Posts Tagged ‘moving’

party girl

I did my best to participate in the debauchery and depravity that is college life. In all honesty, I went to college to…you’ll never guess…get an education! Really. No one forced me to be there. There were no parental units guilt-tripping me into attending. The cocaine-toting, binge-drinking party-goers sort of swirled around my book-reading, homework-doing college self.

I am definitely not trying to paint some picture of a good girl. That, I was not. But, I was studious. And, I took college seriously because I was genuinely interested in learning. I had always loved school. As an escape from home but also as a place to learn about the big, wide world outside of my small-town life. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to experience everything.

I spent much of my high school career focused on extracurricular activities — college was the place for learning, I decided. College was the place to finally get a sense of the world around me. The history, the culture, the literature. I was a product of shitty, small-town schools, with the occasional incredible teacher but mostly a sea of small-minded, right-leaning, mostly white, mostly christian people. I was caught in the middle of the conservative reality of the town I called home and the liberal, commune ideology I’d grown up around.

College was, for me and for many others, a place where I could finally be myself. Or, rather, be the self I always wanted to be. I could shed the reputation I had earned/inherited, get labeled with all new adjectives, stick myself into the categories and groups I felt best defined me or supported me, and make all new friends. Friends who knew nothing about my background. People with whom I could start fresh.

It was exhilarating for me. Moving 3,000 miles away from where anyone knew my name was the most important gift I could have given my adolescent self. The gift of anonymity–where I could feel safe and free and normal.

a social life

I’ve been thinking about friendship a lot lately. Partially because I finally joined the 21st century, Instagram, and am therefore bombarded with images of happy cliques; and, partially because I’ve just moved 3,000 miles away from the place I have called home for the past 15 years. It’s gotten me to this too real place of acceptance and clarity.

In your 20’s everyone is your friend: people from high school, pals from college, work colleagues, friends of friends. You take em all. It’s like a decade of fishing where you don’t throw any back.

Then, in your 30’s you start pruning. Weeding out the emotional vampires and the “all drama all the time” crew. Some of it happens naturally–an illness in the family forces some friends to step up and others to show their true colors. Marriage, kids–some fall away naturally. You switch jobs/careers/partners and you find yourself with fewer and fewer friends. Which is actually pretty great–you spend more time with the people you genuinely love and who genuinely love you.

So, you’re chugging along, happily, with your perfect little crew of good friends. Then, all of a sudden, you make this giant life-change. And, it’s the right thing and everyone supports you but distance. Distance, man. It’s real. Time differences and work schedules, bedtimes and familial obligations and just life. Life in a new place happens. You have to restart your career and re-acclimate your kid. You have to find (or maintain) that inner circle all over again. But, how?

There are a trillion articles about making friends in your thirties. My problem isn’t making friends it’s maintaining friendships. How does one find the time as an adult? How do you prioritize friends over family or over self-care or over laziness and fatigue? How do you balance it all? This isn’t one of those, “how can we have it all” questions. This is just a very real query: how does one find the time and energy to be social in your late thirties–with a partner and a kid and a house and a career?

Where are all those extra hours the enviable #girlsquads on instagram seem to have?

 

small-town etiquette

It’s amazing how seamlessly I can ease back into the ways of a small town. There are  unspoken rules. Rules that you don’t even know you are following until you find yourself amongst folks who smile at you and talk to you, who engage and acknowledge you. Then, all of a sudden it’s as if you never walked with your head high, eyes glazed and forward, pretending not to see. To look but not notice, to be close but feel so far from any human contact.

I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it if I hadn’t been away for so long. I’m quite sure people just do these things without even knowing that they do them–the way we, in New York, live in tiny spaces and acclimate to being surrounded by humans without feeling claustrophobic or intimated or just completely overwhelmed all the time.

You just figure out what everyone else is doing and then you start doing it too. Sometimes with a certain amount of self-awareness (okay, I know I am supposed to wave at this person so I will do it even though I really don’t want to) and sometimes we just slowly turn into everyone else (I am not sure I can break the habit of saying New York’s “on line” for California’s “in line” when queueing up.)

So, here’s what you do if you live in small town, California:

1. Outside the city limits, on your way down the river basin, for example. Or, on a trailhead just outside of town–The rule of thumb is to wave to anyone who passes. On bicycle, on foot with the dog, with the baby, in a car, doesn’t matter. Everyone gets a wave of acknowledgment, of hello, of “we are in this together.” Everyone.

2. Once you are back within the city limits, the etiquette is–To smile and/or say hello. Maybe even a stop-and-chat, depending on the circumstances. Waving would not be appropriate within the city limits. Basically, if you’re on a dirt road, you wave. If you’re on a paved road you assume normal behavior. And, by “normal” I of course mean talk to people and pretend you know everyone even if you don’t. In small town, California everyone’s a neighbor.

packing is like…

  • Being in school–there’s always more homework, even after you think you’re done.
  • Starving yourself to death–slow and painful.
  • Eating a wretched 12-course meal–it just keeps coming and it’s all terrible.
  • Planning a wedding–with the invites and the rentals and the in-laws and the dress…
  • The worst thing ever.

 

how do you choose

One life from another? One path, one career, one place to call home?

I’ve never been one for metaphors. I’m sort of a you-get-what-you-see kind of a gal. I’m all easy-to-understand colloquialisms. Direct. Simple, even. Literal. I lack mystery, I lack intrigue. I don’t write poetically, I don’t even know how to. I end sentences with prepositions. And start them with conjunctions. I’m not eloquent and that’s okay.

Moving back to my hometown is so bittersweet. On the one hand, it’s exactly what I want and I can’t imagine a better life than the one I can lead there. On the other hand, leaving New York somehow feels like some intense failure. Leaving New York without having accomplished…I don’t even know–some level of success, fame, fortune, something!

I have not lived in my hometown as an adult. Ever. So, realistically I have no idea what to expect. It’s possible that we will be earth-shatteringly, ridiculously, unbelievably happy there (I hope!). But, it’s just as possible that we will get there and be like, wait what? What the fuck is this?

You weigh these giant things (housing, transportation, family, education) and make pros and cons lists and try to imagine where you and your family will be happy and inspired. And, then you just jump. You stop thinking about the lists, you stop concerning yourself with all the things you’ll leave behind and focus, instead, on all the things you have to look forward to.

Then, in a state of total confusion and anxiety, you remind yourself that it is not wise to focus solely on what will be better or else you doom yourself to disappointment and depression. For, it is true that you will be overjoyed by the ease of grocery shopping. But, you will be equally dismayed by the non-co-op prices that will keep you from ever buying spices or fancy cheeses again.

And, so. Life. Life at its very best and its very worst. Present becomes past and future becomes present. And, past becomes present in my case. If you get what I mean. Oh, it’s all so confusing and a jumble of emotions. And soooo muCH STRESS! Just gobs and gobs of it. No matter how much you plan ahead. No matter how far in advance you begin the process of packing up your life and purging your past. No matter how many outings you make in preparation for the big goodbye. No matter how many farewells you amass. It will never be enough and it will always feel like too much.

And, so. You can’t win. Or, if you look at it in a different light: you can’t lose. If it will never be enough, stop trying to make it so. And, then magically, the stress sort of falls away. We will be back in New York–this is not the last time we will be in this city. And, in fact, coming back as a tourist allows much more room to do all of the things you want to do when you are stressed out and working too hard and overburdened by a crazy life. Tourists have all the time in the world. Nowhere to go and everyone to see. So, tea at The Plaza a la Eloise will have to wait. The famous Brooklyn Pizza off the J street Q train can happen next year. Whatever. It’s fine.

For now, it’s all about getting out and enjoying the process (as much as is humanly possible). And, let’s not kill each other in the process, husband. Okay? Because wow, people aren’t kidding when they say moving is tough on a marriage. All those big decisions and two people–each with their own attachments and ways of dealing with stress, each with their own expectations and ways of communicating. And, wow. It’s not easy. It is, in fact, quite difficult.

 

things i like

Since this has turned into a total hater-blog, where I just bitch about how awful the world is…I thought a little positivity could be good.

Things I will miss about nyc:

  • steve’s key lime pie
  • the subway
  • olmstead and vaux parks
  • manhattan skyline
  • brownstones
  • take-out
  • bodegas
  • proximity to amenities
  • the anonymity
  • cicadas
  • year-round greenness
  • summer rain
  • walking
  • that feeling of being in it. being a part of something big and something great. even if I’m sitting on my couch watching netflix–the sensation of being at the center of the universe.