Dear Roger: The Monkey Life

Two years ago I was sitting in Arizona waiting to die. My ex was getting released from prison, and I was fully expecting him to finish what he had started before a friend of mine had him swooped up by the cops before it could really get ugly on the ole home front, and I found the nerve and the anger to testify against him and put him in prison for almost 2 years and gave him a good reason to want to kill me.
The time after all that fracas had gone down was filled with a grim struggle for survival where I ended up getting sick with things like H1N1, facing record snowfall, and nearly starving to death as I managed to keep my kids housed and fed up to that point as I sat there on the night of March 25th writing my blog.
I remember I wasn't really scared, I was angry. I had made it. We had survived on our own and I had held onto the house, but it had come at at steep cost. I was ragged and worn and weary as hell and past the point of being able to resist him. He was going to win and be able to wear me back down because I was weak.
If we had stayed in Flagstaff, one or both of us would be dead by now.
Things happen for a reason, and daughter wanting to see that concert seems like a trite reason to pack up and haul ass nearly a 1000 miles away, but that was just the symbolic reason for us going. It was our salvation and that concert was the beginning of so damn many wonderful things for us, but its been hard as hell.
Two years without a vehicle. Our first few weeks in this apartment we went hungry. Seriously, we didn't have money for food or anything. I skipped meals so my kids would have enough and we still went hungry. We all got thin before I finally found a job that helped us to catch up a little.
We had nothing but what had fit in those 7 bags we brought with us, so we slept on the floor until we managed to find furniture at yard sales. Nothing in our house is brand new to this day, and I kind of take pride in that because while it may be used, its still nice and I am the ultimate recycler, teaching my kids the value of things.
Its been lonely for me. I left the one man in Arizona that I loved and hoped to someday have something with, but just a short while ago, I finally realized that I had lived so many years as a secret, never able to share my feelings for him with the rest of the world, never able to be honest about things, that it was eating me up. So I listened to a lot of sad music, heard some of the same hurt in others,(ironically from the same band), and realized that I wasn't alone, and once again I found the strength to make the right move and I moved forward by letting go. It hasn't been easy but every step forward every breath in and out is progress.
I have second guessed myself a lot, and often considered that maybe I should have kept trying to fix things in Arizona, but then my ex showed up here in Portland. It was bad. Financially, we are still recovering and he had no shame about the damage he did. He likes to call from down in L.A. and gloat about how nice the weather is down there and how cool his life is as a single person down there, because he went there to mooch off his aunt when he decided Portland was,"Too hard". He knows that before I had kids, it had been my dream to live out there as a writer, but now I cant even afford to go down there to attend a concert. I figure karma will get him in the end. I have my pride. I support my kids and make sure they have what they need and they know it. I dont keep the secrets from them anymore. They figured it out pretty quick when they realized he wasn't working and I had to go get the other two boys from Arizona. They don't believe his stories about how he is going to have it all together pretty soon. They know his version of "pretty soon" hasn't happened in over 10 years.
Its been a couple of years of big changes and realizations, some good, some sad. The boys that brought us to the sunshine are on the outs and that makes me more than a little sad for them because so much good came from those beautiful days in the sun, and I can only hope that eventually they find the peace and happiness that they so richly deserve.
I dont know what this next year will bring for me and my family, but we are still alive and still moving forward, and all I know is that if not for a bunch of monkeys, I dont know if that would be able to be said, so you dont get a much stranger reason for life than that.