the road

In my late twenties to early thirties I opened and closed my thrift store, minimized my belongings, moved out of my apartment and hit the road with my dog. I ended up in Boulder, Colorado, drawn by tales of Pearl Street’s vibrant scene.

I connected with the local homeless community, sharing stories and experiences. After a night of camping under the stars in the park, two drifters joined me on my journey. We parted ways in California, and a call from my parents led me back home.

My thirties? A blur of psych wards, PTSD rehab, and endless road trips. Four times in the psych ward, eight times in inpatient PTSD rehab, and somewhere in between, I kept driving. It was a decade spent half unmedicated, scrambling to stay afloat. For the first five years, I lived in a fog—untreated, unbalanced, and unsure of where I was headed. I’d tell them I was getting better, but deep down, I wasn’t fooling anyone. Not even myself.

The psych wards? Cold, sterile rooms and people with their own battles, some of them scarier than my own. But rehab, that was different. Eight stays. Eight times I went in to confront the demons of life, of myself. It was the one place where, for a few days, the chaos inside me seemed to make sense. I was just surviving, trying to stay afloat in a system that didn’t have the answers I needed.

But the road trips? That was where I found some semblance of peace. Driving for hours, just the hum of the engine and the road stretching out in front of me. I needed to feel free, if only for a moment. The more miles I put between myself and everything else, the more I could breathe.

Yet, despite all the miles and all the time spent in rehab and psych wards, my thirties slipped by in a flash. Every year bled into the next, a continuous loop of surviving without really living. I learned a lot during that time—how to endure, how to cope—but mostly, I learned that no matter how far I drove, the past was always there, in the rearview, waiting to catch up.