So, I did a thing. I made the decision to move halfway across the country. I know, I know, it’s crazy. Here’s the thing, my son and I had so many terrible memories in our old home. Also, all of the family that we used to live close to had all moved away. It was definitely time for a change, and move forward. It was time to move to a place where we can start fresh, and not have painful memories come to mind every time we walk in our front door.

My parents live in a teeny tiny town, smaller than the one we moved to, and not many job opportunities so moving near them wasn’t an option. My brother on the other hand, also lives in a small town but he lives in a completely different state, in a town with job opportunities and he possess’ 4 very important young people in my life: my nieces and nephews. I hadn’t seen them in way too long, since my brother had moved.

That was it, one night while I was in the middle of a breakdown while talking to my brother I decided we were moving. I just blurted out that I was so fed up with all of the messed up things that I had been through there, and that as soon as I was done with going to court we were moving.

Well it turns out, that I didn’t have to stick around for court or even DCFS / CPS. In fact the CPS agent even strongly suggested at the beginning of her investigation that we move. Now, whether or not she meant out of state was a different story, but it didn’t matter. My future was not up to her. I was also told that I would not have to go to any of my abusers court dates, unless he tried denying everything. That would have been a joke – there was too much evidence. Anyway, even if I did have to show up to the final court dates I would have gotten ample notice, and would have just had to come back for court. Nobody could STOP me from moving.

For the record, I want to put out there that I had taken my sons opinion into deep deep consideration. Before I made the official decision to move across the country, we were looking into other options. Such as different towns and schools etc… I gave my son the choice between moving to ND and a few other local places and he chose North Dakota.

With that being said, everything happened VERY QUICKLY! Once we made the decision and I went through all of the channels to make sure I wouldn’t get into trouble, we were moved within three weeks. I decided to make a quick move so that I wouldn’t have to make another rent payment and could use that money to move.

My son had been to North Dakota with my brother and his family when they moved here, but only for a very short while. I, however, had never ever been here. Well, once when I was in high school, but that wasn’t this town. That was for a field trip. I’d hardly count that.  All I knew was that my son had a room when we got there, and I had a couch to lay on until I found a job and a place to live. We were about to make a blind move, and it was extremely scary. Scary albeit necessary.

The process of packing up my house was… full of relief. I was so focused on getting the hell out of there and leaving all those negative memories behind. I completely pushed aside a whole lot of hurt and anger to focus on the task at hand – moving. There was so much more ahead for us than what we were about to leave behind.