A year and some change

The concrete is warm on my feet but the air is still cool and moist, everyone warned me summer would be like this. 

My hair is short and I’m listening to Felt again, twirling around my garage studio on my rug that used to be a little softer. I have this habit of marking time in inconsequential anniversaries, like how 3 months ago my left knee still worked and my arms were a little less scabby, or how this time last week I felt lighter after hanging out with friends or how 1 year ago I moved out of a shared bedroom and into my own place (sorta) for the very first time. My memories are stamped with emotion, and while I wish I could say that my old sadness taints things technicolor, it all just feels pretty gray. 

I wrote a letter to my friend who I won’t see again for at least a decade probably, and told her that San Francisco has irreversibly changed me. It was kind of a dramatic way of putting it but this year (and a few days) has presented me with situations and conundrums that even my obsessive compulsive brain could never have dreamed of. I am so, so grateful but also think I have a pretty bad case of whiplash. There’s that Lenin quote about how there’s decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen, but I looked it up and apparently there’s no proof he actually said it. Well, in my case anyway, there’s fall-winters where nothing happens and early spring-early summers where everything happens and then it slows down for a few weeks and then everything happens again about 3 weeks before your last year of school ever. Oh, and that other fake Mark Twain quote about the coldest winter he ever spent or whatever. 

I had a dream a couple weeks ago that I was older and was telling someone that the city makes me feel empty despite being full of everything I love. I woke up in a weird shudder because I don’t think I actually feel that way but it was a strangely vivid thing for my subconscious to come up with. My friend laughed when I told her about it and asked if I felt full before I moved here. Not really, no, but maybe I don’t feel it here either, but maybe it’s really not the place’s fault at all so much as my own inability to escape myself. I wrote this refrain in my notes app “I bring this black hole with me everywhere I go”, and I’ve been writing a weird bass line to it. I don’t know, maybe it’s post-punk, maybe it’s pretty contrived. 

I’ve been incredibly lucky to make great friends in both the city and the East Bay, and I was super worried about being able to do such a thing when I first arrived. It happened slow at first and then kind of all at once. My friends stretch me and push me to grow creatively, socially and personally, which I am so thankful for. People ask me what I’m reading or drawing or crocheting, how my bass lessons are going and when I’m forming a band, tell me that they liked my newest article or ask me if I’ve been able to find a doctor through Medical. I’m amazed at how so many people listen so closely and make such a huge effort to hang out and be apart of my world. It’s inspired me to be more social and outgoing, and I find that approaching people is far easier than it has ever been. It pays off to be open here, which is something I definitely didn’t experience in Chicago or LA.

The city is full of little magical encounters and coincidences. It’s rare for me to walk for more than a couple blocks down Mission or Valencia or go to North Beach or to Emmy’s or to a vaguely alternative show and not run into people I know. You meet someone once here and suddenly they’re everywhere, whether you like it or not. It’s mostly wonderful, and the few times you see someone you don’t necessarily want to, you’ll definitely be having a terrible hair day or wearing kind of a questionable outfit or be spilling a drink on your lap or something. 

I miss my friends and family at home a lot, and find myself thinking that they would love this band or laugh really hard at this joke or totally buy that sweater in the window or we should definitely eat here when they come to visit. My heart aches in many ways for what once was. 

I’ve been writing loads for business and a little for pleasure, which feels amazing honestly. Getting paid to write has been a dream of mine since elementary school, and while I can’t claim to even be meeting minimum wage, it feels like I’m getting somewhere. My dreams are taking clearer shape and they don’t feel so far away. I’m DJing more, starting my own radio show soon, writing songs, finally drawing again, reading on the bus and dancing a lot. I won’t be able to skate for probably at least a year, but it’s given me the opportunity to embrace my creative hobbies again. 

It’s easy here to feel pulled in every direction, want to go to every event, see every friend and be everything all the time. I want to have pink hair and long hair and a pixie and a bob, I want to be skinny and have big boobs and look good in a dress and hold my own in a fight, I want to be cool and creative and different and also fit in and be well liked and accepted, I want to be smart and quick and witty and also silly and dumb and simple, I want to live in the Mission and the Richmond and Pac Heights and Lower Haight, I want to be loved and be free and be spontaneous and be settled, I want to play bass and skate bowls and write a book, I want to be me and I so want to escape myself. 

I long on the bus and I yearn at work and I dream in the park and I ruminate in bed, always sure that my thoughts have become true until reality returns white-knuckled and hungry for humbling. I wear my colorful tights and my brownish pink blush and my red lipstick and play my records and watch the light through the trees, and suddenly it’s August again and nothing is the same. 

It seems chillier this time around than last year but I feel like I always say that. Maybe it’s true, every year it’s getting colder or maybe I’m just becoming a little more jaded. Am I happy? Of course. My life is filled with wonderful people, good music, fun things to do, good food to eat, cute clothes to wear and a city that still takes my breath away. But  I’m also still me everywhere I go. There is no divine meaning or profound thesis to my first year in San Francisco, it’s been good and bad and fun and sad and hard and expensive and exciting and electric. I am grateful and I have also lost a lot. I think I am ready for more.