The Contents of a Subaru Hatchback

Content Warning: Mention of emotional abuse, domestic violence, eating disorders, and mental health conditions.

The contents of a Subaru hatchback:

One medium suitcase containing clothes, including five cloaks and five pride shirts. Two sex toys. One backpack containing electronics, Medicaid paperwork, and two Hydroflasks. A clothes drying rack and bottle of detergent. A small safe containing a passport, birth certificate, car title, marriage license, and several hundred dollars of cash. A bag of syringes and vials of vitamin B12 and Adequan. A pair of flip-flops, a pair of sneakers, a pair of dress shoes, and a pair of hiking boots. Two 40lb bags of wood pellets. Two smart phones. Two bags of groceries. Two bags of toiletries. Two blankets. One bag of dirty clothes. A bin of prescription cat food. An electric water kettle. A cat tree. A bag of edibles. A mason jar of homegrown catnip. A five-step skincare routine. An electric water fountain and cat food dispenser. A litter box. Bottles of vitamin D supplements, prenatal vitamins, probiotics, Hydroxyzine, Klonopin, and Nortriptyline. A small ceramic cardinal with crystals and cat whiskers inside. A “She/They” rainbow pin. A stone egg in a purple silk bag.

An empty Starbucks cup, with an empty WinCo doughnut bag stuffed inside. The crumpled wrapper of a crispy chicken sandwich and container of half-eaten fries. A straw wrapper and nearly untouched Sprite.

One cat in a carrier. One human in a green scarf.

***

All of the worldly possessions that had stayed with me through four relocations in eight months could fit in my little green car. I should have been more embarrassed about the remnants of my breakfast and lunch on the day I moved for the fourth time, but I was just glad I’d eaten anything at all. My elderly cat with his medications and fancy food and water dispensers had every one of his luxuries. I even schlepped around two extra bags of kitty litter so that we wouldn’t run out, even though wood pellets were easy to find in winter. None of his belongings went into the storage unit during that week we evacuated from the apartment we’d once shared with my husband.

Oh wait, he was my ex-husband now. Still getting used to that. I wondered absently when the divorce was finalized, how long it has taken the courts to process the paperwork he submitted only one month into our separation while I was still trying to secure marriage counseling for us. I was too traumatized to look up the court records and find out. At least I hadn’t gotten pregnant, even though we were trying. Though that was a relief, I was too grief-stricken to have my journey of becoming a mother cut short and I still took my prenatal vitamins.

Initially when I’d packed, I thought I was going into residential eating disorder treatment. But after a few weeks staying with my parents, free of my gaslighting ex-husband and a marriage quickly spiraling into domestic violence, I decided not to go. With nine years of recovery under my belt, I knew how difficult it was to pull myself out of a relapse and I was committed to doing the hard work, even without going back to treatment. But then I realized I had no idea where to go next. The plan was to go to Denver to be hospitalized, but upon discharge, I’d move up to Washington to be with her. But I still hadn’t heard from her.

Then in a blink eight months had passed. I shuffled around to different places, unwilling to sign a lease and commit myself to somewhere in Oregon. In the last place I’d been, I was too uncomfortable engaging with the other folks who lived in the house, so I washed all of my clothes in the bathtub in my suite instead of using the shared laundry room. Once it became clear that the trauma of my divorce, combined with eight months of being unhoused, was starting to take its toll, my mother laid down the law and said I had to find a permanent place to live. My parents generously provided me with funds to make it happen.

I flopped down onto the bed of the Air BnB, my fourth and penultimate abode since the divorce, the contents of my Subaru hatchback finally unloaded. I had this place for 30 days, and by the end, I needed to sign a lease on an apartment. I had to settle somewhere.

But I still hadn’t heard from her. She still hadn’t invited me up to Washington to live with her. I was lost, adrift at sea, floating through time and space with nothing to anchor me. My tether had been cut. Had my ex-husband poisoned her against me? Was she angry at me for getting divorced, even though my ex-husband was terrifying me and I felt unsafe at home? How could she abandon me like this? She was my best friend. And not only that, but she loved me. She had made a grand romantic gesture to me, right as my marriage turned to shit. It was grandiose and public, which only made my ex-husband even more jealous and possessive over me. She had been planning and working on it for over six months before the big reveal. Did she blame herself for my divorce?

Even if she did, it didn’t matter to me. I loved her back, even before I knew about her grand romantic gesture. And as ugly as my divorce had been, I was relieved to be free of that man. I was single now, unattached in every sense. She’d released me from that prison. Now I was just waiting for her to call me and say, “Please come home to me.”

But no call ever came. I clutched onto the stone egg she’d given me, wondering if she still had its matched pair. I masturbated and thought of her, wondering if I could somehow summon her with my pleasure. I signed up for health insurance and took my medications. I got an official letter denoting my cat as my Emotional Support Animal. I wore my pride shirts, finally free of the man who told me I had to stay in the closet so he could appease his homophobic and transphobic parents. I chose a new gender-neutral name for myself and adopted they/them pronouns in addition to she/her.

When I had less than a week left on my Air BnB, I went out looking for apartments. I still hadn’t received my reconciliatory invitation up to Washington, and with no other plans nor desire to settle anywhere but with her, I wandered around the small town I happened to be in and stopped at the first apartment complex I drove by. I looked at one apartment. Then I signed a lease the very next day. There was no rhyme or reason for where I decided to land. I just had to land somewhere.

For a fifth and final time I loaded up my Subaru hatchback, buckling my cat’s carrier into the backseat like I always did. After nine months of living out of my car, staying in spare bedrooms and Air BnBs, I was finally going home. But it wasn’t to her, like I always imagined it would be. I would, however, be able to get my things out of storage and have a stable enough life to address my hemorrhaging mental health wracked by emotional flashbacks and trauma triggers. My parents offered to help me get back on my feet in the wake of all the calamity that had befallen my life. But despite the incoming stability, I was unnerved.

There had been safety in being unattached, waiting for her call. But now I was bound to this new apartment for a full year. The life I’d dreamed of having with her dissolved in the early spring snows in the mountain foothills where I now lived. It’s only a year, I told myself. We could do long distance. It was fine.

***

That was two years ago, as winter turned to spring in 2023. I still live in the same apartment. I found a job to keep me afloat. My cat sleeps curled into my body every night. I am eating well and my belly has a nice bit of pudge, a welcome sign that I am stable in my eating disorder recovery again. I still take those prenatal vitamins, hoping for a future family that seems more and more unlikely as I near my 35th birthday and have no way to pay for a sperm donor or IVF. I just signed another year-long lease. There is a bedside table made up for her, the drawer full of gifts I’ve accumulated for her. But her side of the bed remains empty, unused the entire time since I’d unpacked my car for the last time and moved into this place. This apartment is my home, but it is not my home.

I am still waiting for her to call me and say, “Please come home to me,” so that I can pack up my Subaru one last time and finally go to be with the woman I love so very much. The woman who still won’t speak to me out of fear and guilt for her role in the way my life fell apart. The woman who made a grand romantic gesture to me and then abandoned me. The woman who’d stood by my side as I got married to a man just so I could get on his health insurance. The woman who left me when that man filed for divorce because I was gay and in love with someone else. (In love with her.)

There was the trauma of everything that had happened with my ex-husband. But in the end, that paled in comparison to the trauma of losing her. And even after all this time has passed, I’m still not over it. I’m still not over her. For better or for worse, I still love her. And I still hope that someday I will finally make my way to Washington at long last.

The contents of a Subaru hatchback: One lost and broken heart, unable to let go.