screaming, crying, leaving california
hard launching my #move on day two of unemployment
During my nonfiction workshop in my last semester of college, my professor brought in an acquaintance to speak with us about his career as a profile writer for the New Yorker. I have a short file containing the notes I took from this talk, with direct quotes that have lost their context over the past three years. Somehow the sentences still feel poignant, maybe only because I know that I was moved in the moment to transcribe them.
He said, at one point, “any good writing is something you couldn’t endure forever.” I don’t really remember if this referred to the writing itself or the act of creating it. Despite or maybe because of this ambiguity, I’ve carried this sentence around for three years, naturally extrapolating it past its original meaning.
Any good writing is something you couldn’t endure forever. Any good thing is something you couldn’t endure forever. In other words, all good things must end; or even, things are good because they end. Again, now we are way past the sentence’s original meaning. I repeat it to myself as a mantra this summer as I embark on a decision to trade in my already good, happy life in San Francisco, for a new life in New York. There are no promises that what’s waiting for me will be better than or even as good as what I have now; all that’s promised is that it will be new.
Towards the end of high school, I daydreamed about moving across the country to some prestigious liberal arts college in which I would finally feel understood and special. I didn’t get into any of those colleges, so instead I went as far as in-state tuition could take me. At eighteen, the Bay Area didn’t feel nearly new enough. Ten other people from my high school would be attending my college, and I had already spent at least one holiday a year at my cousins’ house in San Mateo. It wasn’t that I wanted to leave California due to any fault of California. I think I felt tired of how I was perceived or not perceived in my hometown. I felt boxed into roles that didn’t feel right — wallflower, try-hard. I wanted to rip myself from my context and present a fresh slate to strangers.
I don’t really believe in that kind of self-reinvention anymore. I’m me wherever I go. I learned that I happened to fit in better in Berkeley than I ever did in the suburbs of north Orange County. The impulse to write prose poems and thrift ill-fitting clothing was no longer alienating and instead put me in league with people who lived in co-ops and wanted to write for magazines.
When I was growing up, my mom always told me that I would love college. She said this to me when I was as young as twelve — as if to say, hold on, get through the hard part. The ultimate promise for unhappy fifteen-year-olds: don’t worry, your life hasn’t started yet. She was right — I am much happier as an adult than I ever was as a child. I loved my life in Berkeley, and I loved my life even more after I moved to San Francisco two years ago. I am happier in part because I actually have friends now, but also because I probably was always supposed to live in a city.
I love San Francisco for lots of reasons. I love it for the same reasons that other people clown it. I love that 11 PM is a late night. That it’s small enough to run into people. That you can complete a Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-style untangling of who knows who with every acquaintance you meet. I love BART. I love taking the ferry to my parents’ house across the bay. I love that, outside of tech and finance circles, people really care and look out for one another. I love walking through Golden Gate Park all the way to the ocean. I love living one train stop away from my friends and popping over for impromptu dinners and movie nights.
When I visited the city as a kid, walking through Chinatown and buying take-out Dim Sum with my mom, San Francisco was like a dream. I don’t think I ever imagined as a teenager that I could live in this dream city, near my family, surrounded by friends who love me. That we would take the train to the beach after work during heat waves, play basketball on Saturdays, and have picnics in the park. Back then, it only felt safe to fantasize about getting good grades and a good job.
For years I have been trying to convince everyone I know to never move to New York, that New York is not capable of saving you. I had never considered that sometimes people move for reasons much more coincidental than a pursuit of salvation. While I feel excited to drop everything and write for two years, I have a hard time making room in my heart for change. When my boyfriend asked me if I was excited to move recently, I burst into tears and said, “You can’t ask me stuff like that.”
I have never left California for a meaningful period of time. The longest was a two-month summer stint in northern Virginia, during which every person I encountered told me I was the most Californian person they had met. I feel terrified of leaving home, even though I know I can, and likely will, come back. Maybe I have to do it to show myself that I am more resilient, more capable of building than I imagine myself to be.
My mother, who is honestly taking this moving thing much better than I ever could have expected, anxiously asks me if I can create a one-to-one replica of my social life, projected onto the opposite coast: Will you have enough friends in New York to make a basketball team? Will you be able to take dance classes in New York? Will you be able to replace your electric piano?
The last time I said goodbye to a place was when my parents sold the home I lived in for my entire life and moved to Northern California the summer after I graduated college. I approached the goodbye the way I approach everything, ritualistically. I made one last goodbye tour road trip down to my hometown and completed my favorite activities: swimming in the Pacific Ocean, visiting Little Tokyo, roller skating around my neighborhood, eating takeout from my favorite burrito place. There’s a weird sort of melancholic nostalgia that colors an extended goodbye. During this trip, the only furniture left in the house was my twin bed and chest of drawers, which the new owners, who had a young daughter, wanted to keep. My nostalgia was like a ghost filling up this empty house, haunting rooms that belonged to someone else now.
I could leave California right this instant, if I wanted. I already found housing on the East Coast and just quit my job, but instead I want to linger for a while. I want to continue living in the room I love so much, even as its contents slowly dwindle. I want to be a friendly ghost.
I have a little over a month left in San Francisco, during which I want to go to all my favorite places and write about them here. I’m going to make the most of it, hopefully without getting anxious about trying to make the most of it.
So proud of you, Sarena, and I can't wait to read the wonderful things that you'll be creating over the next few years.
Big hug awaits you 🫂