Day 14.

I moved back to the east coast fourteen days ago. In these fourteen days I've shuttled around between places where I used to live: Philadelphia, New York City, and today I'm spending the day in Beacon, NY.

It feels like I've been gone a long time. It feels like I never left.

My only links to my life in San Francisco, all seven years of it, are a few texts from two friends both named David, some texts and calls from my best friend Kurt, and as much as this ever connected me to anything or anyone, Facebook. I realized this evening, standing outside my parents' house, smoking in a light rain, that I'm not going back. A two-week visit to the east coast was common for me, so maybe I didn't even think about it during that time, but now that I've brought the second week to a close, I realize, finally, that I'm not going back. To visit, sure, one day, hopefully soon, when I have money, maybe. But to live? Probably not ever again. I can't predict the future -- I can barely even paint a picture of the present -- but given the surprising sense of relief I've felt upon returning, I doubt I'll go back.

Yes, relief. My new life here isn't easy. I'm living in a temporary room, with four other housemates, with almost everything I own still boxed up, when I'm used to having my own space, my own time. I have a wonderful boyfriend but he lives in New York City so I've spent every weekend so far there, and the plan is for me to continue to do so, which has meant a lot of time on the bus, on transit of various kind, and a sense that I'm never quite home, never quite complete. And yet I feel an ease being here, in all these places, as if there was a tension about being so far away from my family that I'd been ignoring for seven years, a tension that's now released. My life here isn't easy but I'm happy, and hopeful.

I met some wonderful people in San Francisco, and I am really beginning to miss some of them. But I don't miss my life there. It was always a fantasy, running off to the island of misfit toys and pretending to be a grownup. What I miss about San Francisco, aside from certain individuals, is the very thing about my life there that was not sustainable: the endless free time to wander about. If I'd actually had a regular job there such that I could pay my own rent without endless drama about it, well, I might not have had such fun. So what I miss is the fantasy, and I realized it was time to let that go. So here I am, back where I belong.