Dominica May

I have been fairly absent from my blog this year, but this post should address some of the reasons why. 2025 has been a rough year for me. After being laid off from my job in August last year, it has been a struggle for me to figure out what to do next. With the news of so many tech layoffs and the economy struggling to add new jobs, along with having many reservations around the direction the United States is headed in, I realised I had to really reassess what I saw in my future.

I didn’t really seriously consider leaving the US until my ex-husband suggested I sell my house back in February. Even then, having been so set on staying in my house for the long haul, that had seemed like such a crazy idea to me. But I started investigating, and discussing things with my kids, and thinking about timelines, and where would be feasible to move to. The ideal date for a move kept getting pushed back for different reasons. Initially I figured I needed to stay through the summer, for my son to finish the summer camp/school he had been accepted into for the last five years, and almost as soon as that was over, I decided to sell my car because I didn’t think I’d need it anymore, and I wanted to save the money I was spending on insurance.

After that, various events came up that I had a reason to stick around for, and the further into the year we got, the more I realised it would be better to at least let my son finish the first half of tenth grade because he loved his computer science and graphic design classes. Beginning in May, I spent months packing up different parts of my house, and I’m still not done, but all of my personality has disappeared from my shelves and walls so I feel like I’ve been living in a shell for a few months now. I organised LEGO sets so that I didn’t have to completely dismantle them and I’d be able to easily reassemble them whenever I get to my new place, wrapping them in packing plastic wrap and storing them in large plastic containers.

I first met with realtors back in March, and picked the ones I wanted to work with back then. I didn’t make a decision right away. It took time to discuss things with my ex-husband to ensure he would be able to handle me relocating to another country and changing up his access to our son, since our son said he’d like to continue living with me, wherever I chose to move. I also kept looking for work in the meantime, hoping I’d be able to find something so I wouldn’t have to deal with the stress of a move. I finally signed a listing agreement with my realtors in October. My house is not officially on the market yet because I wanted to wait until January before selling, but they have been sharing it around to other realtors as “coming soon” to see if we could sell it off-market until I’m ready to actually have it on the market. Other delays have cropped up so at this point I still don’t know when it’s going to be officially on the market. I had been hoping to be in my new chosen country to live in by mid-February, but the window to make that happen seems to be narrowing now.

The things that have been occupying so many of my thoughts this year finally coalesced a couple of weeks ago to help me figure out the career direction I want to head in next, but I don’t plan on sharing any details about that plan until something is more official. It’s just nice to no longer be in a state of existential crisis of “what am I supposed to do with my life now?” since it’s been so challenging to even get an interview with any of the jobs I’ve applied to this year (though at least I finally landed one based on a cold application with no referral or prior introduction back in June). As for where I’m planning to move? That I’ll post about once I’m settled, in case I wind up having to change things up. Living in limbo for the entire year has been hard on me. I just want everything to be settled so I can finally properly relax without worrying about timelines.

One thing I am willing to share here, however, is that I have been feeling a profound desire to distance myself from doing so much online. I’ve been missing the atmosphere of the late 90s, early aughts when people still had to go to video stores to rent movies, and we weren’t tethered to the Internet 24-7, but we did have access to it. Once I move, I don’t want to subscribe to any streaming services any more. If I want to watch anything, it’ll be from my own DVD/Blu-ray collection, or in a cinema. I’m planning to move somewhere that I know I’ll be able to feel a strong sense of community, and those connections will help keep me offline and connecting with people in person instead. I’ve been thinking about having one room in my house that I can dedicate to using the Internet in. If I’m not in there, my phone and computer’s WiFi is off, and I’ll be clear of online distractions.

Strangely enough, despite my history of wanting to share what’s going on in my life online, I’ve been feeling like I want to have more control over what specific people know. It’s funny… last year, I wrote a 26K-word blog post about a significant relationship in my life in part because I resented feeling like I didn’t have the freedom to share one of the happiest things that had been going on in my life when I was in the midst of it, and I didn’t care who read it, and then a few months later I ultimately decided to put that, and a few other blog posts, behind a paywall. Part of it was because I wanted to be able to know who was willing to pay to know the more personal stuff in my life (so far, unsurprisingly, no one has subscribed), and part of it was just because I didn’t want certain things easily found on a search engine. Since then, I’ve kind of felt some joy around certain people who may want to know what’s going on in my life not having access to those inner thoughts. I’ve found comfort in specific friends knowing those things, supporting me through my decisions, and not needing to share it all. It’s like I have a newfound desire to only share with people who actually put in the time and effort to discuss those things with me directly. I can only see this becoming more pronounced once I’ve relocated to a place where I feel a stronger sense of community where I’ll spend time with people offline.

I have one final episode of my livestream podcast Real Talk with A Vulnerable Angel & Friends coming up before the end of the year before it goes on an indefinite hiatus while I deal with the logistics of my move. After that, I’m actually not sure if I’ll bring it back yet because, after 54 episodes, I feel like I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish with it. I practised having deep and vulnerable conversations in a safe environment, opening up about things that had been hard to talk about, so that I would hopefully have an easier time doing so in a romantic relationship, since that was something I really struggled with last year. If I do return to livestreaming, I may focus more on my media discussion topics, which I did a few of this year. Mainly we stuck to specific genres – rom coms, Disney animation, and horror movies. If I decide to blog more, I may focus on similar topics. I’ve had ideas percolating for a while, but not the energy to sit down and write.

This year I feel like I’ve grown in a sense of reconnecting with more parts of myself that I didn’t know I’d lost, or given up, as a result of past relationships where I’d felt like I’d had to silence parts of myself they didn’t like. It was only about a month ago that it clicked how my American sitcom habits had changed over the years, and that seemed to be the result of my partner at the time only really enjoying British comedy TV – the only American sitcoms we partially watched together were Scrubs (which I introduced him to because I was watching it when we met) and The Big Bang Theory (which we only saw the first few seasons together). I found new things to love, too, like discovering way more anime than I’d ever made time for before (last year the only new-to-me anime I watched was Demon Slayer and Death Note). I’m hoping at some point in the future to blog about all the anime TV shows I’ve watched over the years, and the impact they’ve had on me.

I reached a point where I could freely physically emote (i.e. cry) whenever my body actually felt an emotion in the moment. It was something I didn’t realise how much I’d suppressed over the years until I began crying over the smallest things (both happy and sad things) that I watched in movies or TV shows. I discovered that whilst there is a lot in my life that I don’t care about people judging me for, the areas I do worry about being judged in are the areas where I judge myself the most. I don’t need harsh, judgemental words from others when I’m already doing that to myself. I think therapy has helped me a lot. I continued to see the therapist I started seeing in 2023, until she had to go on indefinite leave and I found someone new, and I’ve found myself crying even more while opening up to her in sessions. I think part of that is because she’s been there to see me transition into giving myself permission to make choices about my life without voices from my past holding me back and telling me I shouldn’t.

And whilst I reconnected with my emotions in a way I hadn’t in years, I also gained more control over my responses to situations where other people attempted to assert control over me. I was able to respond without feeling a need to “correct” their perspective, because it wasn’t worth the time or effort to fight about who was “right.” I didn’t need them to understand my truth because I knew they weren’t going to change their mind anyway. It helped me see how much more sure of myself and my reality I’ve grown to become, compared to the days of being gaslit to see only someone else’s experiences, erasing my own. It’s so much harder for people to drag you down when you have a strong sense of your own experience and can notice patterns from people who are trying to rile you up or project their own issues onto you. Wow, I have boundaries now?

Back in March, when I first seriously considered selling my house, I grieved prematurely in just a day and found myself emotionally detaching. I told myself, “it’s just a house,” and suddenly it no longer mattered how much time and effort I’d put into turning it into a home I loved and wanted to stay in. Since then, I realised that whilst I’ve had the opportunity to do so many incredible things in the San Francisco Bay Area, such as all the live shows I’ve seen (musicals, conventions, celebrity photo ops, movies with Q&As with actors, famous comedians, concerts) that I’d probably never have the opportunity to do if I lived in another country, I’ve done enough of those things to last a lifetime now that I don’t feel like I’d be missing out by moving somewhere that I’d have a much more limited access to those things. Now that my kids are older (with my daughter legally an adult and my son 15), I’m entering a stage in my life where different things matter, and that has nothing to do with the fact I’m probably also living with perimenopause (though it would be nice to have a more stable temperature).

Having said that, I have been making the most of my last months in California by taking advantage of the opportunities I won’t have after I move. Some events have been last minute decisions because I didn’t know if I’d still be in the country when the tickets went on sale, though there have been cases where I would’ve done more if I hadn’t been out of work and living mainly off my savings for over a year (I’ve surprised myself by how far it’s stretched, honestly). I didn’t expect to still be here for SF Sketchfest next month, but since there’s pretty much no chance I’ll be moving before the end of January at this point, I am looking forward to the Randall Park tribute at the festival. That will hopefully be one of the last exciting things I do before I leave the country.

My year has also seen me connecting with friends in person who live both near and far. I’ve been terrible about reaching out to make plans with people because I’d gotten so sick of trying and never actually setting plans in stone (since the pandemic, it’s been harder for me to want to meet up with people outside of Oakland, and most of my Bay Area friends live outside of Oakland), so I relied more on getting together with those who put in the effort to reach out and make plans with me first. It got easier to then communicate with some of those people when we were making plans regularly – I mean, one of my closest friends lives only a single BART stop away so it’s been easy for us to hang out a lot. One highlight, in particular, was hearing from a Canadian friend I met when I was only 20 (21 years ago at this point) because he happened to be in town. I hadn’t seen him in person since he was in San Francisco in January 2015, so it was great to have the opportunity to catch up again before I leave the country. Sometimes it surprises me that we’ve stayed in touch all these years later. It just goes to show that distance doesn’t have to mean the end of a connection, and I’ve had several friends talk about wanting to visit me after I move. We’ll see if that happens to work out.

Though we’re about to close out one of the most unstable years of my life, I survived, even grew as a person, and I’m feeling more positive about the coming year compared to how I was feeling a year ago. I’ll miss spending time with my daughter when she moves to a different city than me, but I also recognise she needs to follow her own path into adulthood, and I’m hoping that will be easier for her to do when she’s not living under my roof.

I wish you all the best for this holiday season, and the coming year ahead.