I’m fifty-three years old. Six feet tall, two hundred and fifty pounds, prediabetic, with severe depression and ADD that I’ve been managing mostly on my own. I don’t have a car. I live in Canada where the cost of living keeps climbing and the barriers to changing anything feel higher every year. On paper, none of this sounds like it’s moving me toward leaving the country. But that’s exactly what’s happening.
Health is the first reason, though not in the way most people think about it. I’m not broken down yet, but I can feel the trajectory. The weather here doesn’t help. The cost of eating well doesn’t help. The stress of making it month to month doesn’t help. Moving to a warmer climate, a cheaper cost of living, and a place where the basic math of survival adds up better than it does right now feels less like running away and more like moving toward something that might actually work.
I work as a forklift operator and I make decent money, between five and six hundred a week after tax on a good week. But my rent alone is twelve hundred a month. Add utilities, food, and basics, and I’m spending twenty-four to twenty-five hundred a month just to stay alive here. There’s nothing left over. No breathing room. No cushion. I’ve looked at what it would take to fix these things here, and the barriers are real.
The money piece is honest. My pension at sixty will be around three hundred dollars a month. At sixty-five, maybe four hundred. At seventy, if I wait that long, maybe seven to nine hundred. These aren’t guesses. I verified these numbers on the government site. That’s not retirement. That’s just another problem to work around. Find somewhere that money actually means something. Find somewhere I can breathe without constantly worrying about how I’m going to pay for groceries.
My daughter lives with her mother. I see her once or twice a month, sometimes three times if I’m lucky. On Fridays when I pick her up, I’m the happiest person in the world. By Sunday when I have to take her back, I’m miserable for the next two days. She’s my whole world, and she’s also my biggest fear about leaving.
When I first told her I wanted to leave the country, she said no. Didn’t want it. Of course she didn’t. She’s a kid. But then I reworded it. I told her if I stay, this is how much time we’ll have together. This stays the same. If I leave, maybe with some luck I’ll be happier, lighter in body and in mood, less stressed. I could add years to my life. Good years. Years where I’m actually present instead of just surviving. I asked her what she thought. She said go.
As soon as she said that, everything stopped being a maybe. It stopped being something I hope for. It became real. It became a plan. It became something I have to actually do now, not just think about.
The fear is still there. What if I leave and the regret is too much? What if I can’t handle being away from her? What if I cave and come back? The fact that I couldn’t do it, that I failed, would destroy me. It would feed the depression, make everything worse.
But the bigger risk feels like staying. Staying and watching my health decline. Staying and watching my money disappear. Staying and seeing her once a month for the rest of her childhood because I couldn’t figure out how to live.
So I started looking for ways to make it work. Remote income. A place with lower barriers. A future that isn’t just surviving until I’m too broken to work. I don’t know when I’ll leave. Could be a year. Could be five. But I’m not leaving until I have the income to sustain it, the cushion to land safely, and the knowledge that I’m not abandoning anyone. She gave me permission. Now I’m building toward it. One remote income stream at a time. One healthier choice at a time. One day closer to a life that actually works.