It’s time. Today’s the day. We are leaving. Noah has plans to return to the country in November for work/seeing his best friend. I don’t have any plans to return. I may someday… life is long, but I have no idea when. It might be a decade. I might come back for a book tour. Maybe there will be a wedding or a funeral I can’t miss; I don’t know.

I miss my mother already and being much further away from her increases the likelihood I will maintain the severing of our bond. I need to and I hate it and I feel so sad for her. This life has been so spectacularly unkind to her. It’s a lot easier to see that after I have been cherished for years. Noah and my kids like me. I am not sure my mother has ever felt like that. It’s really sad.

I don’t know what it will mean to be Scottish yet. I am looking forward to finding out. I look forward to uncountable hours wandering the Highlands. I wandered up and down and forward and back in Fremont. I used to wander the Santa Cruz Mountains. I wandered the woods of Oklahoma. I wandered the freeways and highways of the entire United States. I want to know Scotland in my bones; that’s going to take time. I am not a sporty person, but I am active. I want to be active in the glorious Scottish rain.

RAIN, Y’ALL! IT’S GONNA RAIN ON ME UNTIL I DON’T LIKE RAIN ANYMORE. I am from the desert. That seems like a miracle. People keep telling me that I will get sick of the rain. After the Mojave I have my doubts! We’ll see! It won’t be happening in the first five years!

The first five years are assured. Past that… we don’t know yet. I have hopes but that’s not a plan and even less of a fact.

Our flight leaves in 14 hours. The car is due back in 11 hours. I have a solid workday left in the US and no more work to do. We are packed. The only shit still out is the stuff we need for hygiene and I have a nice empty hole in a suitcase for that equipment when we finish. I have another load of leftover groceries to bring to the neighbor who has been so kind over the summer. She feeds a lot of people because her kids and grandkids are always over. She’s absolutely thrilled to get free food. Her husband has spent a bunch of time painting with my kids. My children love her grandkids. It’s been a really blessed summer.

I am not trying to make it sound like there is no good in the US. I know good people. I know how to make a life here. Even though Portland can’t be my home I understand the appeal. Excellent donuts, decent weather most of the year (WHAT IS UP WITH THIS SUMMER), and absolutely stunning scenery. I get why my friends love it here.

I just have this internal drive that says I should not be here; this is not for me. I don’t know how much of that is related to my feelings about colonization. I am an 8th generation Californian and I still feel like I shouldn’t be there too.

Feminista Jones says she only wants to go places where a face like hers is unremarkable and welcome. I understand that feeling deep in my bones. It’s like Trevor Noah says: there are places where it being mostly white people is a problem (hello Australia) and places where it being almost entirely white makes sense (I am running to Scotland as fast as I can).

I feel like my existence is a problem in most of the world. My ancestors were the raping, pillaging thieves who helped wipe out other cultures. In many ways my body being here has continued their efforts whether I meant to or not. It’s white guilt and it isn’t. My ancestors were driven out of the British Isles. I’m coming back, bitches.

Not really “bitches”. I mean… it’s complicated.

My entire species has been on the move for hundreds of thousands of years. Is there really a “place” for any of us? I don’t know. I really don’t.

My buddy last night tried to do the “I will come visit you” dance and she didn’t appreciate it when I stepped off of the dance floor. She wanted me to hope. I can’t do that. There are two people I am pretty darn sure will travel to the Highlands to see me but that’s because A&P like to wander up and down the UK every summer. They’ve already been doing that for a while and I won’t be much more out of the way of their summer wanders than I was in the bay. Everyone else?

I can’t hope. I can leave space in my heart for you. You will always be welcome. I would love to see you. But I can’t live with feeling let down or disappointed so I can’t hope. I will wait and see. It’s part of how I can’t move to the PNW because my expectations would drown me. It isn’t that anyone else is doing anything wrong.

The tension I felt managing Dad this summer was awful and really depleting. I love that man even though sometimes I wish I didn’t. But his behavior and attitudes and personality… managing him takes work. I don’t have that to give in this life. If I stayed here I would feel compelled to work on him and help him be a less shitty person. Kind of like how I spent my childhood lecturing Uncle Bob about how he really didn’t need Auntie to wait on him hand and foot; he has hands and feet he can go get his own damn iced tea. I would lecture Dad. I would try to change him.

I would tell him that either he formally adopts that kid or he needs to stop fucking encouraging a child with a developing brain to think of him as their father. It is going to be monstrously cruel if this child grows up to find out that the only father they have ever known only financially provided for his “real” kids. But it’s not my circus and it’s not my monkeys and I’m not sure I could force him to behave ethically and I sure as fuck can’t watch him behave unethically.

I don’t want to do the dance with this little kid about why my children can’t spend the night in their house ever again. It isn’t their fault that the grown ups have different feelings about what appropriate behavior in front of children means. It would hurt the kid to be rejected all the time when they ask for time together in their home. But I can’t throw my children on the fire with them just because they want to be burned with company.

I have obligations to keep three children safe. I am not capable of being the boss of everyone’s children. I tried with the Bonus Family and that blew up in my face. I miss the Bonus Kids like an open bleeding wound. But their mother told me to go the fuck away because I couldn’t allow her to continue educationally neglecting her kids. Ok. I’ll go.

I don’t want to get into a position where I love another kid I can’t help and that feels really chicken shit.

I can’t save everyone. I’m not even sure I can save me but I’m trying.

We must leave this house in 6 hours.

Tick tock.

Hello Bangkok, it’s lovely to see you. Even if I fear I will feel like I want to die in the heat. Please slap me if I ever say “I think I’d love to go on a vacation in a hot place.” Hawaii was so hard; I spent a lot of time feeling like I couldn’t move or breathe. Bangkok… is going to be hot. Like holy shit hot. Upper 80’s-90’s and raining most of the time. We are showing up for monsoon season; I’m actually super excited about that part.

And we are going through Hong Kong airport on a Saturday while protestors are trying to shut down the airports on weekends. It’s going to be an adventurous weekend! If our flight gets fucked up I will consider that a very worthy outcome. Good for you, protestors. Keep it the fuck up. Fight. I absolutely support your efforts, even at my own expense.

I am so forking happy I never have to sleep on this shitty mattress again. Yes.

11 days until we go home.

This is like the end of the road trip only it isn’t because I asked Sarah to join us for the last week of the road trip so I didn’t say “fuck it” and just come home early.

Speaking of open, bleeding wounds.

Run away, Krissy. Run away from all the shit you can’t fix. All the people you tried to figure shit out with but you failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed.

It feels like it is all my fault. If I were less controlling, less of a bitch, less demanding…. maybe I could have a mother or a Sarah or a Bonus Family. But I can’t.

So go.

Stop fucking crying and go.

I don’t feel like a victim. I feel like if I wanted to have these relationships I would have been less of a fuck up.

I am looking forward to the chance to be an entirely different person in a community. Maybe if I don’t show up wanting to find enmeshed friends things will go better. Jenny has always been incredibly good about holding her boundaries. I have never been able to push her to inappropriate intensity in over 25 years. I have a lot of hope that we will figure things out. It certainly seems worth the attempt.

I am very lucky. I get to keep trying. I get to keep striving and growing and becoming. Even if I am a grown ass woman. Not everyone gets to keep changing throughout their life. Lots of people get to a place/level/situation and they feel stuck. I don’t. I feel full of utterly limitless potential.

I want a quieter, smaller life so I can write more books and make more art and watch my children grow without being distracted by having to drive 90 miles most days of the week.