"Home"
For some reason, I found myself awake at daybreak this morning thinking about this blog and my friend Huckleberry the hound, and thinking about my long journey to my home out in the country.
As one might imagine, there hasn't been a demand for house and pet stays during this weird time in 2020. I've been in one location - "home" - since my last stay ending March 15th, for the first time in several years. It has been a very interesting process and adjustment, (and one I've finally been able to settle into, with the assurance of no last minute "can-you...?")
In 2012, days after my ex-partner graduated from our shared alma mater, with my dog Kitty in the cab of a 16-foot moving truck and towing my beloved Jeep behind, we set out cross-country to start a new life in a place very different from the one in which I'd grown up and started my own life. 2200 miles from everyone and everything I'd known, I started fresh in Portland, Oregon, full of the love of a passionate, burgeoning relationship and the hope of a different sort of life.
We got various kinds of jobs when we first got here, me at Pet Smart with my dog training credentials as a temporary gig, while she hustled and bounced until landing a couple of different impressive positions at OHSU with her degree. Pet Smart wasn't offering much in the way of hours and didn't need another trainer, so I soon got a job at a law firm in downtown through a random pet grooming client I met at Pet Smart. Things looked very much on track for making the kind life we had planned to make together.
We moved from an apartment out east towards Gresham to a beautiful house in the Southwest near Tryon Creek, then to an adorable two-bedroom in Woodstock. But the kind of lifestyle I was working to support and the climate at the downtown firm were not happy-making or fulfilling, and I set out to start my own business running errands and pet sitting.
Things shifted very quickly after I left my job at the law firm. Our roommate gave notice that he was moving in with friends, then our landlords gave notice that they were no longer renting out their house, and then OHSU gave notice that they were not going to renew my ex-partner's contract.
We scrambled to pull things together, to find a way to stay in Portland and have a place to live. Coincidentally, my ex-partner had been researching tiny homes and was obsessed with/fascinated by extreme downsizing and tiny living. We had a huge sale and parted with most of our furnishings and things. It's such a simple sentence, but how else does one convey the loss experienced when you get rid of almost everything you've brought with you? We bought a travel trailer and moved into it together, and things got really interesting and at times, really dark. My ex-partner hustled for another job for about 6 months, then decided to help me with my business, and both of us were house sitting and pet sitting exclusively for our income, sometimes at two different places at the same time.
Owning a business alone is enough to cause resulting mental and emotional stress and strain on a relationship. In our case, with neither of us having really found a friend network, we were sort of everything to each other: family, co-workers, spouses, best friends, and roommates in a tiny space of 100 square feet in between house sitting stays. Balancing the business with the strain of seemingly never having enough money, and at times, not knowing where we were going to be able to park our "house" and sleep safely or where our next meal would come was enough, but on top of it, strangers would come and bang on our door to shame us for how we were trying to get by.
During all this, I was suffering from a mental health crisis that I didn't know how to solve: depression so deep I could barely function, constant anxiety, daily panic attacks. That wasn't easy on my ex-partner either. Each of us found out just how strong we were, just how resourceful, and where our breaking points were, to say the least.
That just scratches the surface. The more involved version of my story is one I will tell at some point, somewhere, but it is one that is far too long and involved to dip further into here. For now, I will say that my years in Portland were the hardest and the most enriching of my handful of decades on this Earth plane. I've learned so much about myself and grown myself into a version of me that I'm glad to be, one that enriches the world around her.
After almost 8 years together, and still in the throes of a complicated living and working situation, and my ex-partner and I separated and parted ways. Now she is moving on to another city in another state with another partner. And about a year ago, I moved into the woods somewhere between Portland and the Oregon coast.
My dog, too, left this plane of existence about a year ago; her final act was helping me find my new home. Kitty drove with me out to where I've lived for the past year; she met the people who own this property, sniffed and checked everything out, and she was gone the next day.
The last several years of pet and house sitting have found me adjusting to a different neighborhood, a different schedule, and almost a different way of being every few days to a couple of weeks. I never felt fully in one place for very long, and before this time of quarantine, I didn't realize just how much that division and constant movement had impacted my health and overall adjustment to life.
Also, earlier experiences in my journey made "home" a complicated concept for me for years and years, and this complicated relationship with home lead to essentially feeling like I did not have a place I could call home. When my ex-partner and I decided to part, it felt like I was saying goodbye to the last hope I had of having the concept of home and family I had wanted and craved and tried to find or make for myself for twenty years.
But now, as I sit here in the front yard of the main house on the property, in a great big wooden swing, watching the world wake up as the Sun begins Its great climb in the sky, I marvel at how far I've come. I think about the concept of "home", and just how much it means to me to have a place in this world that I can call "home". How incredibly impactful it is on every other facet of my life to have found these beautiful people, who love and support me just as I am. They feel like family. So this experience feels like what I remembered "home" to be like, back when I was a youngster in Oklahoma, growing up with the unconditional love and support of my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, great-uncles and great-aunts, cousins and church community. Love and support. Home.
I started this blog to honor the dogs and cats (and the parrot!) who have helped me on my journey. These compassionate, loving souls in furry or feathered bodies patiently helped me learn about myself and life and love. They accepted and loved me, they gave me temporary sanctuary during a turbulent time, they gave me a sense of "home." I will never forget any of them.
But be patient. It requires a lot of me emotionally to plumb the depths of my connection to some of my "clients". Like my buddy, Huckleberry. Our story together is coming.
 |
| Huckleberry Hound |
As one might imagine, there hasn't been a demand for house and pet stays during this weird time in 2020. I've been in one location - "home" - since my last stay ending March 15th, for the first time in several years. It has been a very interesting process and adjustment, (and one I've finally been able to settle into, with the assurance of no last minute "can-you...?")
In 2012, days after my ex-partner graduated from our shared alma mater, with my dog Kitty in the cab of a 16-foot moving truck and towing my beloved Jeep behind, we set out cross-country to start a new life in a place very different from the one in which I'd grown up and started my own life. 2200 miles from everyone and everything I'd known, I started fresh in Portland, Oregon, full of the love of a passionate, burgeoning relationship and the hope of a different sort of life.
We got various kinds of jobs when we first got here, me at Pet Smart with my dog training credentials as a temporary gig, while she hustled and bounced until landing a couple of different impressive positions at OHSU with her degree. Pet Smart wasn't offering much in the way of hours and didn't need another trainer, so I soon got a job at a law firm in downtown through a random pet grooming client I met at Pet Smart. Things looked very much on track for making the kind life we had planned to make together.
We moved from an apartment out east towards Gresham to a beautiful house in the Southwest near Tryon Creek, then to an adorable two-bedroom in Woodstock. But the kind of lifestyle I was working to support and the climate at the downtown firm were not happy-making or fulfilling, and I set out to start my own business running errands and pet sitting.
Things shifted very quickly after I left my job at the law firm. Our roommate gave notice that he was moving in with friends, then our landlords gave notice that they were no longer renting out their house, and then OHSU gave notice that they were not going to renew my ex-partner's contract.
We scrambled to pull things together, to find a way to stay in Portland and have a place to live. Coincidentally, my ex-partner had been researching tiny homes and was obsessed with/fascinated by extreme downsizing and tiny living. We had a huge sale and parted with most of our furnishings and things. It's such a simple sentence, but how else does one convey the loss experienced when you get rid of almost everything you've brought with you? We bought a travel trailer and moved into it together, and things got really interesting and at times, really dark. My ex-partner hustled for another job for about 6 months, then decided to help me with my business, and both of us were house sitting and pet sitting exclusively for our income, sometimes at two different places at the same time.
Owning a business alone is enough to cause resulting mental and emotional stress and strain on a relationship. In our case, with neither of us having really found a friend network, we were sort of everything to each other: family, co-workers, spouses, best friends, and roommates in a tiny space of 100 square feet in between house sitting stays. Balancing the business with the strain of seemingly never having enough money, and at times, not knowing where we were going to be able to park our "house" and sleep safely or where our next meal would come was enough, but on top of it, strangers would come and bang on our door to shame us for how we were trying to get by.
During all this, I was suffering from a mental health crisis that I didn't know how to solve: depression so deep I could barely function, constant anxiety, daily panic attacks. That wasn't easy on my ex-partner either. Each of us found out just how strong we were, just how resourceful, and where our breaking points were, to say the least.
That just scratches the surface. The more involved version of my story is one I will tell at some point, somewhere, but it is one that is far too long and involved to dip further into here. For now, I will say that my years in Portland were the hardest and the most enriching of my handful of decades on this Earth plane. I've learned so much about myself and grown myself into a version of me that I'm glad to be, one that enriches the world around her.
After almost 8 years together, and still in the throes of a complicated living and working situation, and my ex-partner and I separated and parted ways. Now she is moving on to another city in another state with another partner. And about a year ago, I moved into the woods somewhere between Portland and the Oregon coast.
My dog, too, left this plane of existence about a year ago; her final act was helping me find my new home. Kitty drove with me out to where I've lived for the past year; she met the people who own this property, sniffed and checked everything out, and she was gone the next day.
 |
| And now "home" looks like this |
Also, earlier experiences in my journey made "home" a complicated concept for me for years and years, and this complicated relationship with home lead to essentially feeling like I did not have a place I could call home. When my ex-partner and I decided to part, it felt like I was saying goodbye to the last hope I had of having the concept of home and family I had wanted and craved and tried to find or make for myself for twenty years.
But now, as I sit here in the front yard of the main house on the property, in a great big wooden swing, watching the world wake up as the Sun begins Its great climb in the sky, I marvel at how far I've come. I think about the concept of "home", and just how much it means to me to have a place in this world that I can call "home". How incredibly impactful it is on every other facet of my life to have found these beautiful people, who love and support me just as I am. They feel like family. So this experience feels like what I remembered "home" to be like, back when I was a youngster in Oklahoma, growing up with the unconditional love and support of my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, great-uncles and great-aunts, cousins and church community. Love and support. Home.
 |
| Zulie |
But be patient. It requires a lot of me emotionally to plumb the depths of my connection to some of my "clients". Like my buddy, Huckleberry. Our story together is coming.
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