Abandoned in the UK

So this is a really clear view into the mind of the crazy woman who raised me.

I spent the fall semester of my junior year in Washington DC, which was great. I took classes and worked for a non-profit organization and went to a lot of museums. I'm terrible with people so I naturally was cut off from my roommate by the end of the semester, but it was ok. My parents came to visit me for Thanksgiving and I was going to visit my best friend in London before my parents joined me for Christmas.

It was my dream! I was traveling, life was good. My mom showed up in DC wearing a new fur coat and there was no mention of money trouble.

I don't think I should need to remind you that Thanksgiving is at the end of November. This was about 2.5 weeks before I was supposed to leave for the UK. Clearly any glaring money trouble would have been discussed at this point...right?

Hahahaha! (maniacal laughter)

So I left for London to visit my best friend in the whole world all happy and content that my life was finally starting to look up.

(Insert maniacal laughter again)

I had a great time with my friend and the friends she had made while on her semester abroad. We were kind of broke, but it was all good because my parents were coming and they would take me to do the expensive stuff.

This may seem naive for me given the insanity of my mother, but I have always been an optimist and still am to this day. I think that things can always get better and this firm belief that I hold for no damn good reason is really the one thing that kept me going through my childhood. I had the faith that I would continue to age and eventually get away from these crazy people.

I went to the airport to see my dear friend off since I had a day before I would meet my family at the airport. She called her parents on the airport pay phone to let them know she was getting on the plane when all hell broke loose. She told me that I had to call my parents, something had come up.

So I called my parents from a pay phone in the Heathrow airport to find out that they weren't coming to London. That they had a flight back for my in 3 days and I was to take that. Oh right! There would not be any more money for me.

I landed on the floor of the airport in shock. I couldn't stand or speak for a while, I just sat there. I really could not believe that they would do this. My friend was panicked, because she had to get on the plane, so I waved her off and told her I'd be fine, pulled myself together and went forward. I was 19 and had just been abandoned without money in the UK.

Just writing this is leaving me with shivers running through my body. I haven't really talked this through in detail with any of my many therapists and I had forgotten how incredibly traumatic it was to be abandoned in another country.

I can't remember due to the shock, but knowing my friend, I will assume she gave me some money. I brushed myself off metaphorically, left the airport and went to figure out what I was going to do. My mom had me leave my luggage at the hotel they were planning to stay in and I was hoping that they had already paid for one room night. They hadn't, but that wasn't a big shock at this point.

So I took all of my luggage and stored as much of it as would fit it in a locker at a train station. I still had an active Eurorail pass so I looked at what the longest train ride would be so I would have a place to sleep that night and I took the train there. It took me overnight to Aberdeen, which was delightful. I had been up to Edinburgh with my friend the week before and my love affair with Scotland just grew from there when I got a look at Aberdeen. It was cold with snow drifting lightly in the air and I was happy to be there and it helped me forget my worries.

I tried to go visit a loch, but being alone made me too nervous to walk out on the lonely lane on my own.

I just took the train all over the place using it to sleep and keep me safe while I waited for my plane to leave. I had to stay a night in the youth hostel in London, which was truly terrifying to me. I can't read social cues so being in a big room with a lot of strangers is my own personal nightmare.

I got back home to find out that my mother had not been paying for my tuition or housing while I was in DC, so that would have been a clue. But one I didn't have until I got back.

I don't think I've processed this enough to find the humor in it, so I guess some of these stories will be a bit raw. My goal was really to find the humor in all of the stories I share, but I see that's not going to be the case. Oh well.