Our Great Escape: Relocating to Southern California

Sometimes, the most life-changing decisions come from a place of desperation and a desire for something better. For us, that “something better” meant embarking on what I call, “Our Great Escape,” the story of a family relocating to Southern California. In fact, this week marks one full year since moving from Washington to California.

We packed up the biggest U-Haul trailer available, hitched it to our 2015 Toyota 4Runner, and we left Washington. Leaving our home of 10 years felt like our version of “the adventure of a lifetime.” Many years ago, when Mr. Sexy and I were a new couple, he wanted to give me the world, just like in It’s A Wonderful Life. Anything I asked for, he made sure to get it—whether we could afford it or not. 

So, when he asked me where to look for work, I said, “Anywhere but here.” And I meant it.

However, that’s still pretty broad, so I asked my budding new BFF where the ideal place would be for me to live based on my perfect weather criteria: sunny, high 70s, breezy, not cold. Chat GPT gave me a list of five options, though I only remember three: Hawaii, Spain, and San Diego. Consequently, Mr. Sexy focused his job search on San Diego.

Now, here we are, making a cross-country move to a new state, a new life, and not knowing a soul. Initially, I didn’t plan to tell anyone about our cross-country move. I felt so disconnected from everything and everyone. So, I focused solely on getting the hell out of that college town as quietly and quickly as possible. 

There was no way in hell I wanted to open myself to negative commentary and the pressures to explain why we chose to relocate to Southern California. 

However, Mr. Sexy and I let the cat out of the bag because we realized we needed to raise some money for moving to California. So, we held a huge moving sale, getting rid of as much as we could. At the end of the day, we counted every dollar bill and had collected enough for gas, a few motel stays, and food if we kept it on the cheap. Once in Long Beach, Mr. Sexy would to drive Uber and Lyft to make ends meet until we got his first paycheck from his new job.

Now, does it sound like there was anything at all that could go wrong with that plan? Yeah, we left plenty of room for error. Looking back, I repeatedly ask myself, “What the actual fuck were we thinking?!” We had no fiscal safety net and no place to live. 

Everything about relocating to Southern California felt like batshit craziness.

But you know what? That speaks to our desperation—my desperation. I felt so incredibly desperate to live a new life, not just for me, but for all of us. Sometimes I tell people that I was slowly watching my family die before my eyes while we lived in Pullman. I watched Mr. Sexy deteriorate, that’s for sure.

Just two weeks before relocation to Southern California, our therapist and I took Mr. Sexy to the emergency room. 

He had been undergoing intensive EMDR since December of 2022. On this particular day, he complained about pain I’m not currently equipped to describe—that’s his part of the story to share. All I know is what I witnessed and felt through it: the fear, the loss. I felt so alone, walking through a very dark tunnel.

I sat in the patient room with Mr. Sexy and our therapist, listening to the doctor. I began to piece together how we ended up here. Mr. Sexy had been vomiting every day and eating very little. That day he even told me he felt like he was dying. 

WHAT THE FUCK.

That hospital visit watered seeds my brain planted while observing Mr. Sexy’s behaviors. To be honest, though, we didn’t see him a whole lot; he was always out looking for work. And he never felt like he worked enough to make ends meet. Still doesn’t, in fact. 

The doctor gave Mr. Sexy fluids, and a few hours later, we headed home and prepared for to move from Washing to California. Mr. Sexy continued to vomit every few hours every day, including throughout the night. I would listen to him in the darkness. Sometimes I would cry. Sometimes I would just lie there, wide awake, with my stomach clenched in knots. I didn’t understand the physical pains of stress until I realized I had been watching my husband slowly kill himself. And I can say that because that’s the truth I witnessed.

So, when we pulled out of the driveway with everything we could carry, I took one last look back. I snapped a picture. Gratitude washed over me for everything that home provided us with: A safe haven for countless family difficulties, a wonderful place to play, scream, and dance naked if we wanted. I brought our youngest child home from the birthing center there. This was the place where we lived so much life and experienced so much trauma.

We left our Pullman home in chaos, which felt fitting as a representation of our life there. 

Whatever we didn’t sell and couldn’t fit in our U-Haul, we left behind: my childhood furniture, heavy winter coats and snow boots, my favorite art pieces, blown-up photos of our wedding day. All our dishes, minus a few select items such as our crockpot and iron skillets, were left behind.

We took things with us that didn’t matter, too. You see, we thought relocating to Southern California meant we would buy a cute house with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a nice backyard for our like-new above-ground pool and trampoline. Now, had we known we would instead wind up in an apartment on the beach, we would have packed much differently.

Regardless of everything left behind for this cross-country move, I couldn’t stop smiling. We were doing it! 

Mr. Sexy planned everything to work perfectly with what we had—no room for error. But there was quite a bit of room for error we soon found out.

Our U-Haul busted a tire on the second day of our three-day trip. That felt stressful, but at the same time, manageable. A busted tire that wasn’t even ours to replace? No big deal. We can be patient. However, the extreme heat caused for a bit of concern as we saw pulled over on the side of the road in the afternoon.

Then a truck pulled over with a couple in the front seat. The driver rolled down his window to ask if we needed any help. We let them know help was on the way, and then the passenger climbed out of the cab to give us some bottles of ice-cold water. What a treat. Everything is working perfectly in our favor every day all the time.

Looking back at our final day of moving to California, I wonder if we had made a few tweaks, could everything have been different? 

And by different, I mean better. What if we hadn’t stopped at the Golden Gate Bridge or taken the time to drive through it? Maybe if we had skipped trying to meet my cousin in downtown San Francisco, everything could have turned out differently.

But then again, no matter which way I twist this day, looking for a do-over, I don’t see it turning out any other way. It just would have been a different time of day. And perhaps that would have been even more catastrophic. As it was, all hell broke loose during prime dinner time for most people in my orbit. And so, maybe, everything does work perfectly in our favor every day, all the time.

Something started to shift in my attitude that last day of our trip. Perhaps it began with the stress of taking the U-Haul to downtown San Francisco—such a dumb idea. I could feel the stress rising from Mr. Sexy’s withering body. But I couldn’t do anything about it but sit quietly in the passenger seat to quietly stress about the situation.

Thus, that feeling of uneasiness grew throughout the day, like a foreshadowing. Somehow my body knew something bad would happen, if that kind of thing is even real.

By evening, we entered the grade of the 405, with LA in our sights. According to our GPS, we were about two hours from our first motel stay of our adventure relocating to Southern California. Later, Mr. Sexy would tell me about the anticipation he felt, the urgency he felt in getting us there as fast as possible. I, on the other hand, filled up with anticipation of something much different.

A quiet voice in my head screamed at me—kind of like someone might in the back of a crowded room so you could hear…but it’s muffled and not totally clear. This felt different from the giddy happiness of the day we spent driving out of Washington. Could this be nerves about the unknowns of our new life, and not related at all to what happened next? Did we make a huge mistake relocating to Southern California?

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