Three Weeks To Go

Today is my last week working for the company I've been with for over 11 years.

It could have been another 11 years if the new store manager hadn't cockblocked my attempts to get more hours because she's dead terrified of females who get engaged to other females.

Oh but one of her friends is a gay guy! She's so not homophobic!!1!

...tell that to the fucking newspaper, lady.

I've got my visa and flights, Dralion's flights, the moving+storage company all booked. I've got an appointment at the GP to sort out my meds and pick up a copy of my medical records. Had the chest X-Ray to make sure I don't have any sign of Tuberculosis and today I got the last vaccination I needed to get to satisfy entry requirements.

I've been stabbed with so many needles this year, omfg.

Fun fact: I'm old enough to have only gotten the old-version Pacific Islands Measels/Rubella shot and not the full MMR as a child.

Well that's been fixed. As well as the chicken pox (I caught it, never got the stab) and tetanus (mum didn't bother unless we stepped on nails) and this seasons' flu vaccine. Which is a good thing because there's some seriously nasty bugs going around right now.

Dral will come to the airport with me on fly-out day, but she'll be spending two nights in a cattery in Auckland to prep her for the flight over, and so I don't have to introduce her to two Hercules Morse doggos at 5am after being awake for over 30 hours. (I never assume I'm gonna sleep over the pacific. I've gotten lucky and been able to nap 2/6 times.)

I feel so fuckin bad about subjecting her to this, but I just don't know anyone who can take on an inside cat right now. And the sad irony of the situation is that it will be cheaper to fly her to America than it would be to get her leg fixed here.

She'll be an inside cat over there too, for absolute fuckin sure. I'm terrified she'll get out and be eaten by something or get bit by a tick or hit by a car or or or. What if she can't adjust to big lazy doggos? What if the doggos don't accept her? She was OK with Summergirl's dogs after a while, but they were smaller than her. Of course they were more energetic and nervous and freaked out when she moved which would set her off too... Ugh. I need to stop freaking out and deal with shit as it happens.

Three weeks left.

Glamour Nana and Grandad might be coming down in that time. Nana has done us a tapestry as a wedding present, but they still haven't figured out what's causing her so much pain and I don't want her to deal with that drive when she's already in so much pain and they haven't figured out what's causing it.

When I had to go up to Chch for the medical eval for this visa I stayed with them and... I have no words to describe it. She was lying on the floor, crying from pain. Heavy, hopeless, silent feeling.

Grandad is gonna be forced to retire for good at 80. With our current housing market they're not gonna be able to afford to continue renting when they're both on the pension. When my fiancee and I move back down here the plan is to buy a place big enough that Nana and Grandad can move in too.

I hope we can manage it.

A couple weeks ago I saw an old drug den in the bad part of town going for half a million dollars. It sold, too. Emmie+Jay at work only managed to buy a house because the seller specifically wanted to sell to a young Kiwi family and passed over some M-A-S-S-I-V-E offers from overseas to accept their bid.

That's too far in the future though. There's so much in between now and then I can't wrap my brain around it all.

I never thought I'd live this long.

Right now I'm glad I have.

~Peri

Quandary

I want to come back.

I want to post here again.

I'm just not sure.

I can't remember if I gave him this URL, if he had blanket permission to read no matter what.

Doesn't matter now. Don't expect him to keep his word now. Never should have, not when there couldn't ever be real-world consequences for breaking it.

These kinds of people, they guard their reputation jealousy. It is EVERYTHING.

I don't want to sever myself from my past. My past is a part of who I am. It doesn't dictate all, but it is important and I don't deny that it exists or has led to me being who and what I am today.

Still, I'm stuck.

I don't want to risk THOSE eyes seeing. I'm tired of being manipulated and controlled. I'm tired of living in fear. I didn't realise how bad it had gotten until I was free.

Mum says I seem a lot happier now that Baby Bro has moved in downstairs. I wonder if (even at some subconscious level) she's connected the dots and realised that it's because someone moved OUT.

I dunno. We're probably coming to the end of the Honeymoon Period that the cancer scare bought me. She's already pushing on certain subjects. The sooner I escape the better.

It'll be out of the frying pan and into the fire. So many unknowns and so little to fall back on.

I wonder if part of distancing myself from everyone online was part of trying to protect those old, uncontaminated networks from his touch? I know it was at least a little bit deliberately trying to cause distance so people would be less upset when I inevitably killed myself. No matter how stable I am it's always an option that automatically pops up and I'm finally realising just how fucked up that is.

Old, tired option that I roll my eyes at like the Cherry Ripes everyone leaves on the staffroom table.

Like Alyssa says this is probably the kick up the ass I needed to escape the rut I've been in for fuck knows how long now.

I never thought I'd live this long. I'm halfway through my expected lifespan. I've lived over ten years longer than I thought I would. I'm doing something I never thought I would, something I never thought was an option for me.

It's insane.

Fuck fear, embrace the adrenaline, use the lessons of the past to survive the trials yet to come.

I don't know what's going to happen.

I miss everyone so, so fucking much.

For safety I should make this private, I should start again elsewhere. But that would mean losing the roots in the past that are I-M-P-O-R-T-A-N-T in ways I'm too tired to articulate right now.

The possibility of escape seems too good to be true. I know something of what is to come, but not quite enough to make me entirely calm about the situation. Too many unknowns.

At least there nobody looks at me weird until AFTER I open my mouth.

I'm scared of losing my accent again. I never really got it back and now it'll probably go agai because I KNOW me and I know that communication is so fucking important that it comes above nearly all else.

I don't know. I need to drink water and sleep so that tomorrow I can get up earlier than I did today and get some packing done before i got to the gym. If these fucking gales die down enough to make it safe to ride.

I miss you all. I love you. Please, don't ever give up on yourselves.
~Peri