I really do owe you all an update on how things are going. You can't exactly drop the kind of bombshell that I did and then leave it at that for months without any word. So here's a nice update on things!
My partner is back from treatment and settled back into our home. There's still a lot of work to do and there are still hard days but she's doing MUCH better than she was before. There have been some stress-related pains and there was a trip to the ER over a scare (turned out to just be extreme stress pains, nothing serious) but we've been making a lot of headway as well. We've been attending couples therapy, she's increased the amount of therapy sessions she engages in and I've started going to therapy as well. Among many other revelations, I have a tendency to think that because I don't have any diagnosed disorders, that means I have to be the strong one and endure the worst of everything and take all the burden upon myself to take it off of her. However, this has only lead to me being over-stressed all the time, constantly on-edge and so sensitive that I just shatter the moment anything goes wrong. It's been leading to a lot of sleepless nights for me lately but hey, you don't go to therapy to have an easy walk in the park. You go to therapy to confront the hard and ugly things in your mind and I have a lot more of those than I allowed myself to realize.
Another major update, I have quit my day job! Part of it is so that I can actually resolve the last of my mother-in-law's affairs as I was simply unable to handle taking care of that and working at the same time. The other part is that I have been working non-stop since I was 16 years old and just... FUCK! I need a break! The problem is that I've spent more than half my life consistently employed and being the sole bread-winner of the household so the idea of not working is just... hard to adjust to. I don't actually know how to relax and live a life not filled with responsibilities and deadlines. Every day has always been filled with work, work, work and project after project and not having any of that before me is messing with my head. I'm having to learn who I am outside of my job. But there is also a third part to quitting as well. That part being that I was going to have to do it eventually anyway because we've decided we won't want to live in Las Vegas anymore. It's just not the city we were hoping for. We were expecting a hip and progressive city, something youthful and artistic but when we got here, we found it was shockingly conservative. My partner, who is covered in piercings and tattoos, was unable to find work anywhere! Every prospective employer required you to look nice and non-offensive so as to not offend the international tourists. Furthermore, the health-care system in the state of Nevada is just plain fucked. Despite my partner working in Mental Health for six years and even building a high-complexity toxicology lab, she couldn't get a job in her field anywhere. Turns out Nevada requires that every single person who interacts with mental health clients be a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Her experience and dual-degree in Sociology and Criminology do absolutely nothing for her here. But this also means that the field is ludicrously under-staffed and over-worked. After all, nobody with an LCSW is going to accept $12 an hour as a receptionist- but that's what the state demands. So she is unable to serve the people she is trained and experienced to serve and it's very difficult for us to find the help we need as well. So with that in-mind, we knew we had to leave. So hey, I was gonna have to quit sooner or later so I may as well do it now so I can focus on getting everything sorted out.
So in light of all that, it leaves us with where we want to go. I'm well on my way of tying up the last of my mother-in-law's affairs and at the end of the day... we kinda inherited a small fortune. Nothing enormous but the kind of money that could actually get us out from under our student loans and give us a pretty strong start on an actual retirement fund. We also got a house which we do NOT intend to keep so we're in the last steps of getting it fixed up and then we'll put it on the market. Once it's sold, that money will go to buying us a new house wherever we want to go! So after discussing it with my partner and going over several options, we ruled out just about everywhere else and are solidly decided on moving to Vancouver, BC. So that's where things are. We are both working on ourselves, tying up the last of the loose ends and then it's all about selling the inherited house and moving to Canada. In the meantime, we're also going to do some actual vacationing with the money we got. We're starting small right now, got a 3-day trip to the Grand Canyon in mind (I've never seen it!) but hopefully by December, we want to do a week-long Cruise! It's actually proving to be kinda hard to allow myself to enjoy myself without working but it's part of the process! We're breaking out of boxes and going for a big, needed change. We've got the opportunity and we're not going to let it go to waste!
-TB
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4 years, 6 months ago
09 Oct 2019 06:49 CEST
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