When the Worst Thing Ever Becomes the Best Thing Ever

A year ago today, was the worst thing that ever happened happened in my life… And the best thing that ever happened in my life. I went to sleep one night in my two-bedroom house with my garden and I had just gotten enough teaching work to make a living.

In the morning, I got up from my bed and my right side was dead.

I was in a daze and staggered to the top of the steps where, thankfully, I fell at the top of the steps and not down the steps. My neighbors heard me because it was the middle of spring and my windows were open. I was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed as having had a stroke.

At that moment, I had no idea how it would change my life.

I could tell you about how I lost everything and the horrible time I’ve had trying to recover. I could tell you that, but that’s not the sum total of my experience. A catastrophic event in your life is a call to action. I just watched the movie "Finding Joe," which talks about the hero’s journey in the work of Joseph Campbell. (If you don’t know who that is, you better learn it now.)

This is the threshold I’m standing on — the call to action. All my life I’ve talked about how I wanted to live in Europe and I wanted to travel and how Anthony Bourdain had the best job in the world, in my opinion. We all know how that worked out for him. That as much as I talked about it I never had the courage to get on the plane and go somewhere foreign.

Tomorrow I am getting on a plane to Houston, Texas, and then on Wednesday, I’m moving to Guadalajara, Mexico. With Covid, Europe isn’t exactly open right now, or at least the Czech Republic and Prague, and it occurred to me that because I’m a digital nomad, I no longer have to choose to accept the treatment I’ve gotten in this country. I got only public housing after my stroke. No Social Security, no disability benefits even though I could barely walk or feed myself, and the food stamps that I already had because I would have gone through a tough time and had just gotten to where I could make it without them. Before the stroke.

Let’s talk about the Housing Authority, which sees us as animals to pen up or children they can order around. They do everything they can to hinder disabled people and live to fine poor people.

When I applied for health insurance, they quoted me a rate that was over $150 more than I made in a month. That was when I snapped. I finally decided to become an ex-Patriate. As one of my gurus says, go where people treat you well.

Poor people and people down on their luck aren’t treated well here.

I’ve traveled extensively in this country for years but had never been outside it except a short stint to Canada in the 1990s. I talked about developing a course for digital nomads, but hadn’t really practiced what I preached. I had developed another career teaching English as a foreign language and I hadn’t even contemplated how that could take me almost anywhere in the world.

I know it seems obvious, but I thought I was too old (54.) I thought I was too fat. I certainly thought someone partially disabled couldn’t do this.

And then I said “Fuck it. I‘m doing this.”

So tomorrow I fly to Houston, then Wednesday I fly to Guadalajara. As Louise said to Thelma, “we’ll be drinking margaritas by the sea, Mamacita.” And she also said, with determination, “I’m going to Mexico. I’m going…”

Yes, I am.