Slouching Towards California

Moving to California happened to me in the same way you decide to go the grocery store: you need something in order to live, but it's also something completely expected and not revolutionary. My sister convinced me to move in one conversation, when circumstances came to a head at the hospital. Conversations are chaos, and that one had lead me to change.

Packing is light when you have a father who has a garage to store your crap. A plane ticket across the country wasn't scary to me. Palm trees and sunshine promised a reprieve from severe mental health challenges. When I got off the plane, I went to Starbucks and accidentally ordered a latte with five shots of espresso. I have been told on more than one occassion that if I were a flavor, I'd be vanilla. My life had been on hold for quite some time, and change was necessary to move on. I got in an Uber and decided I could at least now be French vanilla.

California is much how I imagined it. I take in my life as if I am merely an observer to my own fate; I am uprooted but still mentally on a plane and only anticipating change to happen to me. Perhaps being in my twenties was a part of all this. I had nothing tying me down, no roots to pull up. I could start over, empty pockets in San Francisco, one of the most expensive places in the country to live. But I wouldn't know. I was mentally still waiting to understand that I could now touch the Pacific Ocean.

I am bothered tremendously by my lack of self-awareness. When someone recently made the comment that I should start a diary, I flinched. Is my writing that obvious, screaming of a need to vent what should be my thoughts alone to contemplate? I write only when I'm alone. I don't plan anything I write. It flows out of me and I hope for the best. When I moved to California I let the experiences come and go like waves on the shore, adventures that ended the same way they had in Boston: going to bed, only to wake up again.

Chaos and change, for me, are not the same. Chaos that comes with change requires a mental awareness and a reaction that I did not have upon arriving in California. I've paid taxes twice now in this state and still close my eyes and see the east coast. Unlike two chemicals combining to make a new one, there was no visceral reaction to my new life. I am merely floating by, out to sea and waiting for the day I can pinch myself and see what is right in front of me.