The dating profile looks vaguely familiar. “Victoria” lives in Claremont, California, which, I learn from Google maps (because I’m still illiterate to California’s geography), is a suburb east of LA. She must be in town visiting, probably lived here before which would be why I might have seen the profile before. The LA thing is a deal-breaker. I won’t be swiping right.
The advice column I read this morning, the one that showed up in my news feed (I don’t normally read advice columns), was about two people a few months into their relationship. They’ve been hanging out almost every day. She met his family in passing. She’s going to meet his friend group in a week. He checks off nearly every box, but they’re both planning on moving away at the end of the summer. There’s some overlap in the cities they’re considering, but they haven’t really talked about what comes next. The shortened version of the columnist’s response was, you need to have that conversation.
For much of the day on June 30, I could hear coming and going outside of my apartment – footsteps back and forth. At one point there were items stacked in the hallway: a lamp, a small cabinet, other stuff. At another point, there were empty, folded moving boxes. My neighbor, who I neither knew nor saw very much was moving. That night, I was out at the bar with friends (two roommates that live in the neighborhood). We were having one last round (or several) before both of them moved – one to Chicago, and the other across the bridge to Mill Valley.
Several years ago when I was living in central Pennsylvania and feeling stuck, both professionally and geographically, I was shopping my dating profile around in different cities. I was like a Flat Stanly or the traveling garden gnome, though I wasn’t actually traveling anywhere. I had it in San Diego, San Francisco, Austin, and Seattle. I might have even tried San Jose or Santa Barbara or Santa Cruz – I know I interviewed for United Way jobs in Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. At the time, my thinking was that I’d consider moving to any of those cities (even without a job) for the right person. I was telling myself that I had moved for jobs which didn’t work out, why not move for love? It was an unrealistic experiment, but I wasn’t sure how else to go about manifesting change. And I wanted change. It turns out I did move for the right person, I just didn’t know that the right person was me.
I say all of this as preface and contrast.
Now, I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Now, I’m hesitant to date someone that lives across either of the bridges or down south of the city. A 40 minute drive, are you crazy? I see profiles of people who live in Oakland or Berkeley, Novato or Palo Alto, and I think, nope, that’s too far, can’t possibly work. And while I maintain that with the right person, I’d be willing to go just about anywhere, when I think more deeply about the idea of living somewhere else, I always return to, “why would I want to?”
I think about this a lot – to the point where it almost breaks my brain. On the one hand, I love the idea of partnering up with someone and seeing where life’s road takes us – big city, small town, simpler life, or just living a different life. On the other hand, I can’t imagine not living the life I’m currently living – a neighborhood that’s embraced me, being as close to the water as I am (I walk, sit, or run by the Bay several times a week), or not having access to the cultural events that I attend (concerts, poetry readings, street fairs). I love that there’s a bar next to the famous bookstore and I can sit in the sunny alley with a beer and read. I love that when I’m standing in line at the grocery store, I can look out the big glass windows and see the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Not only that, I love, love, love that I can walk to my grocery store. Aside from brief periods with women I dated in Philadelphia, I’ve never been able to walk to the grocery store. It’s a game changer.
The part that breaks my brain is wondering how I can justify staying in one spot when the world is as big and wonderful as it is. I know there are awesome places everywhere, and I feel small or diminished for not wanting to leave or not wanting to explore other possibilities. When I was on a two-month road trip across the country, I had lots of “I could see living here moments.” I loved St. Louis and Santa Fe, Kansas City and Austin. I was surprised by places like Richmond and Tulsa. Even before that trip, when I had taken a different road trip, mostly through North Carolina, I was able to envision living in Asheville or Winston-Salem.
For most of my time here in San Francisco, this has been a recurring theme: how to take greater advantage of what’s here (in the city and outside of the city) and how to expand into new places and experiences without giving up what I so thoroughly enjoy. Conversely, how to avoid getting too comfortable or complacent. I wrote a very similar post two years ago… it turns out, two years later, I’m still dealing with the same “challenges” of wanting everything and also wanting nothing. It’s as if I know that I need to be open to more things (dating people who live outside of the city, traveling more, or just getting in the car more often), and yet I feel quite content doing what I’m currently doing.
In thinking about this, three poems come to mind (though there are plenty of other variations), “How to Like It” by Stephen Dobyns, “If I had Three Lives” by Sarah Russell, and of course Robert Frost’s famous “The Road Not Taken.” All of them, in some regard, are lamentations (or at least contemplations) on the lives we don’t live… the struggle between appreciating the very precious here and now while salivating over the innumerable other ways we could be experiencing this life. The people we’re not meeting because we’re spending time with the people we enjoy, the places we’re not going because we can’t be in two places at once and we happen to love it here.
Spending these past few days thinking and writing about people moving, and change, and feeling a little stuck in the paradise I’ve come to know as San Francisco (I know, it’s awful), has forced me to re-think or re-focus on potential future version of myself. What is it that I still want out of life? How might I move towards it? What compromises might I be willing to make? When I thought about where I might want to be twenty years from now (assuming I get twenty years), there wasn’t a clear vision of where or with whom, but I don’t think it will be hanging out at the bar in my neighborhood. Unfortunately, the unsettling truth is that until someone can show me something better, I’m not terribly inclined to compromise on very much or make any significant changes. And so, I find myself in the predicament of longing for someone who knock my wobble and show me something better or different, yet doing very little to seek out such people. And though I might be itching for some sort of change, I’m trying to play the patience game and believe that newness will come along when I’m ready and open to newness.