Things aren't always what they seem to be... (part 2)

Buckle up and get ready for this crazy ride we call life. This journey started nearly two months ago but I couldn't bring myself to finish the horror story of my life until I was completely through it and knew how it all ended. I wish I could've shared this story sooner but it is hard to write when your world is crashing all around you. I know this part 2 is long overdue and I want to apologize to all of my followers who have been waiting patiently to know what happened. Well here we go....

After we got back states side from Costa Rica (where our entire life dreams had been smashed into pieces) we knew we had to come up with a new life plan and we had to do it quick. Living with no direction in life was not something we wanted to do so we got back to the drawing board, we had to figure out where we wanted to live.

We thought we had some time to figure out our next move in life but it turned out my parents decided that they wanted to sell their home in AZ so we basically got kicked out less than a week after we got there. We were now not only homeless, we had no where to go while we figured it out, no home base to work from, no where to go back to, we really were nomads! At this point we thought we were at our lowest, lol, boy were we wrong!

We decided it was best to go back to our original home state of Wisconsin so we could leave our dogs with a friend while we were home searching across america. After a terrible 30 hour drive (which I drove straight through) one of my dogs (Rosko) ate rat poison immediately after getting out of the car so we spent all night at Vet office while they tried to make him puke up the poison. Not a great way to start out our new journey. Ultimately he was fine but a few days later he did it again! So our first week on the road when we should've been looking for homes was wasted trying to nurse our sick dog back to health, in a hotel to make matters worse! Not a great way to kick off our new adventure. After that we realized we couldn't leave our dogs with friends, we had to drag them along with us on the home finding excursion.

(hotel living for dogs is ruff!)

We had started drinking daily by this point and that is not normal for us at all. Normally if we drank 2 times in a month than it was a crazy month (lol). We live pretty healthy life styles so drinking is rare for us. Our organic diet also went out the window, with living in hotels we couldn't find enough restaurants or afford to eat every meal out organically. This is when the weight started stacking on and our mental health really started declining fast.

We had no clue where to start looking for a home but we had been in Arizona for about 3 months prior to leaving for Costa Rica so we knew that we didn't want to live there permanently. We decided to we wanted to be somewhere warmer, but not in the desert because it was to hot and to dry. We thought Colorado would be good since I had lived there previously, so we headed out there to check it out. When we got out to Colorado we realized that the cost of living there was incredibly high now and there are a lot more people then 5 years ago when I lived there, probably because every stoner moved there when they legalized recreational marijuana lol. I can't even be mad about that, but I was a bit sad because I did love living there. Next we went to California but that was also crazy expensive, over crowded and just not what we were looking for. At this point it seemed like every move we made was the wrong move. We didn't know what to do next.

We finally decided the west wasn't what we were looking for so we headed east. On our way to Tennessee we drove through the heart of the country and realized that Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Illinois were not what we were looking for either. With each state we crossed off our list the more lost and hopeless we both felt, like we would never find a new home. The depression had set in pretty hard by now, we were eating more, sleeping more and not exercising at all anymore.

We started eating candy and fast food again, things that we hadn't eaten in well over a year, basically since we started our clean eating in Jan 2017. It seemed like eating was the only thing that made us feel better and we were indulging. Maybe even trying to make up for the last year and a half of not eating food like that. It was not healthy to say the least.

I was starting to get excited about our new plan, I was convinced Tennessee would be a good fit for us. Not only was it a warm, it also has beautiful scenery. We figured we could find a secluded home in the country and grow our own food, it seemed like a perfect match. Plus having a few old army friends close by would be a huge bonus for me. Besides we had been on the road for 3 weeks at this point so I was ready to be out of hotels and into a home.

We started looking for homes immediately when we got to TN, we were sure that it was the right place for us, but the more homes we looked at, the less we liked it. We realized that the Tennessee was a bit over crowded, I know it sounds stupid but no one really has space out there, at least not the area we were interested in. Neighbors are extremely close and you have no privacy, what happened to country living? It was also odd to me that trailers would be right next to million dollar homes as if they shared a yard? My hopes were crushed once again, this wasn't at all what we wanted.

Since we couldn't find the right spot we moved on to North Carolina. At this point my depression was at its worst and I was tired of being on the road, it had been a month of hotel living from one place to another with two dogs and we were no closer to finding a home than we were when we started. In fact we still didn't know exactly what we wanted, we were just wandering aimlessly, it was frustrating to say the least but we knew if we kept moving forward eventually we would find what we wanted. So we pushed forward.

North Carolina is beautiful and I liked it way more than TN to be honest but something was missing. We found a few homes that we liked but ultimately decided against them because I realized that I wanted to live in a state that was legal to grow my own medical marijuana to help with my PTSD from war. I struggle with my PTSD so much and I have tried many medications and the only thing that really helps me is marijuana. It hadn't been something on our list before because I was feeling good, but when I am depressed my PTSD spirals out of control and I don't want to have to worry about going to jail because I need medication that works. So that prompted us into looking at states that were legal to grow and realized that we only had a few options where I could actually grow my own medicine. Apparently most of the legal medical marijuana states don't allow you to grow your own medicine(?). Probably because they can't tax it and they want their money! LoL. Anyhow, we were left with only a handful of states and most of them were in the West and we had already decided against those states for other reasons.

Since we know we know we love the midwest we decided to move to Michigan. I know it sounds like a weird choice but it's right next door to Wisconsin so we know we love the scenery, we are a bit further south than we were in Wisconsin so its a little warmer and the people in the midwest are so kind its disgusting! lol. Plus I obviously can grow (legally) once again :) We finally found a match!

We looked at about 40 homes in the first week and decided on an big old beautiful Victorian home. We put in a bid and it was accepted, we had finally found a home!! The stress and depression started to melt away at this point, and we realized it was time to take our health back. We are still hotel living for another week and a half until our closing date (which sucks) but now we are focused on diet, exercise and picking out colors and furniture for our new home so life is definitely starting to get better. :)

When it is all said and done it will have been more than 2 months in hotels on the road looking for a new place to call home. We traveled to different countries, visited at least 20 states and spent countless hours in vehicles only to move 6 hours southeast of where we started. I guess I was in search of something that was right under my nose the entire time.

Maybe I didn't need a change of scenery at all, maybe I needed a change of mentality. As hard as this whole journey has been it has really changed my outlook on a lot of things in life. Maybe being beat down to my lowest level in years was exactly what I needed to appreciate all the amazing things I already have in this life. I may have needed all of this as a reset on life, I guess sometimes things aren't always what they seem to be.........

"Peace, love and all that hippie shit"