I Bought A Postcard In Every State I Traveled Through (here's how it went)

 I bought a postcard in every US state I traveled through, and here's how it went... 

Through a series of unfortunate events—don't come for me, Lemony Snicket, copyright is a joke, and capitalism is a lie—I ended up moving 2,300 miles from home. This put me all the way from sunny California to Louisville, Kentucky. It was a place I'd never been before in a state I often forgot about, but by chance, I ended up here. This meant my mom and I packed all of the stuff we could possibly fit in my tiny Hyundai, and Grandma volunteered herself for the expedition. Over three days of 15+ hours of driving, we trapezed the country, getting postcards in every state and battling stiff legs. 

My grandma took a copious number of photos, my mother cried a few times, and I ate so much McDonald's that my digestive track wept softly. I peed on the side of the road, waved at lots of cows, and questioned every life decision that had led me to this point. All of this is to say we somehow made it to Louisville. I still don't know how Mom and Grandma survived my track record of me being aggressively hangry.

I don't know how the postcard thing even started. I still have yet to get one for Kentucky, but I hung every single souvenir acquired in the tiny dorm room that became my home for a semester. I never filled them out, and the one I planned to write to my Grammy never got sent before she passed. It became a constant to help me ground as I processed the shock of leaving the place I grew up. 

Let me get one thing straight - no one ever leaves Modesto. Outside of a few major famous people from the area, like George Lucas (Star Wars), Jeremy Renner (The Avengers), or even Colin Kaepernick (the NFL), most everyone stays in the 209. Every person I meet in the grocery store seems to know my second cousin, Talia. There are countless run-ins with ex-boyfriends and people I couldn't stand in high school. If you ever wondered what it's like to swipe on the same people on the same dating apps, Modesto is the place to be. It's the kind of place people stay for generations, and when I was twelve, I decided I was tired of hearing people talk about leaving. I didn't want to be a miserable adult with a dead-end job I clearly hate, so I vowed to move far away and never come back.

I'll be the first to admit I didn't actually know if I'd achieve what I set out to do. Such is not common in my family. Outside of my Uncle Dave, who only moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, most everyone I knew never went away to college, and certainly not as far as I did. I think that's what made the road trip so nerve-wracking. I was always the black sheep of my family, the one who wanted to write instead of becoming a nurse. I was also the sole queer-identifying child, the liberal, the one with dreams no one else ever dreamed would come true. Somehow, I started to prove everyone wrong and wound up here.

It's funny to think about now, but when we arrived in downtown Louisville and my family saw the copious number of crackheads, they attempted to bribe me to come home. I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider being handed a thousand dollars and bailing on my grand excursion into adulthood, but I decided to stay in the end. I stayed with my nice roommates, even though they were total strangers and older than me. I made my dorm room cozy and tried to create a home as best I could.

Not to shamelessly promote my last blog post, where I got all sappy about moving and new opportunities and blah, blah, blah, but I stayed in Kentucky. If you want to read all about it, feel free to refer back. I made a home here, and I still look at the postcards at least once a day.

I won't say that the drive was comfortable or even particularly enjoyable, but it was worth it to get here. This is supposed to be a travel blog, but I'm a rule-breaker and went with a misleading title anyway. I won't bog this down with the details of a cross-country road trip, because nothing really happened, but I will say that of all the big decisions I've made, this was a pretty solid one. Plus, unlike the belly button piercing I had that got horribly infected and hurt me to no end, this has a promising outcome. 

To top it off, my mother likes my crack-den college a lot more than new holes in my body.

I still miss my belly button piercing.

Sonderly,

Jo

P.S. Spalding University is not a crack-den, but hearing my mother's assessment might make you believe otherwise.