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I woke up at three am and found my house filled with smoke from the countless wildfires burning in the mountains surrounding my Old Colordo City home. The moon was an erie shade of red. A few months earlier I found my boyfriend freebasing coke in our half bath. A few weeks later my mom died mysteriously and unexpectedly. A couple of months after that my coke head boyfriend said that even though he hit me, lied to me and sexualy exploited me...he had been nothing except angry at me for four years. Excuse me? I'll show you angry! I took off to Oregon with his best friend, who he had babysit me while I was home on bereavement leave and not doing very well at all. It was the end of August.

I got too tired to drive any more is a little town called Troutdale about 30 minutes or so from Portland. We rented a shitty apartment in Gresham (another PDX suburb)after a week in a Motel 6 and I got an equally shitty job with a home health agency as a care aide. We starved and on Thanksgiving we had almost nothing to be thankful for. The next day a potential landlord took pity on us and let us move into his 1930's farm house on the fringes of a town called Boring with nothing more than our last $300.

Eventually I got a better job and I settled into an uncomfortable routine of my looser musician boyfriend going on drinking binges and being controlling. I lived at the library and relished my hour long commute through the country- it was time away from him. He kept threatening to leave and would take off to a friend's house for a day or two and menace me with angsty cell phone calls while I was doing quality control in the field for a landscaping company. About the 500th time he said he was leaving I packed his stuff and said "GO!"

I got my life together a bit after that and sacrificed the farm house in the country for a generic apartment in the SW 'burbs of PDX. I made some friends and was doing well at work. I met a new, not only better but, PERFECT boyfriend.

Eventually I moved to Portland and we share an interesting apartment above a knick knack shop. We have two kitties (one we aquired one on our first date) and we are happy.

I have everything I want for the most part. I take pictures, ride horses, and hike in the damp forests. I feel safe and loved for the first time in my life. For the first time since my mom's death, I feel a sense of family.

I reconnected with my mom's sister who I never knew and while she doesn't replace a mom it helps me stay connected to my past and gives me hope for the future.

I went from being a freeze dried corpse on a mountain side to being a beatiful and lively otter in the softly falling waters of the NW. It only took 23 years to get here.

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