"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.