You and I will never agree

i need more refined sugar, starches, and saturated fats

 bad

mood cures and causes yum

and dont forget the preservative sprinkles

gotta rob uncle sam a lil more

and then I’ll be set for mediocrity 

eternal unhappiness. Fine by me

- Mallory Ruff

Moments of rage keep bubbling up inside me. Damn it. I wish people would stop planting seeds of annoyance. They don’t seem to understand how fertile the soil really is….

I’m definitely depressed. It’s unshakeable and getting worse. I can’t find the source of it this time. I’ve gotten pretty good at that over the years. Track down the reason, confront or solve it in some way, and then move on. This time I can’t pinpoint it. 

School is bumming me out.

Long distance is bumming me out.

My lack of resources is bumming me out.

My lack of freedom is bumming me out. 

These are all things I’ve grown accustomed to and they usually don’t bother me that much on a day to day basis. I’ve learned to deal with all of this and I realize that some things just wont change and if they can change it’ll take time. I’m working on all of these things every day. 

There’s something dragging me down. Obviously it’s mental/emotional. I just don’t know what it is.

                It all began in 2006. It all actually began a little over year before that but this part of the story starts in mid-2006. I had already spent almost year on the road following my escape from high school in 2004. I’d made a vain attempt to settle back into a normal life in early 2006 but I was undeniably miserable. Then Felix, a squatter from Boston I had met in Virginia, and I ran into each other again in Richmond in early April and it was all downhill from there. I’m going to attempt to recount this tale as best as my foggy memory can. There were a lot of places, people, and events between April and September 2006 but more significantly there were many lessons learned. This memoir is an attempt to make sense of it all. I need to connect my past to my present so I can understand just how I ended up making it to where I am now and where I might be in the future.  

I had come to Virginia to visit a friend for her birthday and see a few old faces to help ease the monotony of my day to day life. I had every intention of heading back to Maryland four days later to appease my worried family by dutifully returning to a minimum wage job at McDonald’s. Recently I had been inhabiting various relatives homes from day to day because I had no car to get to work and needed to rely on rides from whoever could offer them. Three days of reminiscing, scheming and partying in Richmond later, I had become very convinced that I’d rather die than return to rural Maryland and work my legs to nubs shucking double cheeseburgers while still living out of backpack and bouncing from one mundane moment to the next. I had been accepted to the Art Institute of Philadelphia and wanted to enjoy every moment of summer before I settled into a dorm room in a very cold grey city that coming fall. The road was calling me back yet again and I couldn’t manage to say no. I figured at worst I’d die some amazingly tragic death and at best I’d have plenty more amazing stories to tell in my old age. It wasn’t my first time on the wide open road but it was the first time I was completely convinced that the traveling life was the only way for me to be happy because a “normal life” back home was worse than any fate I’d meet on the highway. For what I supposedly had intended to be a short visit to Richmond I had brought my pet rat, Radar, my last paycheck, and a single change of clothes. I say “supposedly” because I realize now that making a run for it was probably my plan all along but I wasn’t able to admit it outright at that time.  

As luck would have it my old sleeping bag was still stuffed under my friend Carrie’s couch on Grace Street. I also found a tiny road atlas from the back of an out-of-date day planner she had laying around and stuffed it into my back pocket. Felix and I took off on foot toward Interstate 95 on a chilly spring morning. All I had was five dollars, my old sleeping bag, one clean change of clothes, a tiny map of the main interstates, my best rat friend, a male companion, and a pink grade school backpack and I was more than ready to take on the country. We made it to the onramp and immediately got a ride from a girl in her mid 20’s who had stopped to put change in the unmanned toll bucket beside us. This was the start of a long, arduous but inspiring journey.

After a few short rides we seemed to be making a good pace down 95. By the time we reached the bottom of South Carolina it was starting to get late in the day and I turned o Felix and said something to the effect of, “We’ve had pretty good luck so far but right now I’d like to get a ride from some cool punk girl with awesome music blasting who will take us all the way to Florida. We could sleep on the beach my midnight if we’re lucky!” It seemed the Road Gods were pretty bored that day and heard my request because it wasn’t much more than five minutes later that a beat up sedan pulled over a few yards ahead of us. It was a mother and her 30 year old daughter and they had decided to take an impromptu trip to Jacksonville Beach. They were blasting Pat Benatar while they rearranged their luggage to accommodate our packs. It wasn’t exactly what I had asked for but it was the best approximation I could have thought of. We made it down I-95 in sixteen hours and I dozed off on the beach until the cops forced us to leave. We spent a little over a month hanging out in northern Florida. I visited an old friend in Apopka just outside of Orlando. Then we made our way to my Aunt’s place in near Fort White where Felix worked occasionally for room and board and I enjoyed an extended visit with family I hadn’t seen in a long time.

Every few days we’d head into Gainesville to find some trouble to get into. We’d met some good kids in Gainesville who wanted to have their first experiences of hitching so we all took off together to head out to California. After a few short rides we decided it was best to divide the team and meet up later. Since Felix and I were now “dating” we sent the other two, Swett and Dino, off on their own. They picked up work someplace in Alabama and we picked up a ride with an 18 year old wanna be hippy who called himself “TaDa” (you know, like the sound people make when they give you a surprise gift) heading to Flagstaff, AZ. He was a nice kid but we happened to pick up a fourth wheel named Joe somewhere along Route 10. Felix and Joe had a hell of a time giving this young, naive boy as much trouble as possible. We spent a little while following the tourist route through what remains of Rout 66 until we got sick of how long it was taking. TaDa had started a lovely schtick of allowing people to graffiti his silver Camry with sharpies for a small donation and we practiced the useful road game of glug glug* at gas stations every fifty miles or so. Thankfully, despite their abuse, TaDa took us all the way to Flagstaff as promised. Even more thankfully Joe left the group after about three days and 400 miles. Along this leg of the journey, Radar went missing at a rest stop and I was in a very bad state of mind.

After spending about a week in Flagstaff we arrived one morning in the town square to see that Swett and Dino had finally made it. We kicked it around there for a bit. I think we stayed in Flagstaff for about three weeks all together. Just long enough to befriend a few local punk kids and a few other travelers. The weather was amazing and the people were friendly. We bounced around from apartments and trailer parks accepting couches and floors that were offered for us to sleep on. We even started what I called a “Hobo Day Camp” for some of the local housie* kids that wanted to experience the road without leaving home. We taught them how to make the best campfire set up and how to cook with no pots and pans and told jokes all night until we all passed out from too much malt liquor. In return they showed us the best covert locations to hang out under bridges and inside tunnel systems throughout the city and the best spots in town to make a quick buck.  We managed to pan handle about three hundred dollars in one afternoon at the entrance to a Wal Mart and got hotel rooms and cleaned up and were well fed.  

All of this cheered me up and helped me get over the loss of my old rat friend. Then one afternoon while the whole crew was flying a sign* next to Wal Mart, some random traveler kids that we’d never met before stopped their car next to us and asked if we were the kids looking for a dog. During the week I had mentioned to a few locals that I’d lost my rat and might get a dog and it turns out they had spread the word for us. I was about to get a new pet. I acquired a puppy from a bus of Rainbow* hippies who were camped out in the National Forest near Lake Mary. I named him Painless after the theme song from M*A*S*H. After a few more adventures with Swett and Dino in Flagstaff we decided to go our separate ways again and Felix and I took off for California. I don’t remember where the other two had decided to go but they weren’t on the road much longer after that. Jake ended up back in Gainesville and last I heard Dino finished her degree at Florida State and bought a house in Ohio where she teaches.

Felix and I trudged on with an eight week puppy in tow through the northern Arizona desert. Things started to get tense as they always do when two people are alone together for too long.

By the time this part of the story took place I had spent three months straight on the road, I think.

We had spent about 6 days in Portland at this point. It was beginning to get very boring in the city. The only people we met had so far were meth heads and one old roommate of mine from Ohio I’d never really wished to see again. It was cold and dreary but not cold and dreary enough to make us completely miserable. We were on the verge of it minute by minute though. Everyone in this town seemed to be at least slightly insane but not the fun kind of insane. From a homeless girl that had perfectly kept fake nails to a very clean hippy who called himself Greenleaf, I just wasn’t feeling the crowd at all. 

sad. All. The. Damned. Time

I still cry all the time, daily, over my best friend being gone. 

I still stress out over imaginary problems. 

I can never tell if things are ok or if I’m projecting my fears onto someone else. 

I still can’t fill all of these voids. What voids? 

I still don’t even know. 

I’m still having shitty days and I don’t want to tell anyone about them. 

I’m still having shitty days and I have no one I want to tell about them.

I’m pretty sure anyone I’d tell stopped really caring a long time ago because I have so many shitty days to tell about.

I’ve gotten really good at hiding all of this. 

He is shown a very colorful bird and told that it speaks 10 different words and its price is $500.

Then he is shown a more colorful bird, with a vocabulary of 100 words, with a price of $5,000.

He then sees a scruffy beast in the corner and asks how much that bird is. He is told $100,000.

“Why?” he asks. “That bird is not very beautiful at all. How many words, then, does it speak?” None, he is told. Flabbergasted, he says to the clerk, “This bird here is beautiful, and speaks 10 words and is $500. That bird over there speaks 100 words and is $5,000. How can that scruffy little bird over there, who doesn’t speak a single word, be worth $100,000?”

The clerk smiles and says, “That bird thinks.”

18% grey mother fuckers