Today was by far the worst day so far of this trip. I felt pushed to my limits, struggled to cope, and was disappointed by people I considered family.
It started out awesome enough but ended with tears, tears, and more tears.
Heads up, this is a real, raw, emotion-filled post.
For the last week, we have been in the St. Louis area staying with friends who offered to let us camp in their driveway when we told them we’d be in the area. We’ve been hanging out with them and their family, catching up with others, and just enjoying the rekindling of old friendships. But today all the good feelings and some friendships went straight out the window.
Here’s what today looked like:
7am – up early with the kids and managed to get the tent put away before it rained
8am – cleaned up the house of the people who have been hosting us, did all the dishes, swept and mopped the kitchen and living room (there’d been a lot of people in and out of the house the day before as we celebrated Mr. Stubborn’s birthday).
9.45am – everybody’s fed, dressed, with hair and teeth brushed so we headed into St. Louis to spend the day at the City Museum to continue celebrating the birthday, on the way sent a text to our hosts to let them know we’d be back late in the evening.
2pm – After spending the last several hours climbing and sliding and playing, I sit down to take a break and see a message from our hosts asking us to move on from their place as they need their home back and that we have been a burden and too much stress for them.
Cue the first wave of tears. I now have less than 6 hours to find us a place to camp for the night while needing to also pack up our campsite at our hosts (there were a few plastic tubs and a folding table we’d left next to where we had been parking along with a few groceries in their fridge and our bathroom stuff) and of course, I don’t want to ruin my kid’s birthday by leaving the museum early.
2.15pm Send a message back letting them know we’d be back in a few hours to pack up and leave. Put my phone away to try to enjoy the rest of the day with my littles.
5pm – Heading back to our hosts to pack up and leave when the exhaust pipe blows off… again.
Cue the second wave of tears. I am really tired of having to fix this thing. I am grateful I have the skills and know-how to do so, but it’s really starting to suck especially on days like today.
Make it to the auto part store and call up Trevor from 4×4 British Specialists in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania and learn the exhaust is supposed to be bolted to the engine block – it’s not and the bracket on the pipe doesn’t even come close to lining up with the bolt hole.
Cue another wave of tears as I silently curse the idiot who rebuilt the truck and the one who bought it because it most definitely wasn’t me in either case.
Manage to follow Trevor’s advice and tie up the exhaust so it hopefully won’t fall off again. It’s nearing 6pm and while I’m ready for the day to end I’ve got 4 grumpy, hangry kids and a campsite to pack up and move and it’s nearing dark.
After 6pm – make it back to our hosts just as the exhaust falls off again.
Cue yet another round of tears. Pop the hood as the kids start to collect our things from inside the house. The exhaust wiring up job failed and needs to be redone. The youngest two kids are crying now as they’ve just woke up after having fallen asleep on the way home and they’re hungry but we’ve got a lot to pack up and it’s almost dark and I have no food to give them.
I’d say cue yet another round of tears but I’m not sure I’ve even stopped crying at all in the last hour. I’m feeling like a wreck as I try to hold it together for the kids but feel like I’m failing miserably.
The kids are helping pack up, I’ve got the hood up trying to fix the exhaust but I need another set of hands to do so and #2 is busy carrying stuff out of the house and to the car and taking care of Little One who just can’t stop crying (that makes two of us). Several different adults (some who live here, some who don’t) have come in and out of the house next to where we’re parked walking right past me, and not a single one has said anything or even offered to help. Not. A. Single. One.
I’m literally crying my eyes out as I try to get our truck fixed, haphazardly pack everything in it so I can get out of there and get the kids fed and to a new campsite before midnight, and every single person – and there’s been four of them, four grown adults – every single one has ignored me. People who I counted as friends and trusted to be open and honest with me have basically shunned me.
As I’m processing these thoughts and emotions mentally, physically dealing with the truck and packing, I pretty much had an all-out breakdown. I was yelling at the kids who didn’t deserve it, cussing out the truck under my breath, and bawling my eyes out. What kind of people treat their friends this way?
It’s hours later and I still don’t know. It’s the middle of the night as I am going over the day’s events and pouring out my heart in this post and I still don’t know how people can act the way they did.
The kids and I eventually got the truck all packed and #2 and I hopefully got the exhaust attached more permanently.
Miss Drama shed her own bout of tears just as we were leaving as she feels responsible for us being asked to leave because she’d had a bit of a cough and sore throat a few days ago and our hosts were worried about it being covid (it wasn’t by the way, and no one else in our family developed similar symptoms). We then proceeded to go have dinner out because there was no way I was going to cook after such a disastrous evening. That’s when Little One refused to eat and then threw up everywhere.
About 10pm we finally made it to a nearby campsite and found an empty spot for the night and were blessed by a wonderful friend who came to check on us and make sure we were situated and had everything we needed. Much love and gratitude to you G-man. You restored my faith in humanity just a little bit tonight by your show of care and concern for my family and me.
The kids thankfully all fell asleep easily and don’t seem to be struggling to stay asleep the way I am. Hoping they all sleep late and that I’ll be able to drink enough caffeine to make it through the day we have planned tomorrow – first a trip to the Gateway Arch and them some time at the zoo before we head on to see more friends. Hoping the fun of it makes up for the disastrous way today ended.
Let me just encourage you, readers, to be open and honest with others. I get the feeling our hosts had been wanting us to leave before they finally spoke up about it today. Had they spoken up sooner, we could have had more time to find a new campsite and been able to pack up our truck properly rather than just cramming everything in haphazardly.
And for goodness sake, show some love. Especially when you see someone struggling and in need. Don’t just walk past them and ignore them. Because when you do, it hurts. It deep down cuts to the heart and soul of a person.
I doubt I will ever forget what it felt like to have four different people walk past me while I was in the midst of struggling and crying and not a single one stopped. They didn’t offer to help me, they didn’t offer to help my children. They just walked past with blinders on. Don’t be that person, friends. Never ever. Don’t ever be that person.
Update: I just wanted to add that after we got to our new campsite and I got all the littles tucked in I finally had a chance to look at my phone and saw a message from our hosts at 3pm saying we could wait until morning to pack up.
Well, I can acknowledge the olive branch in this gesture but there’s no way I would have felt comfortable staying another night after the message saying we were a burden and too much stress. Even if I had seen the message earlier in the day before we’d gotten back to their house I still would have packed up and left.
Not to mention if they’d really meant it, wouldn’t, no shouldn’t someone have come out and said something like, “Hey, I know it’s late and you’ve got kids to feed and put to bed. Don’t worry about packing up and leaving tonight. It can wait ‘til morning.” But no one did. Makes me wonder if they even meant it.
That brings me to another piece of advice friends. Mean what you say and be ready to back up your words with your actions. Otherwise, just keep your mouth shut because empty words may make you feel better but they just make others feel like crap.
End of rant and hopefully there will be no worst, worst day to top this one as we continue on our cross country journey.