"no, but seriously, how are you?"

literally every day since the moment i left san francisco, i thought would surely be the day i would write some words here. now three weeks have passed (what?!) and it's saturday again-- 21 full days since i sat light-headed and detached in the warm goodbye embraces of the many people i've loved so long. too much has happened to properly attend to any of it.

i wrote mini stories in my head. i wrote stories as i drove across america, surprisingly enjoying the many passing hours of highway-- of salt deposits and rock art, of the comfort of so many endless blue hills, of car naps and conversations and the power of boredom, of the mundane, to give perspective. i wrote stories about the meaningfulness of watching the time and space between san francisco and louisville pass. i wrote stories about candice and friendship. i wrote stories about bravery or fear or how they often seem interchangeable.

i wrote stories about that first moment i got here and smelling nic's skin and the concurrent experience of terror and comfort while his sweaty face pressed against my own; stories about the night, which was warmer than any san francisco day, and the oddness of sitting outdoors, close to midnight, drinking beer and sliding with heat. i wrote stories about the moment candice left and it became real, when it stopped being a vacation and i cried, because i was scared.

i wrote stories about crying, nearly every day. not for the reasons i thought or expected. usually not even for reasons i could ever describe. about nic's patience and his confusion. about the difficulty of feelings and partners and then feelings occurring around said partners and then the feeling that the partner is responsible for the initial feeling, when in fact they truly are not. i wrote stories about relationships and the fear of something that seems very possibly forever and the kernel of self-sabotage that lives within me.

i wrote stories about home. about how minutes were sometimes hard, but i immediately and ultimately have a surprising feeling of peace in being here. because here is where nic is and here is where i'll stay. here is wherever nic is. here is where my home is. i wrote stories about loving nic, about how huge and revelatory our love seems and then how obvious and banal somehow, just in its ease. i wrote stories about so many contradictions.

i wrote all these stories and then life kept happening. i got a job. we got a house. this is the house:

i did not love it and then i emphatically DID. it needs a lot of work and we need a lot of things, so very quickly life became about work and things and not so much about stories and reflections and sitting about musing on the impacts of moving.

it's just so funny what you think, what you expect, and then what is. i expected this move to be big and beautiful and hard and rending. i spent so much time anticipating that.

and what i ended up with is very much just now. it's saturday. it's days passing. it's three weeks before you know it. it's laundry and a dirty bathroom floor and scratched, waxy kitchen cabinets and the decision of which duvet is neither too masculine nor too feminine and which most importantly is easily laundered. it's feeding yourself several times a day and the surprising difficulty and expense of that. it's the sudden thunderstorm on a day that feels like a heated wet towel already. it's eating ice cream on the couch instead of finishing your work. it's talk of going to the fair. it's kissing hello and goodnight and good morning and weekend coffee in bed and meeting the friends and seemingly always having to put gas in the car and holding hands and hugging and bickering and laughing. it's just the days. the days. the days are passing and now i'm passing them here and they're with my nic.

maybe i didn't take the time to write, because i wasn't sure what to say. i wasn't sure how to say words that weren't forcedly emphatic or disparagingly sad. i wasn't sure how to say words that seemed like what i wanted to seem. i wasn't even sure about my seeming. 

the truth is, i'm not quite sure how i am. 

it's days and it's stories and it's in louisville now.

this isn't meant to be sad. i am eight thousand percent sure i made the right decision. i would not take it back for one moment. 

i miss my friends. i miss them bad. but other than that, i don't miss san francisco, and i think that's the weirdness of it all. that whatever amount i'm unsettled here still is not some desire for somewhere else. it's not some flaw in my relationship or a desire for a different or better paying job or for the couch i can't quite afford. it's nothing that can be solved by an arrangement of things or people or even words.

it's just time. it's just the bigness of life that i'd somehow lost that now feels so overwhelming in its view. like i stepped back to look at the panorama and it's big and it makes me feel small and even in that revelry, i still have to keep feeding myself and doing the dishes and shitting and that that all feels strange together somehow. it's the big and the small, standing side by side, and the uncertainty of how to attend to either. it's the not attending but the just going.

it's so many big and little things, trying to fill up the same space.

i am, for now, a very saturated contradiction. these are the things i know:

i'm here.
i'm glad i'm here.
i made the right choice.
i moved for a boy and i moved for me.

everything else will come in time.

for now, it's saturday and my name is beth.

FAQs

true confessions: somewhere in the last week, i became so totally overwhelmed/ in denial/ saturated that i basically stopped feeling things. i mean, i feel things in the minutiae, like god i wish that not-very-smart person hadn't left a lock on the trailer i was supposed to rent or man, now that said lock is finally removed, i am very irritated that a firetruck is running drills for an it's-gonna-be-a-while amount of time in the only alleyway that allows me to access the unfettered trailer or maybe i shouldn't have rapidly eaten sixteen donut holes, because now i feel like vomiting.

those things i feel. but the big stuff, the breadth and scope and depth-- the expanse of it all-- that i have basically stopped feeling. it's too much. i am going about life just as if it were every day life except people are making me 95% more beautiful, heartfelt cards and crying 100% more over me. i'm drinking my coffee and running my errands and going to and from work and still going home before 10 pm. 

it just turns out to be a lot of feeling and talking. i think the real problem is that it's about things that i don't yet know how to feel or talk about. it's all projection. 

i just saw my dear surya and was bemoaning how exhausted i am at being the focus of so much emotion. in her ever loving, gentle, humorous, but also frank way, she basically said, you don't get to be sad that so many people love you and want to know about what you're doing. which is true. i don't. and, really, i'm not.

i am so so so abundantly loved and i do not begrudge any person wanting to hold me and love me and look at me and be near me and weep bitter tears over my impending departure and know what on earth i'm about to do, because firstly, if they did not i would be weirded out and lamenting people's lack of interest in me, and secondly, because i would do the exact same thing were some person i loved leaving. i tried to think about what it was that plagued me so, that had turned off the feeling, and it is, i think, both self preservation, but also just a side effect of having repeated the same things and feelings so many times that i've become slightly numb to them.

(this repetition effect does NOT extend to my general feelings of love, adoration of babies, joy of being, and intense affection for all things cupcakey, sweet, colorful, and huggy. it is, i think, a bi-product of my generally having no idea how to answer most questions, making up some version of an answer every time i respond, and essentially turning into an improv actor, who has tried to "improvise" the same line too many times and has subsequently lost any genuineness, fervor, or relatability.)

with that extensive preface, in a fit of obsession with myself, which assumes anyone cares beyond those who have already asked, i will now share my responses to the most frequently asked questions:

1. where exactly are you going?

louisville. for whatever reason, i keep referring to it as just kentucky. i think this is a. because i basically only recently learned where kentucky is on a map (sorry private school education for failing you) and am holding tight to that knowledge and b. i cannot appropriately pronounce the name of the city to which i am moving.

2. can you pronounce louisville?

no.

this is me: LOO-ee-vill.

other people: lulvul

me: what?


3. where are you living? do you have a place?

also no. nic has some wonderful friends, who are letting us stay at one of their unused homes, while we look for a place together. apparently real estate is so basically free in kentucky that one can own more than one home and leave one of their homes uninhabited. the idea of owning anything is totally foreign to me. the idea that these people are awesome and generous and my new best friends is very real to me.

4. is anyone moving into your place? can i move into your place?

sadly no. the nice people upstairs are having a baby and grandma is moving in. if grandma comes up short on rent, i will let you know.

5. how are you getting there?

i'm driving! i got rid of all my furniture, seriously pared down the rest of my belongings, and am traveling with a 4x8 u-haul trailer hitched to my cupcake truck. it is filled with the thingsthatmadethecut.  here is a depiction of me driving away as envisioned by one of my most glorious and beloved babies:

(trailer not pictured here)

6. oh my god you're driving? are you driving alone? will you make it? do you know what you're doing? will you die?

yes i'm driving! my best friend candice is coming with me. i (sort of) joked that candice is the reason i'm moving. i basically talked about moving to kentucky 12 minutes after i met nic, because i'm casual. when it became a real possibility, candice said "so am i driving with you?" i had not yet decided when or how or even really if i was going. she averred that she needed to know for her own schedule. and thus the move was solidified.

we are theoretically taking three days to go between sf and salt lake city, salt lake and omaha, and then omaha and louisville. i am pretty sure we'll make it. i am pretty prepared to make it. i have a first aid kit, a lifetime supply of water and snacks, a freshly serviced car, AAA on call, and no practical knowledge of how vehicles work. 

in this whole scenario, candice is my greatest strength. we do not plan on dying.

7. that's a lot of driving. what if you don't make it in three days?

it is. if it takes more than three days, i imagine it will take four. but it will not be two.

8. when do you actually leave?

sunday! as in this sunday. august 3rd. early. oh man.

9. do you have a job?

no.

this is a beautiful and challenging exercise for me in saying no. i am not actually denying anyone anything i guess, but it really is a lot of unknowns and it's weird for me to even say the word. i'm a yes girl! 

i know that i want to work with babies. i also know that this will pay me basically zero dollars and i am coming from the only place maybe ever-- as in, mission kids, not san francisco-- that legitimately pays early childcare educators a livable wage (thank you mission kids!). still, it's what i love and i'm going to do it regardless. i have a job interview the thursday after i get there. i'm going to feel it out, get to know some babies and families, and eventually hope to start my own school that is basically mission kids, ie. lots of free play, emergent curriculum, high parent involvement, organic snacks, focus on social/ emotional development, best-school-ever kind of deal.

10. are you scared?

yes.

11. are you excited?

YES.

12. what are you going to miss about the bay area?

this is the most interesting question someone asked me. when i tried to answer, i had no idea what i was saying. this is why i think it's important to go. 

as a semi-adult person, i've only ever lived in the bay area. i thus foolishly assume that all places are compact, diverse, bustling, liberal, green, and closely surrounded by abundant and stunning nature. whether or not i love louisville, i'm excited to have something to which i can actually compare the bay area. i'm excited to expand my view of the world, to see how other people live, and to maintain what i feel and believe in a place that very well might not feel and believe the same. 

what do you love about the bay area? please tell me. my world is so small up until now and i'm so curious about what other people know.

13. insert question here that i'm going to answer with this:

it's also important for me to go, because i want to ask people if it's okay for me to go. i look for approval. i want people to agree with what i'm doing. i have somehow come to require affirmation. 

i am doing this, because i want it. because i choose it. because i want to know what it feels like to choose something for myself and own whatever happens, whether the outcome is good or bad. what i expected or not. i want something that is just mine and i sort of forgot how to do that in a place that's become so comfortable for me. because maybe it's time to be uncomfortable for a minute.

because i choose nic. but also because i choose myself. i choose different and fear and nerves with the possibility that it will be so totally excellent that i can't imagine i was ever afraid.

nothing was bad here. i love san francisco. i love its hum. i love its rolling, hazy, starless nights. i love its impossible hills, its expansive stretches of icy water, its brightly-colored buildings with their touching skins. i love its people-littered parks and so many festivals and its overpriced salads and narrow streets and its loudly-beating heart. i love the people i've met here. i loved my job. i loved my many nights out and my readily available lunch dates and my babies being born and i even love the impossibility of sustaining it all. i love how hard san francisco makes you work, how often you want to give up, but how always, always, on the drive in across a bridge from any direction, my heart would swell at the line of this dreary-skied city in all its glory and my mouth would say to my chest, you live here.

but there's more. i know there's more. i don't know if it's better. i just know it's different and i'm big enough to know that i don't know enough of what different is like.

i wrote a little thank you note to the parents of mission kids and a tiny part went like this: The kids know I'm moving because I love a boy, but I also told them I'm moving because it's time for me to see some new things too, because life is big and amazing and we learn things about ourselves and the world by trying new things. I've lived in the Bay Area for twelve years now! It's time. Their own brave and curious spirits reminded me that it was time.

that's all. it's just time. i love a boy and also it's time. my beloved san francisco, i will miss you. i'll come back and visit.

but for now, i love a boy. and it's time.