Now is Not the Time for Here
When you move somewhere for the people, and you can’t be with people what do you do?
My heart was aching for home the last 5 years. I went through a tumultuous political life in Las Vegas, Nevada. Then a divorce. I traveled the country for work with an ache in my heart to return to my hometown that built me.
Portland, Oregon was always the hometown of my heart. I had friends and mentors who stayed in touch. When I got into political scrapes it was Portland that claimed me as their hometown girl even though I left in 2004. If not for the love and support of Portland to be a political radical I would not be who I am today.
I often say what other place in America would let a kid operate anti-racist marches and practice radical feminism at age 15. I had a radio show at 17. I pushed military recruiters out of high schools by the time I left Roosevelt in 1991.
I led protest marches. Including the massive walk out of my high school over the first Gulf War.
I was the world’s biggest fan of the Ralph Steadman show. He let me sit in the studio for every Career Day I had in high school. I got to be on the air. I basked in the joy of being with him and the Mystic Kimberly. All of the work I do behind the microphone including my radio voice I credit back to the love they showed me as a young woman.
My first babies were born in Portland. I had amazing midwives and doulas who put me in touch with my body. Even when things went terribly wrong I felt tremendous love and support.
I took a fall from grace early as a mother. I went from a perfect college student to a hostess at a strip club when my first ex-husband suffered from crippling depression. I was raising two kids, working part time at a bank, and showing men to their tables at the Acropolis. My awkward body lacked rhythm to pull off stripping. Nor did I ever really try. I was smart and honest so I excelled at cashing out checks and getting change to customers to tip the girls who would in turn tip me. I came home with my pockets filled with much needed cash from a secret life which would have shamed my husband who could barely get out of bed to care for the kids while I worked all night. His family certainly could not know. I credit this experience for why I am so fierce an advocate for sex workers. Strippers helped me make my house payments and feed my babies.
I had mentors who always stayed in touch. I walked in to surprise an old boss and found my picture on his wall 20 years later with a picture of my nearly getting arrested at a political event. I felt like I was always part of this hometown.
Three years ago I broke down and cried like a baby on camera immediately after the 1 October mass shooting in Las Vegas. I responded to the event as a member of the Red Cross. The first story went out identifying me as from Portland because Oregonians were the ones posting back against the conspiracy theory crazies. Friends of folks I barely knew were posting all day F-You to anyone who said shit that I was part of the Deep State. When a conspiracy site posted information about me that I must have been in on the attack because I had worked on the local city council the effort was led out of Portland to take down those cruel posts and protect my family.
When my soul was so deeply broken afterward I went to Portland to curl up in blankets and drink tea as I recovered from the initial waves of PTSD. This was a sensation of every pore in my body living in sheer exhaustion, yet too afraid to sleep. I have the kind of friends where when I was struggling for kindness and sanity in the world restored it through taking turns making me get up, go to yoga, go to scream therapy, go on a hike, fed me, sang with me, made sure I went to a therapist, and nurtured me until I was strong enough to go back into the world.
Oregonians are book givers. I had self help books and spiritual guides of all different kinds tucked in the door with sweet notes from people I did not even know. I was that woman from Oregon who had been through something terrible. We stay connected that everyone knew someone who knew someone who knew me.
The blessing was to know that there were people who wanted me back out into the world. When I was at my most numb an old boyfriend from college and his wife came to see me. He told me that he wished there was just someone’s ass he could go kick for me like the good old days. They told me how much they loved watching me fight. I felt myself pop back. Then this big 6ft plus tall man picked me up in my shriveled state and held me up on his lap against his broad shoulders and cried with me. His wife rubbed my back. I felt safe and restored. I carry with me a responsibility to fight for families like theirs. They said there are times when in the world of politics it feels to them like I am the only person fighting for people who grew up like us from the poverty of St. Johns.
In December 2019 the opportunity presented itself to join and become the catalyst which is a founding member of an intentional community in Portland. It paired perfectly with a position I was offered to lobby within planning and land use for affordable housing.
I spent the next 3 months preparing for the move there and a new start. The dream was to share a living space. Each person has their own bedroom and bathroom plus shared use of a fully stocked gourmet kitchen, laundry room, and family room.
I enjoyed the other members selected by my community. We had amazing conversations about our visions for the home we were all making together. Then I left on what was supposed to be a 10 day business trip. I did not come back for nearly 60 days. In that time I contracted and survived Covid.
What I returned to was a drastically changed community. My housemates at the time in the uncertainty of the pandemic no longer wanted to share the kitchen or large family room central to the experience. I was down to living only in my bedroom.
There would be no singing. There would be no gatherings of friends from the outside community. The weather was dark and grey. I returned back into the world to work in part because many of the folks older than me in my same field I felt a responsibility to protect them from getting Covid, and I had already survived it.
I tried to return back home three more times but it never felt right. Each time I barely passed the quarantine period locked alone in my room. I craved companionship that could not happen in the pandemic.
I tried dating someone I had met before the pandemic who also lives in Portland. He came over a couple times but was not the most attentive of suitors. The last time he spent the night at my place I wrote a sweet text that I really enjoyed our time together. All he wrote back was “back atcha.” Among my great attractions to him when I swiped on his Tinder profile the summer of 2019 in Iowa was that he lived in Portland where I hoped to return. His mental health challenges were better to put distance and believe if there was a time for it, there would be a time for it should the fog lift. I touched back and checked in. However knowing from my own experience of depression adding my name to the list of people he may feel like he is disappointing would be a cruel thing to do.
It was better for me to go take a job which placed me in quarantine with an ex. The ex and I know exactly why we will never work out. I chose companionship within a relationship I fully understand, where we already negotiated all of the boundaries, than to wait pining for the crumbs of a relative stranger.
I lived four and a half months of bliss between Puerto Rico, and Portland, Maine doing my work. The holidays approached and I felt strong. The ex was going back to the mainland to visit his family. I decided to give Oregon another chance. Try to see if there was anything with that guy from there as my ex encouraged me to do. Perhaps there was a chance. He had come all the way down to Puerto Rico to visit me.
When I returned to Portland the second week of November it became clear that I could not run my business and live in shared housing. We cannot have guests during Covid in the common areas. I attempted to rent an apartment to hear push back that I had not held a lease at close to that cost, even though my income supported it. I had to provide additional documentation about my income and business. Then I got the news the unit was being taken off the market.
I talked to a friend who is a Real Estate broker and learned that with the moratorium on evictions until June 2021 and my public declaration of support for rent strikes that I will probably face the same problem over and over. They can legally decide to take a unit off the market without it being discriminatory as long as it is not rented to another person for 3 months. It is an easy feat to pull off within the present market.
Then the man I was interested in dating after 10 days of ghosting texts me with an invitation to join his friendzone. WTF. Seriously. Among the most rude and dismissive things to ever happen in my dating life. A year plus of texting back and forth. Several dates including that he visited just about 6 weeks prior in Puerto Rico. A text? Then blaming me that he was oblivious to knowing I had feelings or interest.
Hot off of that Portland poser rejection, and the rental situation, I was offered a new opportunity back on the road in January. I accepted.
An international opportunity that offered to cover my expenses for a plus one I had been mulling remained available. I considered offering to the Portland Poser to come with me because it would have been amazing but I wanted to feel him out before leaving my feelings out there for rejection. I decided to go do it alone. It feels like leaving money on the table not to have someone with me. It may also be lonely going to one of the most romantic places in the world alone. My life cannot stop for licking the wound inflicted by someone who found me a trivial inconvenience to his.
In 48 hours I changed course. Cancelled my remaining rental applications. Ended my lease. Threw my things into storage. I am back to living in one checked bag and one carry on for at least the next 6 months.
Now was not the time for the Portland I craved filled with dinner parties of interesting people. Poetry readings. Gallery openings. Concerts under the stars. Nights sitting around the fire pit telling stories. The deep connections I always had that if they were available to me I wouldn’t be so bummed out by the greyness of it all in pandemic world.
There is no dating in Portland with the promise of the potential love in my immediate future. I am over apps. One day I will meet a true love while I am glowing out at an event. That is how every single one of the great romances of my life both past and recent present have started. I have faith there will be that day in a pretty dress to see my smile returned inching towards the energy of a stranger who won’t be that way for long.
Portland will still be there at the end of this journey. My storage locker with the necessities for living that next chapter in life is not going anywhere, but I am. People make the place.
Hold on the best way that you can through this, it is among the hardest things we will all ever go through in our lives. Be safe. Monitor your mental health. I know that for my own mental health sitting alone in the ghost of Portland when I can literally live and work from nearly anywhere this is not the place for me now.
Sometimes things fall apart for a reason, so you appreciate them when they do work out. When the world re-opens I know my heart will call me back home.