A couple of things that you need to know before I begin. I've been traveling an off for a couple of years now around the U.S. Sometimes by bus or by hitchhiking or I take the train. There are times where I couchsurfed, and there are times where I had to hide out in a tent, and there are those scary times where I wound up checking in at a shelter or found myself hiding out in a city for hours before daylight. I guess you can say I'm more of a transient with a leaning towards wanderlust. I'm about to be 30 this year.
That being said, I'm going to say this. I want to go home now. Problem is, I don't know where home is anymore. I've been on the road, spent no more than six months at a time at the most, working odd jobs here and there. I woofed at farms, sometimes for pay, or sometimes just to have a place to stay for a while.
But now, I hit bottom. I'm on a farm that doubles as a squalor of 20 people in their early twenties. The place is hopelessly a shit hole. I have to pay for food, but even with foodstamps, I'm afraid of buying anything for fear of it going bad in one of the rancid refrigerators or from someone outright eating my food. I don't have as much as two nickels to rub together and can't find outside work since I don't have a car. Every night is tequila night here at the main lodge, so I'm usually out back hiding out in tent city after hours.
I had no inspiration to ask for help from anyone on facebook. There's no point in calling my relatives because either we don't talk, or they won't help because they think I'm still traveling and can't or won't help me out for whatever reason. So I feel extremely alone and isolated right now. I don't have any real friends here, and my friends that I made back in Austin think I'm still on some kind of random vacation, which I'm not. And yet that is not the worst part.
The guy running the farm turns out to be some forty something year old guy posing as a 20 something with an alias name who is using his family's farm to recruit woofers. This guy has already kicked one girl off via facebook because she had a bad break out of poison oak and couldn't work for a week. And in my second stay here, he chased off another guy who was struggling to make ends meet by woofing, working a part time job, and paying his bills. I've been told that he likes to target the girls who work here and try to sleep with them. His family including his younger brother, from what I can tell due to his turbulent history with his ex, know this and continue to let this man child stay on their property. And in the meantime, this entire farm feels cramped despite being thirty acres of land including a pond. There is no sense of personal boundaries. My computer has been threatened twice by an overturned beverage, and no one notices. I tried to take a nap in my tent, and there's some kid making random animal noises to no one in particular right outside. This place is literally loony tune land, and I know I need to get out soon.
I know it was my choice to travel. I started traveling because I was homeless, and travelled out of necessity and mainly to get the hell out of Houston. No, I didn't do drugs or time. I was the last person anyone would suspect in being in this situation. But I keep getting pulled back into traveling after burning out on the job or another housing situation. It's just easier to just walk away and leave another shitty situation behind, which is where I find myself yet again.
I know that home is not any of the places that I've ever been to, except maybe with the hopeful of one place that I been to just recently. And I'm hoping that I'm finally right after all. That was back in northern Cal. When I left, I felt very foolish for leaving the way I did. I was there for two weeks, but they kept insisting that I could stay on. But I'm coming back there. I just hope that I can get there from here. Rob, I hope you find this, and that I got your text. I hope that I can finally come home again.
Submitted June 18, 2015 at 06:11AM by tinderbox07232014 http://ift.tt/1IPOpt4 offmychest
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