The anxiety I get posting about travelling is real. I love my twitter peeps but they will turn on your in a second if you do something irresponsible. Travelling in a pandemic is definitely one of them, yes. I do not disagree. However, when someone is literally dying, with only so much time left, all they want to do is travel. What then? It’s a conundrum. I want to share these journeys with these friends but at the same time… Some person will inevitably pop up on a comment thread commenting on how “selfish” I am by not following the stay at home order.

I have just come to the conclusion that I am going to travel with my husband. If someone decides to add their two-cents I will provide the reason. Whether they want to agree or not is on them, but I won’t feel sorry for trying to enjoy what moments remain. Nor of making the most of them during a fucking pandemic.

If I had to choose when my husband would get such a deadly disease it wouldn’t have been now. I would have chosen a time when we could go on cruises or travel abroad. He’s seen so much, yet so little. When one is faced with the inevitability of being human, all the other petty bullshit falls away. You’re left with what is important and that is LIVING.

I have heard that sentiment so many times, but (I believe) for most it doesn’t really hit the mark until you live it. The understanding of this particular human flaw wasn’t made aware to me until I did this thing called the “landmark forum.” What I learned there was that we are constantly given the same advice but until we are ready to hear and accept it, we don’t pay it any mind. Even though we may have been told it over and over again. That’s how landmark was. They told us the same bullshit repeatedly, until they told us, “we’ve told you the same thing all weekend.” If you’re interested, I highly recommend the experience. It’s pricey AF and TOTES a cult. But if you keep that in mind you can gather what you need for the experience to matter.

This weekend I got a wild hair up my ass to go to Salt Lake City. My husband (who is the one that is dying) wanted to take a trip somewhere, he just didn’t care where. The last time we had done one, we had stopped in Salt Lake just to sleep and move onto the next stop early in the morning. (This was during out journey to get a second opinion on his ALS diagnosis at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.)

We packed up a bag for the weekend, the boyfriends, and headed out on the road. I had an ulterior motive of forcing the boys to listen to my novel. The hubs joked that I was torturing them, but at the conclusion he told me he thought it was good. “Just be done with it!”

The boys seemed to enjoy it too. My BF told me that I could get it finished in a month. (How overly optimistic of him.) My husband’s boyfriend opined to him (when I was out of the room) that he was excited to read the next one.

The one opinion that really mattered, and took me by surprise, was my own. I genuinely loved my book, by a lot. It was odd. I couldn’t wait to hear the next chapter or see where I took the narrative. I was surprised at the little clues I left that seemed innocuous to the boys, but meant so much to me. I felt proud.

Overall our little jaunt was fun. We got to see more of Salt Lake, the parts that weren’t obstructed by snow clouds that is, and got out of town. Most importantly I got feedback on my novel, from three people at once. Sure they were trapped in a confined space for almost 20 hours, with nowhere to go, but we’re only going to focus on the fact that I liked my story.