My family had to move recently, and I do mean had to, in a number of ways.  Our lease was up, and due to the increasing popularity, changing culture, and rising costs of the city we lived in, we had no choice but to look elsewhere.  The politics of the state we lived in had also made it a literally dangerous place to live for our children as well as ourselves.  We had friends and family 2200 miles away in a much nicer part of the country, but one that was also rather costly.  We figured if we were going to have to pay out the nose to live, we’d rather be somewhere we could actually go outside in the summertime and not roast to death, like our sizzling hometown.

So we moved from the broiling armpit of Central Texas to the much more refreshing Pacific Northwest, and we have gained far more than we’ve lost in the process.  We’ve spent more time outdoors in the last four months than in the previous four years or more.  It’s just too hot for six months out of the year to go outside while the sun is out where we were living, and when it’s nice, it’s super-crowded because everyone wants to get out.  The rest of the time, everything is rather dead-looking.  Where we live now, unpleasantly hot weather is far less common, though it still occurs, and we get out at least three times a month to go for a hike or see a new park.  We feel better mentally and physically being surrounded by nature and having easy access to it, and that’s a good thing, because we need the buffer against the stress of essentially being refugees.

We always wanted to come to this part of the country to live, but we figured it would be something we worked towards and chose later in life when we were done raising our two kids.  This move wasn’t something we chose, it was something we were forced into by circumstance.  Not that we’re complaining about finally being somewhere we love, but what it took to make it happen in America’s current economy has broken us, and coupled with the stress of being somewhere new and starting over, our family is suffering in many ways, like so many others.  We are part of that growing class of families that have what should be a comfortable middle class income but are still living paycheck-to-paycheck using increasingly frugal means because of the artificially inflated cost of, well, everything.

Every now and then I wonder if we made the right choice by moving because our budget seems so much tighter here, but then I remember that we were bleeding money in Texas and we were on the verge of never being able to afford to leave, and that’s a fate worse than death.  Plus there was that whole “half the state and the governor wants you and your family dead” problem.  As it turned out, even with a bonus and moving money from my husband’s job, the general expense of moving even on a DIY budget combined with the increase in gas prices this year meant that we ended our first month in our new home with $11 on payday.  If I hadn’t sold furniture on Facebook before moving, we would have had nothing the last two weeks.

Regrettably, we have not been able to add the fat back into our budget: it just doesn’t exist under these economic conditions, what with the price of gas and food skyrocketing.  I pay the bills and work the budget every month, usually in tears away from my family.  It all makes me so angry, seeing how much money we lose every month on expensive health insurance that we can’t use because there aren’t enough people with appointment availability or because we’re still meeting our massive deductible.  I have a family of four that all need eye appointments, dentist appointments, therapists, and possibly psychiatrists, and I can’t pay for any of it despite having what is supposed to be “good” insurance.  Meanwhile the premium money is just gone, leaving me to browse webpages on how to feed four people on less than $10 a meal.

This lack of mental healthcare for us all is causing our little just-moved family to crack at the edges.  One of the things we did lose in moving was home size.  Our current house is half the size of the last one, and sometimes we really miss that extra room, especially when one or more of us is having a mental health day.  None of us have the privacy we really want except perhaps for myself: I was insistent on using a bedroom as a writing and art studio.

We do have the outdoors, though, and as I said earlier, that’s a great thing and certainly no small thing.  Compared to where we were living, we now live in Paradise.  Or at least, it’s been a very short drive away in multiple directions from where we are now.  We never went anywhere in Texas, not just because of the heat, but because it took so fucking long to go anywhere.  My kids hate road trips because of being stuck in the car for four hours getting to the hot, sandy Gulf Coast or, Goddess forbid, out of state, a 10-hour jaunt.  Now I’m 90 minutes from the most beautiful coast I’ve ever seen and two hours from a National Park.  AllTrails tells me I’m within 60 minutes driving distance of 125 easy hiking trails.

We also have a new community to integrate into.  In some ways it’s not so different from where we were, but in other ways it is massively different.  Our old hometown was once very hip and funky with a slow, take-it-easy kind of vibe.  Unfortunately, corporatist capitalism conspired to make it ground zero for its next big money-making venture, and the influx of rich libertarians virtually erased that hip and funky culture within about 20 years as everyone who contributed to it was economically driven out of the area.  They simply couldn’t afford to live there anymore, and I think that was by design.

The state we live in now is almost a polar opposite to Texas.  What we consider to be basic human rights are codified into state law, which was one of the most important reasons we came here.  We didn’t realize how much fear we were living with until we left Texas and lived somewhere genuinely friendly for a while.  Over the weeks, both my husband and I felt one veil of terror lift after another as we realized we didn’t have to worry anymore about going to jail or getting killed just for living our lives.  While our new state is certainly not devoid of fascists and ultraconservatives, I do not live in constant fear the way I was in Texas, which has had profoundly positive effects upon my mental health.

Our new hometown is like our old hometown was 25 years ago, or at least a lot more like it.  It’s also a lot smaller than where we were living, which I love.  I lived in Houston for 10 years before moving to Central Texas in the early 90s, and I loved living in a smaller city.  As it grew, though, it felt more like Houston and less like home.  This place where we live now, even though we had only ever visited the general area, feels like home.  The sky and the mountains and the trees and the copious sources of water feel welcoming.  I feel like I belong here, far more than I ever did in Texas.

That was another reason we feel more like refugees than anything else: we no longer felt welcome in our own state or city.  We watched as our home town was slowly transformed by forces we did not agree with and could do nothing about, as nearly everyone we had anything in common with slowly and unwillingly abandoned the city and surrounding area, taking the city’s culture with it and leaving in its place what is essentially a mini-LA in the middle of the Lone Star State.  The only reason we were able to stay so long is because of my husband’s programming job, and then even that couldn’t keep us there due to the imbalance between stagnant salaries and the skyrocketing cost of living.

While we are all happy to be here and not there, that isn’t to say any of this has been easy.  Far from it.  We had to get rid of about half of what we owned so it would all fit in a giant UHaul, and we still have to get rid of more stuff so we can actually use our living room, which is still full of boxes four months after arriving.  With everyone’s mental health issues, we all barely made it through the move without losing our minds, especially my husband and I, who endured a grueling 5-day road trip with two cats, covering 2223 miles.  We basically collapsed for a month upon arrival.  Adjusting to a smaller house really is an issue sometimes, especially for our autistic nephew, which gets back to the nagging issue of needing mental healthcare we can’t get.

Offsetting all of that?  My ability to go outside and see the trees of the Pacific Northwest anytime I want.  I don’t know what it is about these majestic trees, particularly the larger and older ones, but just being in the presence of one can instantly melt away everything that is bothering me, and as cheesy as it sounds, I truly do want to hug one every now and  then.  And then there’s the water, which is everywhere in rivers, creeks, streams, and of course, the massive Pacific Ocean, which I can smell when the wind is right.  Rocky, babbling, bubbling creeks run through forests straight out of fairy tales and into the ocean waves at multiple estuaries up and down the coast.  The water in both is incredibly clear. And yes, we know it rains a lot here. We’re rather looking forward to it after so many years baking under the Sun.

That same water feeds another reason I love it here so much even if my budget is tight: the food.  I never bought fresh fruit in Texas because it was always too tart and bitter.  I don’t have that problem here because it’s local enough to be fresh and ripe instead of having to be picked early and shipped to a place where it won’t grow.  The combination of the rain and the relatively mild temperatures means fruits and vegetables here are astonishing.  The cows here all drink that Cascades water and eat soft grass instead of grain, producing the sweetest dairy products I have ever tasted, and I don’t mean sugary.  If we could afford it, I’m sure I would discover that the local meat is also outstanding.

We’ll settle in, I’m sure.  While it’s all terrible, it comforts me somewhat to know that we are not the only family in similar economic circumstances.  The rising cost of Everything seems to be all anyone who isn’t filthy (and I do mean filthy) rich can talk about.  In the meantime, I’ll continue to do my best to deal with having found myself a stranger in my homeland, only to have to move and find myself a stranger in yet a different one.  JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite stories, and as I now live somewhere that looks like The Shire, I often hear post-Quest Frodo in my mind: “Where shall I find rest?”