write me something.

every year for Christmas, my dad asks me for the same thing. 

write me something, he says.

this year, despite always knowing what the answer will be, i asked, and he responded, write about moving to kentucky.

i'm flattered, always, that he asks. that his favorite gift could simply be just the words from my head. but there's also a selfish twinge of wishing he'd ask for something easier. that instead of the time and energy of words, he'd ask for a book. or tongs for the grill. or a pine candle. something i can order off amazon, the lazy voice in my head requests.

but that's not what christmas is. it's not an exchange of internet orders in vaguely comparable amounts. when i can, i like to buy things local, thoughtful, so overly relevant and perfect that sometimes it nearly becomes impossible. so i hush that lazy voice and thank my dad for wanting the things that take time and effort and love.

this year has taken effort and love. louisville has taken effort and love. i mean that in the best way. i needed it. i needed to try. needed to do something other than drifting along in the amalgamation of things that had developed into a good, but ultimately unsatisfying life over the last 12 years in the bay area. i needed deliberateness. i needed to chose. and i did it.

i'm not sure how to describe it, if it's even really possible to write about the move as a whole. i've still barely realized it's true. now, almost six months later, i have moments where i say to myself, i live in kentucky. and i laugh.

and i laugh and i laugh. 

it's both strange and wonderful how quickly you can choose a new life. it's new. it's also very the same.

let me first clear this up. louisville is wonderful. louisville is a big, busy, colorful, changing, dynamic city. i do not live on a farm. all people know seem to know about kentucky (myself included really, before i came here) is the derby and fried chicken and bourbon. i said i was moving and most people just said, fried chicken?

not even a complete question. they'd just look at me blankly and utter those two words, as if offering something vaguely contextual might start the conversation they couldn't even think how to begin. that was their only understanding of kentucky as a state. why would someone move there?

i can't say much for kentucky as a whole, because i honestly haven't seen it, but louisville is awesome. it is many of the things i love about san francisco, but in the process of becoming. it's music and carefully crafted food and beer and coffee. it has tons of museums, sweet little shops filled with handmade treasures, and the best chocolate chip cookie i've ever eaten. it has people with ideas; parking lots turned into a weekend event space with food trucks and outdoor movies, free weekly concerts at the waterfront during summer, festival after festival, the best antique shops and flea markets, magbooth and its free photo strips. it has beautiful old buildings aside sprawling, opulent homes. it has quaint little shotgun houses and an abundance of porch swings. it is filled with greenery and color and life. 

it also has extended strips of unused buildings. dilapidated areas that are creepy and unkempt. it's waiting though. not declining, but rather it's slowly becoming. instead of acupuncture clinics on every corner, there are a few. instead of locally roasted coffee every step, they're few and far between. the profusion of fast food is unmatched by the food scene's curated, sustainable counterpart. it is, truthfully, more of what i typically reject than more of what i love. there's a lot of fast food and styrofoam and waste. but it's changing. and i value that. it's not saturated yet.  if you want to start a store or a restaurant or a practice, you can. there's space and resources to become.

louisville and i are a lot alike in that way then. we're both unfolding. we're taking the space to develop into something wonderful. we're not yet done.

there's also this boy i love. 

it's wonderful. it's hard.

i love the shit out of him. we are taking our time, learning how to be together in the day-to-day. to sort out the bills and the chores. the routines. the expectations.

we sometimes have this very sobering and seemingly unromantic conversation, where we say to each other, i love you, but i could live without you.

it sounds terrible and i think many people wouldn't understand, but it's comforting somehow. it's my favorite way to have a relationship.

we're not desperate. we chose each other. we still choose each other. regularly. it's the opposite of what i was lamenting in san francisco. the routines that i had outgrown. the things that were, simply because they were before and continued to be.

nic is a constant decision. i choose him. i choose him daily. i choose him moment by moment. i look at him and think, i didn't have to do this, but i wanted to.

for once, i chose something i wanted, instead of something i felt obligated to do.

i wanted nic and i got him.

and now he's sitting here, beside me on the couch. he's reading for school and his feet are pressed up against a hot water bottle and then swaddled in a blanket. sometimes, without looking at me, he reaches for my hand and holds it for a minute. sometimes, instead of hand, i put some chopped up apple with cinnamon into his palm from the bowl at the end of the couch. i'm wearing socks and slippers and cozy pants and my clothes from the day and am sneaking heat from his hot water bottle. it's 8 o'clock. 

our life is quiet. we spend most weekends taking walks, fixing up the house, making food, binge watching netflix, playing cards, talking.

there's very little miraculous or noteworthy. i continually wait to write words down. i wait for something substantial to happen and it doesn't. i begin to write and they are the same words about how this is quieter life and i'm relishing that.

sometimes i get sad. i cry more than i should. sometimes when i get sad, i think it means i shouldn't have left san francisco. that i made a mistake somehow.

i have to consider these things. i think, if i didn't, it would mean that something was actually wrong. i think, i'm sad so i shouldn't have left.

i'm sad, i made a mistake.

but i didn't make a mistake. i'm just sad. i got sad in san francisco too. i just hadn't recently made some huge change that i could easily blame my sadness on. i got sad in san francisco, and i get sad here, and i'll get sad anywhere else i may move in life.

i feel like we spend a lot of our lives looking for the reasons we are miserable. we say, i won't be miserable when this one thing stops/ starts happening. we wait for our job to change, our situation to change, our weight to change, our hair, our partner, our backdrop, our car, our wardrobe, our financial situation to change. we are trying to wait out our misery.

but it's just our hearts and our minds. they're the ones that need to change.

so i'm working on it.

moving to louisville has given me the space to work on it and i needed that. i chose it. i knew editing my weight/ hair/ partner/ backdrop/ car/ wardrobe in san francisco was not going to create the change i knew i needed. i knew my heart and my mind needed help. i knew i could not do it there.

so now i'm here. i'm making better choices. i'm slowing down.

i moved and it seems like there should be a story to tell, but really it's just everyday life in a different background.

i moved to louisville for a change and what i got was the same girl that left six months ago. a girl in process. a girl becoming.

one of my visits home before i moved, i had a hard time. i wanted my parents to say they were happy for me, that they were glad i was going, that it was a good and right choice, that they'd visit, that they still loved me. i am the first baby to move so far away and i needed affirmation. i didn't know if it was right, even though i felt so sure i had to do it.

of course they said they loved me, of course they hugged me hard and cried a little and said they'd see me soon. but not the rest. i felt like they refused to give me the support i needed. in retrospect, i guess they probably didn't feel those things. maybe they weren't happy or sure or glad. so i cried some. a lot, actually.

and then i went anyway.

i've written so so many words. i'm spinning through a galaxy of feelings and experiences and ideas and hopes and reflections. i have not at all gotten to anything substantial.

there's a lot and there's nothing.

my dad wanted me to write about moving. clearly the above explosion of words is a much less concise way of saying: i can't. it's too much. i can't do it. i can't write about it, because i don't yet understand it. i am too close to understand it yet.

but i do know this. this what i want to say, dad. thank you for making me a girl that went anyway. thank you for making me a girl, who was brave enough to go when i was scared. who knew i'd be loved, even if you didn't love what was happening. or if you were scared too. a girl with an underlying sense of security. thank you for helping me become a girl with a good enough heart and mind to know when that heart and mind needed some serious nourishing.

thank you for keeping me moving. not my body place to place. not my job. not my wardrobe. thank you for keeping my heart moving. for keeping it fresh and healthy. thank you for making me feel always loved enough to be brave. thank you for always encouraging me to follow my heart, open my heart, and give from my heart. thank you for teaching me to be the best kind of person. 

i feel, for the first time, a little proud of the girl i am and the way i'm living my life. that's a gift you gave me. 

the gift of the possibility of a girl, who one day found her way to loving and caring for herself. what big girl dreams i am just finally beginning to realize. 

thank you so much.

some words in exchange is not too much to ask at all.

n.i.c.

it's the first time i really felt sad.

i've missed things. i've missed people. oh i've missed people. i've missed mexican food and to-go boxes made of compostable material instead of styrofoam. i've missed walking instead of driving. i've missed people that not only eat, but know what kale and arugula and quinoa are. i've missed reusable water bottles. i've missed my school and all its wonderful, honest, involved parents. i've missed a mean temperature of 67. i've missed my mom and dad being a drivable distance away. i've missed making actual money, feeling valued for what i'm working so hard to do. i've missed knowing where i am, being able to summon a girlfriend for a beer in a matter of moments, visible water from any perspective, people filling the cherished scarcity of outdoor space, infinite hugs per day, and simple familiarity.

there are many, many things to miss within this move, having made such a big change.

there are also many, many new and incredible things i relish about being here on a daily basis. some of which i've enumerated, and others i quietly cherish.

mostly, i love nic. i keep sitting down to write about that and i feel silly almost somehow. i feel overwhelmed by it. i feel obnoxious saying it. i want to say, i stand at the end of the bed or the counter at 8:09 am every morning and still feel mushy and transparent and totally encompassed as i kiss his stupid face that spent the last 30 minutes singing some obnoxious song on repeat at full volume, while making me breakfast. that we bother each other like we're either eight years old or eighteen years married. that sometimes i pick fights, because i'm crabby or sad about something else or scared about loving someone real and all the way for maybe the first time and that makes me totally, utterly panicked. that we're both kind of, totally lost, but i still would never, ever choose anyone else to be lost with. that sometimes i come home after a terrible day at school and cry and cry and make nic feel like it's his problem, because i've decided the problem is definitely totally him, since he's the only thing i actually love here, and instead of chastising me, he says, let's get out of the house you silly girl, and that's all i ever needed. 

that i love the way we communicate, even when we're upset with each other. i love his big hairy face and the slightly less big clean face that hides underneath. i love his always perfect body temperature, his endless ideas, his music choices, his rants on anything from racism to theology, his coffee, his insistence on taking the perfect picture. i love the silly dance he does to make me laugh. i love his buns. i love that he makes me breakfast and dinner every day. that after he does it, every cupboard is open and the floors and counters are covered in debris, but whatever concoction he made out of the almost decomposed scraps i stock the refrigerator with was so worth it. that he does something funny until it's so annoying that it becomes funny again. that he can admit when he's wrong. that he kindly tolerates that it takes me twenty times longer to much less gracefully admit when i was wrong. that i'm wrong a lot and he still loves me. that he loves me.

it feels good to be loved and seen for who i actually am.

i mean, i also have plenty of complaints. i complain all the time. i bitch and moan about things like we've been married a hundred years and i am the queen of female perfection, deserving of all things just as i want them, exactly when i want them.

i make cartoons like this, illustrating the apparent misery and discontent that is my life:

i'm a handful and i know it. 

i'm really lucky to have found a person i can see myself being myself with-- in whatever future incarnations that self might entail-- for a very, very long time. i can see myself loving and complaining about nic for several lifetimes and i'm thankful for that.

you know what? i started writing to write about how sad i was. because i was feeling pretty sad. i miss something, not that ever even really was, but something i'm looking for. i'm missing some future thing that involves elements of my past, but is definitely not my past. that's all very vague. i was feeling vague. sad. 

i'm just missing direction and satisfaction and fulfillment and drive in so many facets of my life.

but not with nic.

i started writing to moan about those things and then i ended writing about what i loved and appreciated and now i don't feel sad anymore. what a surprising turn of events that gratitude allays our discontent.

i was going to try to loop back around and fulfill the opening of these words with subsequent words about how sad i felt, but now it would be inauthentic so i won't. i thought about editing them out entirely and just leaving those words about nic, but then it would lose what's so great about this teeny moment of my life.

it's an analogy for my current life experience. it's hard. and i complain about it. and i'm sure i'm miserable in certain ways. i'm sure that if you asked what i needed, i would look down at the floor in the other direction and pathetically mumble, everything.

but then i look at what i've actually got, instead of longing for those that i want. and what i've got is pretty damn good. nicholas b kaniasty, you're pretty damn good. and i love you. you have a stupid face and a big, warm heart and you make me totally crazy and i love you. and you know it. i look at you and smile at 8:09 every morning and you know it.

you say, "you've got it bad."

and i do.

this is what i've got and it's good.

i've got it bad and it's good.

"of course you like that one. it's so generic." -nic.

meridian.

i first met patrick upon visit number one to louisville. visit number one was, of course, also visit number only, keeping in line with the alacrity with which my entire relationship with nic has unfolded.

this will sound silly, but i moved as much for patrick as i did for nic.

let me back up.

i moved, because i was immediately and emphatically in love and wanted to indulge that love. follow it, explore it, magnify it, ground it, give it space to be real and mundane and everyday. i moved, because nic lived here and i lived there and the distance between here and there was far too much. i moved, because i wanted him and was not content to have anything except for exactly what i wanted.

yes, of course all that was true. it still is.

those reasons were the impetus, the romantic version, the beautiful and daring story.

but then there was also what was underneath. the need to move that had long since been in place. the routines i'd created that satisfied what i thought i needed, what people expected. the stress i felt day to day. the franticness with which i was living. the feeling that my body was slowly, but certainly retaliating, becoming achy, sore, strained, decayed.

after spending almost an entire month unable to sleep or move my neck, losing the ability to rotate my right shoulder, and lamenting my ever-clenched jaw and subsequently lopsided face, it was very evident that as much as i loved san francisco and wanted to hold onto all of the joy and love i had there, that ultimately it-- i, rather-- was becoming insurmountably unhealthy. that i needed to uproot the routine and find something more sustainable.

skip to visit one and nic taking me to meet patrick. patrick is an acupuncturist and one of nic's best friends. i had heard plenty of almost mystical stories about him prior to meeting him.

i was skeptical.

not about patrick as a person, but about the idea that he was even one small part as intuitive and capable of healing as nic depicted. i am more than willing to indulge romantic ideas-- ideas of the universe working intentionally for us, ideas of synchronicity, celebrations of joy and love and redemption and the resilience and ultimate goodness of human beings. these are all things i genuinely believe in, absorb, try to emulate.

and yet, despite the liberalness of my beliefs, i'm doubtful. doubtful about people that laud the amazing healing power of acupuncture, of herbs. people, who ask about my sign or my birth hour. people, who want to feel my pulse and ask about my poop. it's not that i haven't partaken in it, because i certainly have. i've been to the acupuncturist plenty of times. it's just that i'm not completely sold.

i believe, wholeheartedly, in the healing power of the belief of healing power. that efficacy goes hand in hand with expectation. the placebo effect, if you will. clearly there's a term for it, so i haven't unearthed something revelatory here.

it's taking me forever to get to the point.

the point is that, patrick undid all of that.

i walked into meridian acupuncture and said my requisite cheerful hi, nice to meet you! upon being introduced to patrick, and he replied, "cut out dairy."

no hello. no participation in social niceties.

i didn't quite understand him, excuse me? and so he repeated, "cut out dairy."

being a girl, who basically only wants to ingest various forms of carbohydrates and cheese, i was reluctant to actually hear these words and probed him for more information. he asked me a series of questions about my health and bodily functions that rapidly clarified that he, without any prior contact or conversation with me, knew exactly what my body needed and had been doing. it was vaguely uncomfortable, but also somewhat relieving to be seen in such a way.

we talked briefly and i asked, anything else? to which he, terrifyingly accurately replied, "yes. don't hide behind the laugh."

this, of course, made release an uncomfortable hide-behind-the-laugh laugh. because, simply, this person knew more about me in three minutes than most people know in three years. people think i'm joyful and blissfully happy, and i am. i really really am. but underneath that, there's anxiety and discomfort and a lot of cheese that apparently making me really unhealthy.

he said i had a long way to go to be healthy, but i wanted lots of pretty babies and i could get there if i wanted it for myself and for them.

i went back to san francisco and talked about nic and how i loved him.

and then i'd talk about patrick and how he'd seen inside me.

when i decided to move, i said, patrick will fix me.

fast forward to now. i've lived here, inexplicably, over three months. on saturday, i finally, finally went in to see patrick. it's easy to wait. it's easy to wait when things are only minorly uncomfortable. we acclimate. we come to view them as normal. we corrode, slowly, gradually accepting, integrating each small pain or limitation into our daily life until we barely notice anymore. we come to allow discomfort as the standard.

we wait until we're so far gone, until something climactic and terrible happens, to attend to ourselves. we wait to fix what's totally broken instead of working regularly to maintain.

i refuse to do it anymore. i refuse to be unhealthy. i refuse to wait to be so broken that i have no other choice than rectify things.

so i went to patrick. i walked into meridian and it was more beautiful than i remembered. it was serene. quiet and warm. the walls lined with glass jars, filled with unfamiliar things. it smelled like earth.

patrick and i sat down on either side of a bed and he said, "complain to me."

and so i did.

my neck.
my shoulder.
my lower back.
my stomach.
my jaw.
my head.
my stupid, anxiety-ridden, worried, busy head.

he listened and asked questions. and then he told me. he told me things it felt like i'd always known. i didn't know them, but once he said them, they seemed so evident, so irrefutably true, that it seemed certain they'd always been in my head.

they were many and i, despite all my words, am incapable of capturing all that is the wisdom patrick gently and casually revealed to me, but the salient parts were this.

i am an earth person, and the earth person is governed by the stomach and the spleen. my actual stomach is incredibly uncomfortable and dysfunctional. my emotional stomach is as well. he said, "this is literally a problem of digestion." as in, both the way in which and the kind of food i am ingesting, and also the way in which and the kind of emotions i am ingesting. the way i'm processing things is off. and my body is retaliating. it's manifesting as worry and stress and an unhealthy body.

i need to reset.

he assured me he can help me reset. redirect energy. encourage movement and absorption. but that i'm also responsible. for what i'm putting in. i'm supposed to eat warm, cooked food. no dairy. he was understanding that this all would take time. it takes time to change habits, to edit. but i feel absolutely certain that he's right and my intention to have a long and healthy life makes me want to make those changes.

he poked me with needles.

he said, "these are going to be terrible."

they were terrible.

i've had acupuncture before and this was more terrible. it felt like every punctured part of my body was radiating heat and pulsing with pain. tiny, rhythmic waves of pain, radiating out in ripples from the source. but also that kind of pain you can tell is necessary. that kneading of knots. that massaging of clots. a loosening. breaking up what has become congested.

i throbbed.

and then it was over. patrick unpinned me, hugged me, and sent me away.

he said it will take time, but it will be worth it and i will be so much better. and i believe him.

i feel better even just knowing i believe him. it feels good to believe. to allow myself the space to reset. to have people to help me.

i'm in louisville now. i am three months into louisville. and it will all take time. but it will be worth it and i will be so much better.

life is so much better.

"it's strange how things that once seemed so important just stop being important one day."

these were mariah's words when i sent her the update:

i stopped wearing blush.

once upon a time, mariah and i were roommates, and i informed her that it was her duty, as my dear friend and protector, to make sure that, if i died, i was buried with plenty of blush on my cheeks. because i piled it on every day and felt not quite myself without it. i wanted to go into the ground as the beth that i and everyone else (or so i imagined) pictured myself to be.

and then one day, without really noticing, i stopped. 
and it crossed my mind that i should tell mariah, in case i died and she was still the one to bury me. i needed to update her on who and how i was.
so i told her.

and then she said those words. and they're so easy and true. things that once seemed so important just stop being important one day. it was once important to me that my bangs had the just-so sideways swoop. that i kept it pitch black. it was important that i go out 5-7 night per week. it was important that i talked to all the people all the time. it was important that things looked a certain way, that i maintained a certain level of joviality and ease, that i responded quickly enough, that i took care of people the way i thought they expected. infinite moons ago, it was even important that i had a denim baseball jacket, that i saw hanson in concert, that i get over 99% on my french test.

today i don't speak french. my hair is blonde. i've stopped wearing blush.

the things that seemed so important are not.

and so i ask myself; i came here, really, to ask myself: what's important?

what transcends time and space and trends and routine and availability?

there are things that faded away quickly, easily. there are things i moved to fade away from. there are things i didn't expect to fade. there are things that i expected to fade that have persisted. what's important?

i moved because i love nic. and also because i needed to reconcile that question. what's important?

what's important is love and tiny moments and the things you take with you wherever you go. 

what's important is not even the identity i thought i had. i never get to wear a dress. i'm crammed in a generic pink scrub top and the same pair of black athletic pants over fifty hours a week. i spend a large majority of my free time cleaning the house, grocery shopping, doing laundry, and exercising. i eat at home, i make pennies for the most exhausting and demanding job i've ever worked, i can't afford to bring the boy i love with me to a wedding in november, and the compost pile i imagined is actually just a pile of rotting food covered in flies in the back of the yard.

but those are not the things. those are surprises. they could be disappointments, if i didn't have perspective. but ultimately, really they are not what's important. what's important is one of my beloved four year olds, who calls me mr. beth, telling me he wants to marry me. what's important is talking on a banana phone and making the new guy feel comfortable. what's important is store-bought tortellini and cheap red wine on the porch during the last days of heat. what's important is my first real experience of fall and the tiny fire-touched splotches of tree. what's important is coming home to nic every day and my genuine thrill at seeing him, at smelling his face, kissing his mouth, laying my head on his chest and moaning or raving about my day. what's important is missing him when he's gone, always wanting to be with him, but being secure in our absence. what's important is a small walk in the park. what's important is a motorcycle ride and my face pressed into his back and the chill that reminds me of san francisco and the hum and the freedom to only watch the world blur by and listen to the growl of an engine for a while. what's important is reading a book aloud together, practicing german, holding hands, sharing an entree, bickering over stupid things, learning how the other person loves, making the bed, taking pictures in a photo booth, baking banana bread.

there was a moment the other night. i was doing dishes and nic was taking out the trash. i looked out the kitchen window that spans the driveway and his impossibly handsome self was there, shuffling discarded pieces of floorboard between the trash cans and the curb. i felt at home. i felt the version of life i've anticipated my entire being. of togetherness and partnership. of boring and everyday. of work. of moving forward. of keeping up in small ways. of the day-to-day. it was important. what's important is mundane and small and revelatory in its simplicity.

the truth is it's hard. i feel unfamiliar and poor and insecure in ways that i haven't in a decade. but i chose it. and i chose it, because, somewhere, i knew it would be exactly that. because i got so sheathed in the false securities of my routine that i lost what was important.

so here i am. 

i don't wear blush anymore. i'm not pretending life is any rosier than it actually is.

but the truth is, too, that in the absence of that lacquered rosiness, life is still actually pretty sweet, it just appears and swells in a way that's a little more natural.

today i went to the gym after work. i listened to music, loud, and stretched and lifted weights on the empty, glossy floor and secretly danced a little. i was flushed and hot and enlivened and i looked in the mirror and liked what i was. unadorned.

this is what's important. the grit that is everyday life and the tiny victories within it that make it beautiful.

i feel lucky to be so basic right now. to be surrounded by such real, substantial, unshakeable love. to figure out who and where i am, slowly, unprotected and yet completely safe. i feel pretty damn sure of what's important. and i'm thankful for that.

the truth is, i don't wear blush anymore. and this is hard. and it's so good. and i'm the very luckiest girl alive.

"it's not a celebration..."

a month ago today, i left san francisco.

i got in my car in the still darkness of morning and expected to feel overwhelmingly emotional, leaving my newly totally empty house and the beautiful lurching hills and the proximity to so many people i've loved so long. but instead, i just felt like a girl in a car, wondering just how long it would take to get where i was going and at what point it was legitimate to stop for a treat or a pee. i was a girl in jean shorts and a baseball tee in an old dirty truck, setting out on the same roads i've driven for over ten years now.

anticipation and reflection are so much, and reality, often not much at all. it's what makes movies and songs so moving. they're condensed. they're encapsulated. they've filtered out all the passing moments of just sitting in a car, watching mile marker after mile marker bleed into one another, and all that's left are those crystalline moments of either intense joy or sadness and they seem like so much.

today doesn't seem like so much. it seems like today. it's wednesday. i'm wearing pajamas for pj day at school. i have thirty minutes to myself in between shuffling around maybe the craziest babies i've ever encountered. i'm drinking now cold coffee and eating the remains of a sandwich that sat in my sweltering car for at least an entire day. said car only intermittently works. i left dishes in the sink this morning.

this is what i do. i wake up early to snug nic and go for a run. we drink coffee and eat oatmeal that he makes while i shower. i go to work. he goes to school. we come home early evening, make something for dinner, watch a show or read a book together, then go to bed. we do it again.

it's mundane in its consistency. it is not the adventure that i anticipated in coming here. i said that word so many times before leaving. adventure adventure adventure. it's not what I expected. and yet it is the biggest blessing. 

this is what i needed. what i needed was not the movie version of life. not the beautiful, cinematic moments of twirling in circles, laughing with girlfriends, at free concerts in the park. not spontaneous snow days from work, spent at barbecue restaurants, drinking champagne for pretend birthdays. not festivals and parties and anniversary events.

i had that and it was fun and i love all those moments in retrospect. but it just got to be so much of that all the time that i completely and totally stopped relishing it.

 it's not a celebration if you do it every day.

i needed everyday. i needed consistency and routine. i needed to be bored. i needed to get back to basics, to encounter them for the first time really, so i could relearn to relish what life is.

i don't concede to ennui; i don't want a thoughtless, routine life; i do not intend to just move through the days. but for now, this is good. this is cutting out all the excess to remind me what's important.

what's important? what's important is that i love coming home to this boy at the end of the day. what's important is that i want to kiss his back at night and hand him his towel after a shower in the morning. what's important is him doing homework and me, the dishes. what's important is a tiny gummy penguin surprise and a canvas bag in my car. what's important is small and simple and together. what's important is not grand or overly demonstrative. it's a small collection of moments that make everything else okay, that make the other bits cohesive.

this is my adventure. my adventure is resetting. my adventure is muting the overwrought daily celebration and learning that celebrating does not have to occur at such a high volume.

my adventure is being with a boy i love, taking care of myself, and that being enough. my adventure is letting that be enough.

"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.