The Book of Lost Friends in Magical Realism

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TW: brief, non-detailed mentions of death, cancer, rape, suicide

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I’m going to ignore that I tried to get back into the swing of things here again but then it’s been 4 months. And I will skip the Locked Up Abroad: Norway installation for now since there is an NDA involved and we all know people on the internet can’t always be trusted and I don’t want to get sued. Hopefully I can share all in a few months.

I guess that brings us to August of last year and leaves two more topics:

How to lose friends and gain enemies
The first part is painful honestly. Everything since 2020 was rough, but somehow in July 2021 it just got worse. On one hand I am okay, everything is okay but on the other, the isolation, the fear, the avoidance of almost all the things I enjoy have been unbearable. I think I was okay the first year or so, but after that it just spiraled. Or maybe it was initial awfulness that just turned mundane at some point. Sometimes I think I have some sort of long covid. Even though I had such a mild case, I just don’t feel myself anymore. It’s hard to separate from two years of not leaving the house for weeks and months on end, bad habits, entering my 40s?

Many friends lost, I lose count at exactly how many, and I guess it depends on definition of friends and definition of loss. Literal loss - swim friends who meant a lot to me, but who I may see only a few times a year in normal times? My friend’s in-laws, who daringly escaped genocide in their home country to the US only to die from illness. My amazing friend who kayaked the first lap of my 45 hour swim, only to be diagnosed with brain cancer a month later and died less than a year later. She was a costume designer for tv, film, and theatre. She had just gotten married to the love of her life a few years ago. My friend the very talented illustrator who wanted to write a children’s book about me. She died of cancer just when she should have been getting better, and just a month or two before her book physically came out. Four months before her last child went away to college. She would have been so proud.

Only a handful to covid but just as many by cancer and more than a few by their own hand, sadly. Somehow these were always the people who were so kind, so helpful. I’m tearing up just thinking of a particular one. He survived abuse, foster care, military service, only to kill himself over the holidays. In addition to that there were three violent deaths, including two former colleagues killed on the NYC subway in two separate shocking incidents a few months apart. Both at totally normal times, “safe” areas. One shoved onto the tracks, one shot on his way to Sunday brunch. And of course war and injustice and the unraveling of the world as we know it. It’s just all too much.

I don’t want to overstate it as no one loss was that insurmountable for me personally, nothing that could break me individually, but they all just pile up somehow. The world is sadder and smaller without them in it. I guess everything is by degrees and shades of grey. And those are just off the top of my head.

And then there were the metaphorical losses. A lot of these, maybe all of these were my own fault. I have a lot of rage inside me. Against governments, people who are selfish, people who don’t think about their actions. I push people away. I cut them off cold when I feel like I’ve been betrayed. I’m I’m sure there were some good things that happened, but I have trouble recalling most of them. A was a rockstar, as always, and while it was mostly me falling apart and him holding me together, we took turns a bit. I don’t think I could have gotten through this without him.

Work was crap - too much to do, little support and even less time. To pile on, one of my direct reports was totally incompetent and I did not manage them out ASAP as I should have done in retrospect. It made my life terrible on top of a very demanding job having to teach, correct and/or second guess everything they did.

Swim life was also dumpster fire worthy, inadvertently drawing the ire of a group of nasty trolls who systematically bullied me to the point of stalking/threatening “anonymous” text messages to the point of a threat of rape and dismemberment, at which point I reported them to my local pd. They fortunately took it seriously and escalated it as it turned out to be coming from outside the city/state. Even more bizarrely, months into the midst of their investigation it was discontinued because they found out that the person who had sent at least the worst messages had passed away. By DROWNING. You cannot make this stuff up.

How to relocate to another continent on 3 weeks notice
In the midst of all that, A interviewed with and took a new job based in Australia. We had both interviewed a few times for roles overseas, me twice for Melbourne and Hong Kong and A for Sydney, but it never worked out due to timing etc. With covid and the country being closed and all that, we weren’t really sure when the visas for us to physically come over would happen, and knew it could be a long time (there was another American on his team waiting over a year at the time he accepted the job.) But we took a risk, and A started working with them remotely in July of 2021. I was excited for him and thrilled for a potential move, but it made things even worse work/life wise. I would log in around 8am each day and his day would start at 4pm and then we’d both go through about midnight NY time, so I was just working around the clock barely sleeping, barely leaving the house.

After about a year at my “new” job, I got a big raise and promotion, and I loved the work itself but I was doing the work of at least 4 people, not including being a micromanager to one report I inherited. Things were just unsustainable in every way. I was on the brink of total insanity and told myself I just needed to get to 2022, then I could resign. I continued on until my bonus was paid out and it was touch and go from there. In late January we finally got our visas issued and I officially resigned shortly after that.

I knew my employer at the time didn’t have a presence in Oceana (thankfully) but they asked me to stay on and work remotely for the US firm as long as I was able, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. After that, they made all the usual noises/announcements detailing my contributions and wishing me well but overall were pretty nasty/cold to me. Such a terrible feeling on the way out. Looking back there were a million things I would have done differently, but hindsight is 20/20 I guess. By the end of our time before the move I was a shell of myself, burned out by overwork and loss and pain and all the horrible things going on in the world.

Movers came a couple of weeks later to take everything we were shipping via boat, then we flew out a few weeks after that in March. I had never used packers/movers but it was amazing - they carefully boxed up and moved all our worldly possessions in under an hour. Our relocation package provided for regular airfares, but A had a dream of arriving to our new home in style so I used miles to upgrade us, which made things a lot less painful, and we actually had a really lovely dinner along the way at the full service restaurant in the LAX lounge on our connection. A even slept on both flights, which is unheard of for him.

We also checked 4 full-size suitcases to get us through the next few months until our boxes came, which was comical. (The rep who checked us in told us how much the luggage cost would have been without status - I don’t remember exact figure but think it was over $700!) It was necessary but I don’t know how people do it. Somehow all our crap, plus us, plus an uber driver all fit into a standard Prius. All 4 massive suitcases fit into the trunk, plus I think one of the carry-ons! What a vehicle - I was really impressed.

After about 26 hours of traveling, we were home in our new home.

(Reading this I sound completely over the top, overdramatic and unhinged, which is pretty accurate. One more entry and then I should be back in real time, which thankfully so far has been less bizarre.)

Last updated September 06, 2022