POV

But What’s My POV?

For a long time, I thought I didn’t have a point of view as an artist, as a writer, or as a student but I hadn’t met myself yet and oh how I was wrong. First off, I never had a chance at a normal life, although this is a newer retrospective. My hippie parents loaded me and my baby brother up in the VW van in Utah and unloaded us in Alaska. My parents were 19 when I was born and weren’t quite ready for parenthood. I had several traumatic events that happened to me in Elementary School that I didn’t remember until I was an adult. As a response to this, my parents moved us to another town and I entered Jr. High. I experienced more trauma there. I spent a year in correspondence school before entering High School. I left at the end of my Jr. year of high school and took my G.E.D.. By this time my behavior in response to the trauma I was experiencing became unmanageable for my mom who had had two more kids after my brother and I. I moved out on my own after my mom kicked me out, I lived with my father off and on at different periods but we’d eventually fight and he’d also kick me out. I spent time living at my friend’s houses and they and their families became my own. Because all of my friends were going away to college I decided to go to a state school further into the interior of Alaska with my friends. I started dating my first boyfriend at 19, many sexual assaults later I don’t know if I considered myself a virgin. The first time we had sex I got pregnant. I felt like for the first time in my life I was getting my shit together and chose to have an abortion at 19. My Sophomore year my boyfriend and I moved to Oregon. I think he was trying to move away from me, I was clingy after the abortion. We finished our undergraduate degrees in Psychology together but he broke up with me by leaving to be a roadie for a band, leaving me a note. (no cell phones then kids). When he decided to come back he tried apologizing to me by telling me he had cheated on me with an underage girl. I had to work through college to pay my way. Neither one of my parents supported me financially or emotionally but I woke up at 4am to work in the commissary through my undergraduate studies to get my degree. Unfortunately, I had an injury and wasn’t able to work and the only place that was available to me was to move back to Alaska with my dad and my first step mother, my younger siblings, including a new half sisters. I met my first husband when I moved to home and we moved into together too soon but the environment at my dad's house was uncomfortable. We did wait eight years before we got married and I probably should have taken that as a red flag. When we were divorcing he told me he had never loved me and I felt throughout our 22-year relationship. During my twenties, I had some fun jobs and got to live and work at Mt. Bachelor in Oregon and I worked as a tour guide for Princess Tours. He started working out of town in remote Alaska for work in the oil industry and he was gone for more than half of our time together. Eventually, I got settled in my dream job in pharmaceutical sales when we decided to get married.  Afterwards, we moved to Las Vegas so that he could attend school and I went to work there. I started getting my first health diagnosis in my late twenties. I was in a car accident and then diagnosed with Fibromyalgia soon after, even though at that time it was not a recognized health issue. Once in Las Vegas, we found out that I had severe endometriosis and fibroid tumors that covered all of the interior of my abdomen. The doctor I had was a man who performed a total hysterectomy over three surgeries in one year. The doctor didn’t tell me anything about menopause and I just woke up in sweat and excruciating pain. I entered a cycle of never-ending doctors appointments to try to manage my pain, I had over 12 spinal shots and became addicted to my overprescribed pain medication. Back then you could get it like candy, it took me a year to get off all the opiates I was on. During this time my grandmother died and I made my first serious suicide attempt since high school. My husband sent me to my family in Oregon and he went back to work. After I was cleaned up and back to work but we started having marital issues and he just left one day. I had to figure out everything on my own while I was working 60 hours a week. I met someone during the time he was gone, I didn’t hide it but I didn’t tell him but he found out and he insisted we move to Oregon. Once again I had just gotten my dream job in pharmaceutical sales. Oregon was a terrible move for me because most of my family was living there but one of best parts of my life was living there was spending so much time with my nieces but they were almost the only people I ever saw. There were no pharmaceutical jobs there. Add more traumatic events, more health issues, an absent husband and I had a nervous breakdown. I started getting severe intractable migraines a year after I was diagnosed with Lymes Disease. Eventually, my marriage was a wreck and I asked my husband to make a choice to either get divorced or go to marriage counseling. He opted out of the marriage and lied to the judge in court about my health status and my lawyer wasn’t prepared. I came out of that situation badly in all ways. I made the bold decision to go on vacation to Palm Springs, CA to see if my doctor was right about changing my barometric location to help my migraines. She was right and I decided to move there. I had no idea how to be an adult. More trauma ensued and my health issues got so severe that at times I was on oxygen and had to tell my family I might be dying. Of course, this was happening at the beginning of the pandemic. I knew with my health issues that if I caught Covid I would get hammered. I spent two blissful years alone creating my life but after being alone for so long when the vaccine arrived I was ready to try dating again, I had spent a lot of time doing tough therapy work. I thought I was safe. Then I met Steven. After we had been dating for about a month he found out his father had pancreatic cancer. At that time Steven was a sober recovering alcoholic but growing up in Alaska I didn’t know anyone who hadn’t had a problem drinking or knew someone who had one. I wish I had known what was coming, I wish I hadn’t left my perfect apartment in Palm Springs, I wish I hadn’t fallen in love but I did and there’s something extremely powerful when two people trauma bond, even when agreeing to work on that trauma together, or separate if that was in the best interests of physical or mental health. I proposed to Steven after six months in Las Vegas but I kept the wedding waiting until he could get his drinking back under control for over a year, and he did. We got married in December 2022 in a Vegas wedding. It was the best day of my life and almost every day after it has been my worst nightmare. From 2023 to 2024 we lived through a blizzard event that was declared a natural disaster, the loss of a job, homelessness, infidelity, domestic violence, multiple moves, Covid, acquiring post covid syndrome, losing both of my step-parents, a psychotic break, massive financial losses, possible divorce, a spinal cord injury resulting in quadriplegia.

At some point during Steven’s breakdown it became unsafe for me to be there and once again I moved back to Alaska to live with my dad. In November 2023 Steven tried to kill himself by drinking two liters of vodka in under two hours. He reached his family who contacted the police. When they arrived he fell out of the door and landed on his head and suffered a C5 break. Without that fall he would have died. He’s still in the hospital fight for his life in California.

This is where you the reader has entered the story of finding my pov…