Category: Personal Stories

Michigan has taught me everything I do not want in this life. 

I know this statement will offend the Michiganders. I posted about a month ago on Threads how traumatizing life has been since moving here, and how I wish I never had. I had endless replies telling me “just go back where you came from” and how beautiful this state is and that I should be happy to be here.

This state is beautiful, but I haven’t had a chance to enjoy any of it. 

Between the abuse I’ve endured and the lack of accessibility, I’ve only left my room a handful of times in over a year. 

I have walked home from ERs after being taken in via ambulance for seizures and low potassium, because there were no public transport options where I lived in the UP. I’ve walked to the ER with a fever, pneumonia, and a tooth infection in the snow for the same reason. 

The person who swore they’d be there wasn’t, and I think that’s where my bitterness started. There was no concern if I made it to the ER safely or back home safely. Not really. And I understand, everyone has their own things and not everyone is capable of showing up in a meaningful way, so they wrap their care in spiritual bypassing, saying they just had to trust that if I died, it was meant to be. 

Those words made me want to die, and suddenly that nightmare where their eyes were black and the trees were begging me to go back home made sense.

I’ve been surrounded by countless drugs from roommates or neighbors, including meth. Moldy, falling apart buildings. All the progress I had made with my health was stripped away from me.

I became homeless. I was in a shelter receiving death threats from my roommate, and the staff didn’t do anything until she attacked one of them, but that was after I left and moved in with a drug addict who had. 

I rented a room with shit smeared on the walls and no door. I was reinfected with COVID for a second time because people are a little too holistic and refuse to believe that masks and social distancing can help keep an immunocompromised person alive. The last round had me laying down towels to try to pee in bottles because I was too sick to make it out of bed.

Between boil water advisories and no access to water for my POTS, meth fumes, men at my doorway when I didn’t have one, just staring at me while I slept… endless screaming… 

Roommate screaming bloody murder that someone was killing her. 911 calls. My number being given to random men. Sexual harassment.

I am not okay.

And I had no one to reach out to during this. Not fully. No one to come sit with me. No one to help me home from the hospital. No one to even call. I have had people show up in other ways, and I am grateful, because their kindness has kept me alive. But it’s not the same.

I really thought the things I had endured in Utah the two years prior to moving here were hard. 

And it was bad. 

Logically, I know that’s the cycle of trauma. We are perfectly primed to be abused again, and so the loop continues. We are vulnerable, desperate for safety. Being disabled and in poverty adds to this risk. If I were to tell the full story, no one would believe me. 

It comes out sometimes, though.

I’ll bring up the cameras in my room. Being locked in the basement. The stalker neighbor. The lady at the Vegas airport threatening to take a knife to me.

I am tired.

You know, I used to not wear my headphones 24/7. Look back at my old videos from last year and before. I can’t exist without them now, because all of the trauma destroyed me.

I finally had a day yesterday where I was able to take my headphones off. I felt more at ease, despite everything. My heart rate was finally relaxed. I let myself rest for the day. And it all crumbled. I stepped outside my room to turn off the A/C only to be screamed at. 

I assume the roommate was having sex, jacking off, or naked. It threw me into an entire PTSD episode. My headphones are back on. I jumped when my air fryer beeped and had a panic attack. I once again peed in a bottle last night, never thought I’d have to do that after that COVID-era, but I didn’t feel safe leaving my bedroom. So I laid the towel down, grabbed an empty Powerade bottle, and baby wipes. I wasn’t allowed to leave my room, and I really had to pee. 

Why is this how my life is?

I say it a lot, but I wish I had died back in Utah. And no matter what progress I make, I still wish that, because this isn’t life.

I also say this often, all I want is to be safe. And somehow I keep ending up in even more unsafe, abusive situations.

No one will read this. Or care.

But I care. I care about me and my safety. And I really hope one day I can look back and be grateful that I am no longer here and that I am finally safe.

As someone who is chronically ill and has had all of her conditions worsened by COVID-19, can y’all stop pretending like you care about hantavirus? More people are worried about the idea of quarantine and lockdowns than they are about the virus itself and the fatality rate. Sure, I know there’s more nuance to that. Lockdown was traumatizing for people. It’s easier to focus on that aspect. Hantavirus isn’t spread as easily as COVID-19. But… it is spreading. And if 2020 and the following years have taught me anything, it’s this: People do not care.

They don’t care. No one cares.

People will know you are immunocompromised and look you dead in the face—or rather, cough in your face—and tell you they’re sick, but it’s fine, because they’ve had the rona ten times and look at them! Well, look at me. Last time I got infected, I was in bed with a heart rate of 140-150. I genuinely thought I had sepsis and was dying, but I was in such an isolated part of the UP that I had no way to get to a hospital that could help me with all of my complex conditions. I wrote a note on my lizard’s tank with instructions on who to call if I was found dead. I was peeing in empty Powerade bottles because I was too dizzy to walk to the bathroom. That was back in February. It flared my POTS and autoimmune conditions so badly that I don’t even leave my room. I’ve been back to doing cardiac rehab exercises, hoping for the best.

The time before that? I was coughing up blood for over a month.

Before the pandemic?

Sure, I’d have mild dizziness here and there. A seizure or two a year. Joint pain. Normal things with my lupus and epilepsy. After, I developed severe POTS and MCAS. I have frightening vascular episodes. I lost my ability to walk, or even stand for any length of time. I started having neuro flares, slurring my words, experiencing confusion, exhaustion… I have lost my ability to live, and each reinfection makes it worse. The irony is that because the people I’ve been around in Michigan are so much less COVID-conscious than people were in Utah, I have had COVID more times in one year than I did in five years in Utah.

People do not care.

People’s children will be sick. They will know. They will let said children climb all over you. You will express that you want to go buy masks, to do anything you can, even if it won’t work, to try not to get COVID because you, the immunocompromised person, can die. At worst. At best, you’ll go into a flare that can ruin your life for months to years.

But it doesn’t matter. Because you’re overreacting. Because it’s not a big deal. And what’s meant to be will happen either way, right?

If I sound bitter, I am.

While all of this is triggering lockdown PTSD for you, it’s triggering a harsh reality for me: If this does start spreading like COVID, it is a death sentence for me. I already hear my roommates coughing in the morning, and I never know if it’s their allergies, weed, or illness. And I know there won’t be communication—despite me explicitly asking for it—if they’re sick. I don’t think my body could handle another COVID infection. Vaccines only help so much. Until I can live on my own, it’s getting to the point where I’m going to have to start masking inside again, because…

People do not care.

And if the truth is different for you, I am glad you have people in your life who prioritize your safety. It’s rare. Because even the people who love you the most would rather let you get infected and risk you dying than take any responsibility or action to help you avoid contracting something that could disable or kill you. And you have to smile and pretend to be happy while they do it.

Because that’s what friends are for.

It’s funny. I started writing this because I saw people saying no one can quarantine for 45 days in this economy. It’s true. I was viewing this through the lens of someone who is immunocompromised and someone who has been homeless. Someone who is struggling. I agree our government should have relief in place for those who need to quarantine, so they aren’t faced with the risk of homelessness and food insecurity… but my life matters too. The lives of those around you matter. I mean, I know y’all hate disabled people, but hantavirus has a far higher fatality rate, even among healthy people, than COVID did… I was going to write about that. About the value of life. But then I realized no one valued mine when it came to COVID. Because as I said:

People do not care.

I disconnected from the stakeholder meeting after thanking them for their invaluable insights, biting my tongue to keep the truth in my throat: I know a thing or two about needing these kinds of services. It’s been three months, but I still have nightmares about the homeless shelter. I put my headphones back on and let “Ashes and Smoke” by Anna Graves repeat, as I cry. And cry. And wrap myself into a hug, maneuvering the pillows in my bed in such a way that I feel like I am being held. I am a 36-year-old woman simulating safety and love in chaos and isolation. 

I was watching Jane Eyre before the meeting, and I realized that the cruelties of life haven’t changed all that much. The form they possess has shifted. When I was first admitted to a psychiatric unit, I remember the officer telling me it would be okay, it’s not like the 1800s or even the 70s. We’ve swapped lobotomies for zombie-inducing medications—the perfect prey for abusive staff. No longer do the adults shoo children outside and allow them to speak only when spoken to. Instead, they are handed an iPad and forced to perform for social media. People will watch you starve, be rushed away in an ambulance for a health crisis, and eventually collapse so publicly, beating your own body into submission, because that’s what it feels like everyone is doing to you. The only way to have some sense of normalcy in this life is by becoming the very thing you hate: a dissociated, cruel thing chasing the next high. 

I can’t do that, so I cry after meetings. I daydream of a world where I’m not sick—or, since it’s so hard for me to imagine that, I see myself supported… that if I am too dizzy to grab water, I can ask someone for help. I dream of such simple things, and it breaks my heart. I dream of being loved gently. I dream of a life free from abuse and trauma. I dream of being able to heal. I dream of being safe. Sometimes I forget that I live in a world where these are out of reach, so I latch onto that which refuses me, hoping it’ll see my soul. Sometimes they turn around, pour their secrets into my stomach, and walk away. The secrets are rotten, and they make my stomach hurt. Sometimes I throw them up, and they get mad, telling me that’s why no one likes me. 

I can’t even cling to religion, though I’ve had the most profound spiritual experiences in this endless dark night… because I can see how suffering breeds belief, because hope needed a sister to keep going, but I’m too self-aware, and if belief and hope are real, they must be evil, because the suffering exists in the most awful loop. 

And all I want to do is go home. 

But I don’t have a home. 

I had so many dreams centered around the Wizard of Oz in 2024 and early 2025… and now here I am. Crying after a meeting, pillows holding my sanity together, as I whisper once again, I just want to go home. 

The other night, I had this dream that the world actually ended in 2020 and I’ve been living in this glitched simulation since. Of course, I have a deep fear and fascination with simulation theory. Pair that with the mess of 2020 and this year, it really does feel like we are living in some apocalyptic novel that is setting us up for the dystopian sequel. You know what I mean? I wonder if that is why so many people refuse to acknowledge the severity of the pandemic, because it is so scary and yet we are expected to continue on with our lives. The world can’t shut down. The same way the world doesn’t shut down for war or other ongoing tragedies. It’s much easier to pull the covers over our head and pretend the monster we see isn’t there. Pretending makes us feel safe. Even if we aren’t safe at all. 

I know I am not alone in the amount of pure chaos that has happened in the last two years within my personal life as well. August 10, 2021 marked the two year anniversary since my mom passed. This will be my third Christmas without her. She passed a little before the rona took over the world, which I count as a blessing. At least I could say goodbye. At least I could be there when they took her off life support. In those first few months after the pandemic hit, I often thought of what it would be like if she was still here. What would she say about all of this? What would we do? Would we be safe? 

Or would we both end up pretending that we were safe for the sake of feeling like we are? I  don’t know. 

Roommates, Grief, and Survival

Shortly after my mom passed, I had to find roommates so I could afford rent. That was when I met Hannah who ended up becoming one of my best friends, and who I am still so hurt and confused over. I have so many questions I want to ask but that I know even if she answered, even if she spoke the truth, I don’t know if I could trust it. I couldn’t trust her.

Kattie became our roommate shortly after. Kattie is passionate, brave, and so kind and genuine. She doesn’t see her worth, which breaks my heart and frustrates me at the same time. I just want to scream at her that she is worthy of a healthy love and a healthy family. Not because I am mad or anything at all like that. I just don’t know how to make her see this. So, Kattie, my sweet friend, if you are reading this recap blog of the last two years / my attempt to start blogging again – YOU ARE LOVED DAMMIT. YOU ARE WORHTY AF (LIKE YOUR TATTOO SAYS). And you deserve so so much better than this world has given you. 

Between a toxic landlord, losing my faith,coming out as bisexual, moving suddenly to California to go live with my sister, and then getting back to Utah, tackling my physical health and mental heath, starting a new and amazing job that is the most healthy workplace I’ve ever been in, living with a toxic roommate who screamed “cat cat cat” and “bleach bleach bleach” despite the house being filled with mold, leaving the Church, taking a break from friends I love so very much because I just couldn’t handle anything anymore, moving into my own apartment with no roommates at all, losing one of my best friends and questioning her motives, to reconnecting with old friends and building new friendships. The last few two months when life started falling apart again, my friend Lex helped me through so much of it. Lex is one of the people who created a safe space for me to come out and hyped me up with a whole bi-pride photoshoot. 

All the while, Christmas is almost here, and I still haven’t really learned how to process my grief. I feel like the first two years have been processing the trauma of watching my mother die. I’m just now at a point where I don’t have nightmares every night and see it happen every night… but as time passes, the more it sinks in… death is permanent (possibile afterlife beliefs aside) and she is not coming back. 

Oh, and did I mention I’ve now been diagnosed with Bipolar? And possible OCD? Yeah, I’m doing greeeaaaat. 

Yet somehow through all of this, through the hardest two years of my life, I’ve survived. Past Sara? Oh, she would’ve unalived herself by now. I’m not sure where the resilience came from or how I’ve managed to find an inner peace despite it all. And on the days, weeks, and even months when I didn’t have that inner peace, I coped. I survived. Honestly, I was in survival mode for such a long time it took me a while to finally disconnect from that and reconnect with that inner peace. 

So, where does this leave me for 2022? 

This last year has set the tone for my self-discovery. I’ve left the Mormon Church and will be completing my official resignation next year. I’ve dived back into the spiritual areas I always felt called to. I have several tarot decks, an altar, ouija board, book of shadows, and spell books. I still love Jesus, or at least what he represents. I’m not sure how I feel about the teachings in the Bible or within organized religion anymore. Of course, this path comes with its own set of grief. Saying goodbye to God isn’t easy. In fact, I would’ve much rather chosen to pretend that I “know” he’s real than let go of something that promised me safety from this cruel world.But I am choosing to be honest with myself that I don’t know what is real and what is not, but I will do what allows me to feel most connected and safe and grounded. And if the Christian God is real, then I hope they understand that I am not choosing anything out of malice or ill intent. And if God is Love, well. Love would understand. Love would know me so perfectly. Love wouldn’t be mad. 

I started a TikTok (like everyone else) during those early days of lockdown. I’ve discovered how much I love making videos, and so I plan to continue that journey and embark on a YouTube channel. 

I will publish a book I am currently working on. (Around February) 

I will get my second and third dose of the vaccine.I will continue to wear a mask and protect others as well as myself. (Maybe this earlier like this Christmas weekend… I just need a ride.)

I will continue to take care of my health, even if some of the tests and procedures scare me.

I will continue to bring all that I can to my job. 

I will go on dates when things settle with the rona. I will learn about people and find their beauty and steal pieces of them for characters in stories I will one day write. I will find the beauty in the world even if most of what I see is dark and gross and sad. 

I will love fearlessly. I will fight for what is right. I will be loud. I will be brave. I will not surrender to myself or to others. 

Sidenote: If you have a book, you’d like for me to review next year, please send me a message to get on my calendar!