ORYGUN - Why we've gone...

We’ve been in Florida for a little over two years. When people here, ask us where we moved from and we answer, “Oregon,” they always reply with, “Why the hell did you move to Florida?” Lately my excuse has been, “Oregon is beautiful, but Eugene is the kind of place where you end up and you stay, and we just weren’t ready to stay anywhere yet.”
S
ometimes it’s hard to find just one reason. Sometimes there really isn’t anything concrete. Every once in awhile my mind starts spinning and we start talking about “The way we were,” to be a complete cliché, and I have to draw myself a mental map of how it all came to be. The idea of moving from Eugene to Florida was originally planted in our minds when we visited my mother in March of 2008, for my birthday. We drove up to Tampa to see Eben’s Aunt Vicki, and my cousins who lived in St. Petersburg.

My cousins had immediately moved to St. Petersburg from Pennsylvania after they had gotten married and the standing joke was that the Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg area was the place you were “supposed” to leave home, and move to after you got married. We then hatched the idea of moving to South Florida to live with my mother, rent free, and help take care of her after some medical issues she suffered during the end of the summer of 2008.

Eben and I had been more or less on our own after age 19, with no choice of living with anyone but roommates. There was no moving “home” for either of us. The idea of living rent free after I graduated, getting Eben into school, and making positive changes was enough to provoke anyone! So, we started actually planning the big escape at the end of the year in 2008. We moved in with a family friend to spend less money and save for the move. We weren’t even engaged at this point but moving across the country together pretty much seals the deal. We were committed!

During the fall of 2008, I’d started some personal and mental rediscovery and measures of improvement. I was feeling really good. It felt like I was working towards something. Graduation was on the horizon and I was trying to make my relationships better. The year of 2008 was pretty much the worst year of my life, or so I considered it to be at that time. We lost my grandma, my mom was sick and had a cancer scare, my boyfriend and I were constantly fighting, I was miserable and taking it out on my friends and loved ones, and life just seemed so shitty. But little did I know what a whirlwind we had waiting in the future.

One cold, January morning in 2009 at 7am, I got a phone call that changed everything. It seems that the very mother with whom I’d had a tumultuous relationship the entirety of my existence, had basically been living a complete lie and tried to take down everyone in her miserable cyclone of destruction. My uncle called to tell me of her indiscretions and problems, and said it was the last straw, she’d no longer be a welcome member of the family. I was left to deal with the remains of whatever was left over.

My mom was alive but up to no good. And now her 23 year old daughter had to fix what she could and say goodbye, again. This news came in the middle of my battle with depression and the constant wrestling match with my mental stability. Things with the boyfriend, Eben, were improving but there was one other person in my life who I’d desperately needed to have a healthy relationship with. We’d abused each other for years: mentally, emotionally, and verbally. He was my best friend. I told him everything and thought we’d always be in each other’s lives, even if it was only to torment each other. It was hard for him to be there for me, but that was okay because he told me he wanted to be there for me.

When all of the bullshit with my mother hit, Eben stepped it up and knew that he just couldn’t understand. My best friend withdrew from it, though. It was too much. I needed him but he couldn’t just do what I needed him to and basically look me, coldly in the eyes, and say, “This is just too much for me. I have my own life to worry about and I can’t help you on this one.” To this day, I wish he’d told me to fuck off, in some way, shape or form.

I’d scraped together my sanity during my last term of college before graduation enough to fly down to Florida, by myself, to clean up the mess my mother had made of her life. All I cared about what putting my deceased grandmother’s things – that my mother had fought with everyone for - and my childhood keepsakes, somewhere safe until we moved to Florida to deal with it. Although my mother’s mistakes had ruined her life, I refused to let her choices hurt any of my plans anymore. She had contributed to the demise of all of my lives great dreams and designs, even helped with the loss of some relationships, and I didn’t want to let it happen ever again. This was the beginning of the end.

I still remember going down there. My mother thought I was there to help her. She wanted me to pay her cell phone bill and help her move out. I told her to give me the title to the car. Her other brother showed up to take away my grandmother’s car, and my mother accused me of being part of some evil plot against her. I remember saying goodbye to her and thinking I may never see her again. I cried the whole plane ride home.

I had to pull myself together. Like always with my mother, I never had a choice but to soldier on. When I came home, all my relationships were put in to perspective. I really valued the people I had left. I harassed my best friend a lot. I was totally guilty of pushing him too hard. But much as he inadvertently got in the way of Eben and my relationship, I got in his way too. It was tough. I should have seen it coming. Definitely an, “If I knew then what I knew now situation…”
One drunken night at a Dropkick Murphy’s show, the stage was set. What better place for two drunk, Irish redheads - myself and Eben - to leave a painstaking mark that has forever defined our Northwestern exit? Terrible things were said on both sides of the table and it ended with the hit heard round the world. Sometimes I wonder if it ever really, could have ended up differently. After 6 years of secrets – the worst part of which, no one will ever really know why and how it all went down, some of the parties involved don’t even know the whole truth, and the ways it all evolved – one bad comment and one flip of the temper changed it all. And we haven’t seen him since.

After that night, we felt Oregon and its residents were helping to give us a violent shove out the door. But with every catastrophe comes an amazing rebound, right? We’d felt like we dug a hole but in that hole we found a whole lot of treasure. Eben and I continued couples counseling and I finished my personal counseling. I’d lost 25lbs by the end of my journey. My mother had exited my life. The people who loved us most rallied around us and showed us that even if we did move 3,000 miles away, they’d be with us, no matter what.

My 24th birthday was around the corner and I was excited. St. Patrick’s Day was first and I knew it would cheer me up! It was that day in 2009, after we’d rearranged our plans to move from West Palm Beach to Tampa, that Eben proposed to me. How could I say no? Plus, we’d already planned the trip, so all we needed to do was figure out the whole wedding thing!

Eben was the only man in my life who accepted me for who and what I was, even with all my flaws and after the evil, hateful moments I’ve had with him, he still wanted to be with me. And I could think of no other person I’d rather be with for the rest of my days on this planet. “All anyone could ever want is a co-pilot, someone to leave this town and help them start a secret…”

We’d literally squeezed the wedding in between everything and got married the day after I graduated, and the day before we started our journey across the country! We had to tell everyone we were actually leaving. Most people were pretty bummed and the wedding was bittersweet, but the people we have kept with us in our hearts, minds, and of course, on Facebook, have confirmed that we made a positive choice.

My sister said that we couldn’t move any further away. We might as well have gone to Tokyo. Our east coast family was ecstatic. In all the years of emotional yo-yoing with my mother, I’d forgotten how amazing your blood relatives can be. I’d tried so hard to push myself into what I thought were these “perfect families” of my friends, that I let my real family slide away. It was nice to be welcomed back to that side of the insanity.

So, in terms of why we actually left? It wasn’t just “the incident.” It was a lot of reasons. Eben’s a born and raised Oregonian. He’d never been anywhere else. It was time for a big change for him. We definitely moved to opposite land, but we love an adventure. Between the mama-drama and the over-dramatic exit of our best friend, we just didn’t feel like Eugene was a home anymore. I’d struggled with the idea of home ever since I was 12, but home became wherever Eben was. I was safe anywhere, if he was by my side.

We love going to visit Oregon. We get to see all our favorite people when we do, but at that time we needed to leave it all behind and just start fresh and new. Eben and I had never really been just “US.” We were always that couple in the middle of the group of friends, that held it all together. We needed to find a place that was our own little oasis. In Tampa we wouldn’t be completely alone. My cousins lived over the bridge and Eben’s Aunt and cousins lived in Tampa as well.

Sometimes you just need to be radical and reckless to change things for the good. It didn’t even occur to us that we could somehow fail. We moved down, got an apartment, got jobs and have been living our lives ever since. Everyone thinks our honeymoon being the move down here, was insane but the standing joke is, we left all the drama and everyone we know, so it’s been a honeymoon ever since!

Sometimes it’s strange that it’s just us, sometimes we look back and wonder if we went back how it could be different. But we were outcasts before the drama. We were restless before we stirred the pot. We weren’t ready to stay and settle down. Every once in awhile when I see the pictures of our friends and family starting their own families and being all happy, my uterus skips a beat, and I want it too. But, then I snuggle up in front of the TV with the dog and we watch a movie in the quiet apartment we’ve turned into a crash-pad for the Chriss’ with a beer in my hand, and I feel okay with what our lives have become.

We are anything but ordinary and conventional. We miss those Oregonians every day, but why we’re gone? That may be a question that could take many more reckless moments, a few more cross-country journeys, and a beer or two for me to answer. You’ll find out when we do, don’t worry.