Arizona or Oregon. I missed Arizona’s warmth, the monsoons, the palms, cacti, and roadrunners, but I didn’t miss the state itself or its crazy laws.

I longed for a place that didn’t get as blisteringly hot as Arizona but also didn’t turn cold and snowy. The area we were in wasn’t as snowy as New England, but it sure was colder. Tom, however, loved it. After growing up in the desert, it was a new and exciting experience for him. As much as I was coming to hate Oregon, it would ultimately become my ticket to my dream state—the one I had always thought I couldn’t live in for one reason or another. Part of me regretted not moving straight from Phoenix to Sacramento and skipping both Maricopa and Oregon. Sacramento seemed like it would offer a better climate, more job opportunities, and fairer insurance policies. Tom was paying $1 an hour of his pay for his insurance, and it would take $4 an hour to insure me, so we decided not to bother. Oregon’s lack of sales tax meant we would be hit hard at tax time.

Though it hurt to lose our land and the dream of building our own house, I realized I would have hated dealing with the brutal winters there—worse than where we were now, at 4,342 feet in elevation.

There were a few interesting things about life in Oregon, like Jane. Ah, Jane. She was a waitress at an awesome Chinese restaurant we couldn’t afford to visit often. From the moment we made eye contact, I knew she liked me. She was funny, and I enjoyed her service, but I doubted she would’ve made a good friend. No one is that hyper—not even me. Given how thin she was for her age, I suspected she was on drugs. Still, she was attractive, with long dark hair and dark eyes, and a bit tall. She eventually moved away, and I never saw her again.

Between early September and late October, we stayed in four different motels. The A1-Budget was the best. Raj and Tina, a friendly couple from India, owned it. Tina even bought a couple of dolls from me, which helped us out. She offered us a room with a kitchen for $650 a month, and while we briefly considered it, we decided we needed more space. Plus, I didn’t want them waking me up to clean the room when I was working nights.

We made one final trip up to the land to empty out the RV and dismantle the shed we had built.

“More money lost,” I thought bitterly as we took it apart.