In May I packed up all of my belongings in trash bags and threw them into the back of my father’s car. I wasn’t sad when the door to my apartment slammed, which surprised me. Who I was in New York isn’t who I am, at least not now, not anymore. When we got to New Jersey we pulled off into a rest stop so I could get a cup of coffee; it was a bright May morning and the sun was already pressing marks into my shoulders. I smoked a cigarette in the parking lot and watched the cars funnel into the Holland Tunnel. I knew things would be different from then on, but in a good way, in the way I wanted.
In June, two weeks of staying with my parents made me restless. I grew eager and selfish and flew to San Francisco. For the first week at my new job I tried to wear high heels because it seemed like something working women did in a very easy and confident manner. By midday I’d be complaining and ‘massaging my arches.’ I haven’t worn them since.
In July I tried to say “yes” a lot more than I usually do, when co-workers asked if I wanted to get after work drinks, when men asked if they could take me for coffee. There was the boy from Santa Clara and the man who founded his own hacking space; there was the Internet copyright lawyer and the guy from the library; there was the Dutch Apple designer and the physics grad student. I got tired of blowdrying my hair, of faking laughter in small restaurants, of saying “yes.” I preferred having my big bed to myself, performing my routines and rituals that left no room for compromise.
It is colder here than I thought it would be, but much, much sunnier.
In August I started a journalism group and went to a lot of bars. I launched an online magazine and drank a lot of organic coffee. I went back to the East coast three times and each felt more dreamlike than the last. During the day I learned marketing speak and during the night I tried to unlearn it. Once, I felt so weak and unsure of my decision to move here that I asked my roommate for a hug. My cat grew fat and spoiled. He prowls outside now, and sits in the sun: I don’t think he was meant for New York either.
In September people came to see me and it was always weird to be with them out of our New York context, in a place where I felt I’d become a completely different person. I know intellectually that it wasn’t my fault he moved out after ten years, but at night it’s still hard to convince myself otherwise. I demurred so unfailingly that after all those “No’s” I don’t know what he saw in me; I think he was just happy to feel excited about something. We needed each other in different ways, for different reasons, until we were ready to be in the world alone again.
In October I was cautious but confident. I said, “Let’s move slowly and deliberately” and he knew just what I meant; he stayed the night. We spent so much time on the Pacific Coast Highway I began to memorize its steep grades, the huge masses of rock that framed curvy mountain passages. I took pictures of jellyfish and got dirt on my boots in the pumpkin patch. There was one exhilarating moment in the pouring rain when I thought we might accidentally drive the car into the ocean. Instead of terrifying, it seemed romantic.
In November moving back to New York didn’t seem like an option anymore. Sometimes it takes seeing a city through someone else’s eyes to remind you why you’re there in the first place. I keep running and running and always land in the same spot. It takes courage to say “I am happy here” and mean it.
I’ve been in San Francisco for six months now–it seems simultaneously much shorter and much longer than that. Because it is always “partly cloudy” and the temperature stays within a 20-degree range, sometimes it feels like I live in a time warp; it is easy to see how people can move to San Francisco and then one day wake up and realize it’s been 10 years since they last left. There are Christmas decorations in the BART stations but it is 63 degrees today: this is East Coast cognitive dissonance.
It is December and I have started paying off my student loans, started putting money in a “401k,” started actually caring about what kind of health insurance I have. What I’ve learned is that being a woman feels exactly like being a girl–there are the same insecurities and confusions and victories–only you worry about money more and boys less.
Last night I arrived at my boyfriend’s and as we climbed the stairs to his apartment we heard his neighbor, a concert pianist for the San Francisco Symphony, playing his nightly Chopin. I dropped my stuff on the ground right there, shook my hair and said, “Do you want to dance?” He put his arms around me and we swayed and swooned.
He didn’t step on my toes! Not even once.
I definitely feel you the warm weather/winter holiday dissonance out here. I don’t even have time to anticipate holidays because they are upon me before I even know it….
This entry was absolutely beautiful! I grew up in San Francisco and went out to New York for school. Now that I am done, I am realizing more and more that New York really isn’t for me and that my heart aches to be back in the Bay Area.