I awoke that fateful morning of early June pumped up and ready to plunge into a new life; one made especially for me. I was heading to Portland where I had hoped to find a fresh new start, as my predicted new beginning in Olympia was an embarrassing account on which my elaboration will be minimal. In short, I had left my best friend in eastern Tennessee in pursuit of a better life, one in which I could get a leg up with my talents as a writer, juggler, and performance artist. But what I found in the capitol of Washington was nothing but a dead end, which drove me back into addiction.

The aliens were privy to my failure and provided me with the solution to my problem via synchronicities. For those who are not familiar with my mental health, I am schizoaffective, and I experience a peculiar strangeness that seems to guide me. For instance, upon vocalizing my frustrations with starting anew in Olympia, my Pandora radio station began playing unusual new songs; music that not only spoke directly to me as if orchestrated by a higher power that could read my mind, but was completely out of place on my usual tried-and-true Massive Ego station that I fervently listen to.

Where there should have been electropop, industrial, and gothic tunes, there was rap and hip hop. This strangeness led to me checking my Reddit feed for suggestions, as I have been trained over the years by the consistent force in my life. There, I was greeted with several synchronous posts regarding homeless life in Portland, like God was speaking to me through burning bushes. What I should do next was as obvious as the nose on my face: abandon the luxuries of housed living that I had grown comfortable with over the last two years with my best friend, and return to life on the streets.

However, as easy as it was for me to discern the path I should take, actually walking that road proved difficult. For starters, as the time to leave approached, the Uber app on my phone glitched out several times in a way that suggested something wanted me to stay. I stayed true to my perceived mission despite this, choosing to navigate this digital obstacle by downloading Lyft, which gave me no problems whatsoever.

That was not the end of my trials that morning though, for I received a notification on my way to the Olympia Transit Station stating that Greyhound was running late. As the anxiety I am most familiar with began creeping its fetid head into my mind, I opted to focus on my breath, which calmed me, allowing me to sort through the flurry of thoughts that cascaded like a torrent in my skull. With my wise mind coming into focus, I took the time to ready my ticket, only to have my psyche pulled further into agitation as the booking number failed to pull up anything but an error message.

Panic setting in, I fiddled with my phone for the better part of a half hour while sitting on a concrete slab and puffing heavily on my cheap blue vape as I did so. Across the street, locals were setting up tents to serve coffee and breakfast to the homeless population of Olympia. I debated abandoning my diligence to solving this cursed puzzle and succumbing to the easy fixings to steady my hand, but I held out, thinking that I wouldn't be worth my socks if I couldn't remain vigilant enough to drudge through the trickery of whatever bully at the NSA was playing with my volatile mind.

Eventually, and thankfully, the gods were kind to me and relented when I found the right combination of digits that allowed me to bring up the QR code that would permit me to board the bus, which pulled up less than five minutes later. There was almost a hiccup there, too, as the driver scrunched her face up in confusion upon checking her device, apparently not seeing an appropriate name for a passenger with a beard as thick as mine. Nevertheless, scanning my code abated this worry, as I was in fact still legally named Victoria.

Getting my name changed to Victorious was one of my major goals for early on in my journey back to the City of Roses. Truth be told, when I was there last, some four years ago, I had my name changed to Victoria, as I was still deeply lost in the programming of the CIA and exploring my repressed feminine side. That proved invaluable in my healing process, allowing my divine feminine half to grow and unite with my overdeveloped masculine energy. But, as an example, spending five months in the hospital system for being as mad as a hatter is proof that I had a lot of internal issues to sort out at the time.

That's a story for another time though. We have much more sane madness to rummage through! Returning to my external issues of the moment, my trouble on my trip south was not yet concluded. Far from it. For instance, we had a single break on the three hour journey, and that proved to be planned as a training exercise explicitly for me.

See, upon stopping at a busy gas station, I picked up a chicken salad sandwich to snack on for the remainder of the bus ride. That's how I got stuck in a long line to pay for it. Soon though, a register opened up around the counter and I jumped at the chance to be checked out quicker. Unfortunately for me though, I was beaten to the front by two actors, both of which had armfuls of goodies for their apparent venture deep into California. Not only that, but they wanted an order of chicken wings, and since neither of them spoke English, this quickly turned into an ordeal.

I waited patiently, but my passive nature nearly made me miss the bus as it was pulling out. This prompted the driver to give the whole cabin a safety lecture on never waiting in line while at a break like that. Now, my rational brain can discern that she was simply trying to help everyone avoid the awful experience of being stranded, but in the moment, with my emotional intelligence of a toddler, I felt like the center of the universe and the cosmos were parting the Milky Way to tell me how badly of a screw up I truly was.