So. My parents move to North Dakota on Saturday morning.
Wait. Go up there, back to the beginning, and read that again, please. And again. And again. And again. And again. And over and over again until it’s the only thing you can hear inside your head or feel under your skin or understand. Read it until it’s ringing around in your bones like a tiny forgotten windchime hanging in the breezeway of a house where no one has lived for a long time. And then maybe you’ll understand, like, a tenth of what I’m feeling over here in my real life.
Isn’t that ridiculous? Isn’t that the most intense/tragic/pathetic thing you’ve EVER read regarding someone’s totally alive and healthy and communicative and loving parents? It’s SO ridiculous. But that doesn’t make it not true! ALL THIS SADNESS IS DOWN INSIDE MY BONE MARROW.
So, basically, the deal is that my dad got a “great opportunity” from his job and is going to open and manage their office North Dakota where all that horrible environment-murdering oil drilling stuff is going on in the Bakken. YEAH, MAN. Opportunity 2k11.
But I won’t dwell on that because my parents are actually HAPPY about this move and they’ve spent the last six months verbally and emotionally shitting all over everything that has to do with California so — duh! — it will be easier to leave and basically if I have to hear anymore of it I am going to burn down the entire city of myself, so I’ll leave it at. HOORAY FOR THEM. BOO FOR ME.
I am really close to my parents — my dad in particular — and this move will be REALLY HARD ON ME PERSONALLY. I am going to be emotionally devastated. I am going to cry a lot. I am going to cry A LOT. It’s going to be so bad bad bad and I am not looking forward to it. But there is Skype. And for now the girlfriend (FEEYAHNSAY) are keeping the dogs so NEENER NEENER MOM AND DAD THE DOGS LOVE US MORE GO TO HELL. I mean. Cough. We will survive.
When Crystal and I left for Kansas City last summer (nearly a year ago! look at that!) it was easy because my parents drove us to KC. Literally! And stayed for a night while we got kind of settled. And then they left. And we parted ways in a Ramada Inn parking lot on Shawnee Mission Parkway and we were so fucking devastated that we had to pull over in the nearby neighborhood and SOB. And call my parents to say goodbye again. While they cried. I had to listen to my dad cry. DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW AWFUL THAT IS?! SO AWFUL. (PS: Don’t stay at that Ramada Inn. It is terrible.)
And that was only for three months! THIS IS FOR FOREVER. Mostly. I mean, all of me is hoping they come back pretty quick. (Like, in a year. A YEAR IS TOO LONG EVEN THOUGH.) But it’s a “PERMANENT MOVE” and I don’t like it and thinking about it makes me sick all the way to the bone and puts my stomach somewhere around the balls of my feet.
I love my parents. I have lived with them for 27 years minus a grand total of 21 months I have spent elsewhere. And Crystal has lived here for… almost four years now. And though that has largely been out of circumstance (NEWS ALERT: WE ARE POOR. SO POOR!) it has almost never been an unfortunate circumstance.
I not only love my parents, I like them. They have their faults — DUH — but they are kind, generous, funny, good people. They make me laugh all the time. They take care of me emotionally and financially. They laugh at my jokes. And they have supported me always 100% no matter how stupid my decisions have been. Dude, they encouraged my going to grad school. They’re clearly reckless and crazy people.
And now they’re abandoning me?! So entirely unacceptable that nothing can quell the rage and sadness hurricane in my heart.
Crystal and don’t know what we’re going to do either, really. We may have to move to North Dakota to mooch off the only adults in my life for a little bit longer — and maybe we’ll make some of that sweet-ass Bakkan CASH — or we may have to invade Crystal’s mother’s life for a while. Or we might have to do both, running this engagement shitshow as a long-distance deal for a while. But for now, we’re going to stay in my parents’ house and try to find a roommate and make this shit work. LIKE ADULTS. So that when North Dakota proves lame and cold, my parents can come back and resume taking care of me for the rest of my life. DUH.
Uncertainty messes with my bowels SO MUCH, you guys. Be so glad you haven’t had to share a bathroom with me these last few weeks.
So this posts exists for a few reasons:
1. To tell the internet at large that I love my parents a lot and will miss them heartily.
2. To make it perfectly clear that I am not nor probably ever will be an adult.
3. To reiterate that I am SO OPEN TO FREELANCE IT ISN’T EVEN FUNNY. (Peep that sidebar, son. Email me. I’m good.)
4. To use the verb “peep” in a public space because sometimes I say it in my head.
5. To reiterate that California is awesome and everywhere else sucks. BOOYAH.
6. To warn you that we will be doing some ~remodeling~ in order to get the master bedroom up to roommate snuff so that someone will want to live with us. And I will be blogging about it.
7. To entice you to want to live with me and Crystal maybe because we are awesome and will be looking for people in June/July and want to welcome some fucking weirdos on the internet into our home. Because we are also fucking weirdos.
Here are some pictures of me and my parents! They are pictures of pictures because I love my parents but am also the laziest. I cried a little though while my webcam went off, so there’s that. Call ’em lo-fi or some shit.
Dear Momma and Poppa,
You are abandoning me. I am 27 and I can barely manage to do a load of laundry and, at 20, in one weekend where I was left alone in your house, I lit the toaster on fire and had to throw a flaming bag of popcorn into the front yard in order to extinguish it. What the hell are you thinking? I wasn’t even drinking.
Regardless, I love you both and I know that you’re doing this because you want to have an adventure and that is GREAT. Go have an adventure. And be safe. And meet people and look at some historic junk and throw some rocks over the border at Canadians and for GAWD’S SAKE please hire someone to shovel your walkway when it snows. We will hold the fort down until your return from the almost-Great White North. I love you. Thank you. We love you. Thank you.
– Ash and also Crystal and also everyone who has ever met you probably.
