how the desert became my past
Mom’s best friend is driving over two thousand miles to bring Grandma out to North Carolina because Grandma is afraid to fly. I can’t believe this is finally happening. My family is finally out of Victorville, the place I’ve fought so hard and so long to escape. I’ve been trying to get them out for years.
I developed the yearning to get out at a young age. I was bullied for most of my adolescence and never felt like I belonged in that nowhere town. Mom was in prison and Dad was in the meth lab he built in our home and I was invisible. In high school I was pulled out of school and my boyfriend was murdered. Life got weird and bleak and then Mom went to jail for the hundredth time. I found Dad crying into an empty tequila bottle and told him it was time to leave. I fled to Los Angeles and Dad and my brother moved to Michigan where Dad’s parents now lived. That left Mom and Grandma in Victorville. It’s been almost twenty years of trying to get them out.
Mom is clean now and I got her out of the desert last December. She lives in North Carolina where I now call home—2,200 miles away from the soul-crushing desert where I grew up. Still, my Grandma had remained in Victorville in a house full of meth addicts.
But we finally did it. July 2020. My family is out of the desert. Hell fucking yes. The world is shit and completely falling apart but in my personal bubble this is a huge fucking win. Something I’ve been fighting for for my whole life. Don’t give up on your fights. Don’t give up on the ones you love. It took me almost two decades but I finally did it. My family is clean and free and safe. A new chapter is finally beginning. 2020, the year the desert officially became my past and no longer my present.