The temporary relief from my Centralia visit didn’t last. The physical consequences of my insanity finally caught up with me in October. Four months of stress-induced anorexia had lead to drastic weight loss, ketosis, and ultimately a hypoglycemic seizure. Two days later, following an admonishment from my hospital nurse to “stop being so sad and eat,” and in defiance of my fragile condition, I took a flight to Sydney for work.

I didn’t stop being crazy, but the dramatic change in scenery and timezone made a world of difference (pun intended.) My appetite returned. I stopped crying to the point of dry-heaving. I was still heartbroken and suicidal, but I was fucking halfway across the world, on someone else’s dime. I still hated the person I had become and wanted to destroy her. But, despite having been in a dangerously bad place before I left, I couldn’t deny that being in the land of koalas and kangaroo steaks was an extraordinary opportunity. I had, albeit temporarily, escaped. My only fear was that upon return I would sink back into the tarpit of desolation upon my return.

I did. Shortly after my return to the states, I half heartedly attempted suicide via a bottle of pills, a bottle of wine, and a long soak in a bathtub. I felt failed by my doctors, my woefully inadequate “support system,” and my own inability to toe the line. I was desperate. I survived, and I decided to go back to the one thing that had worked— I got the fuck out of dodge.

I’ve always been conservative with my finances, so when I look in retrospect at what what I spent on plane tickets, I feel a strong sense of shame. Then I remind myself that these expenses may not have been insurance deductible, but I have no doubt that the money I spent on travel helped save my life. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and if a weekend trip to Los Angeles could keep me from opening a vein, I was more than happy to pay the price. Some folks have lovers, relatives, or employers financing their trips; mine were directly funded under the auspices of off-label treatment for diagnostic code 296.89 (more on that later.)

(below: Bombay Beach, a couple hours from Los Angeles, California, was once a thriving resort town. Changes that turned the Salton Sea unfishable lead to its decline.)

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Paying my respects 25 years after the disaster.