Photo: Haifsa Rafique via Unsplash
I knew I needed to focus on myself but kept getting distracted.
There was a boy, a musician. He performed an impromptu performance in a wine bar on our second date. It was wonderful.
Then, he went away. He said we were destined for different things. That I was closed off and indecisive about my future. He wanted me to be his girlfriend, but I was never one hundred percent sure.
There was a girl, who I met and immediately fell in love with.
Over a long dinner we decided that we’d do everything together, everything that close girlfriends do – go to yoga, have brunch, visit the flea market.
Then one day, she died. They called it a homicide.
The first two important people I met after moving to San Francisco had come into my life then swiftly went away.
I kept my head up. I took long hikes. I started cooking again. When I felt sad I wrote it out, or (perhaps more unhealthily) buried myself in work.
More objects made their way into my apartment, and I became comfortable with the idea of having a home. It was a reluctant feeling – I didn’t want anything in my life to be permanent, but craved the notion of having roots.
There were things in this space.
The more I’ve learned about myself the more I’ve learned that perhaps I’m not meant for stability. It’s terrifying because it’s an option that no one tells you about.
In the last two and half years I’ve moved four times. Two moves were cross-country and two were cross-borough. As a result, I’d lost the concept of home.
Are those the options?
Option one: Have roots, be comfortably ensconced within a community, feel trapped.
Option two: Bounce around, be independent, never really get to know anyone.
Besides, finding happiness in inertia is an art form.
Around that time, life felt shaky but I was starting to turn a corner. My personality was alive. My soul was looking for it’s own version of home, a place to settle and allow everything else to take flight.
As I write, I wonder what it is. Maybe it’s not a physical location.
Some days I wonder if it’s my voice bubbling up from down below, with so much to say so suddenly and strongly that it knocks me backwards a bit.
They say I’m brave, but I felt lonely. I wanted to sleep, to hide, to live in my dreams. I wanted to wake up one day with everything figured out rather than have to chase it down myself.
Some days, I fought to not be sad. Oftentimes, I’d crawl reluctantly from bed and remind myself that it was a new day. A fresh start. I’d take one step after the next.
My health was still messed up. The doctors hadn’t been able to figure things out in New York, so I took matters into my own hands. I went to acupuncture and took vitamins. I consumed anti-inflammatory foods and cut back on drinking alcohol.
When I managed to find some direction a few months later, I’d cut out drinking all together.
Some days I felt great. Most days, I felt tired. Not overwhelmed like I used to feel all the time, just tired. Rather than walking everywhere like I did in Manhattan, I had begun to sit a lot. In the car, at work, and again at home.
I had a feeling that the lack of physical activity was making me even more tired, so I signed up for a yoga membership. And there, I was so tired that my body only wanted hatha yoga. And yin yoga. And all the types of yoga that would slowly begin to heal the stressors I put on my body over the past couple of years.
It’s funny how these elements work together.
And I was slowly piecing myself back together. Some weeks I’d be good then I’d go on a spree of being bad.
Two steps forward, one step back.
I traveled more. I made a point to visit with family and old friends. I went on retreats and formed healthy relationships with good people.
I came back to pen and paper.
My emotional body was depressed from people leaving me and from me leaving myself. But I was starting the process of coming back around.
Something, from somewhere deep inside, was brewing.