not my city anymore

Earlier this week I spent a day in San Francisco. I walked the downtown streets I used to visit daily. I drove through the mission, parked in an old favorite garage and walked through a park I used to each lunch in almost every day. I got coffee at Peet's on Market - my first job was 2 blocks away and I used to step away for lunch at specialties. I got the same looks from random men on the street. Come ons muttered as I passed a bicyclist and crossed the street. I remembered my mindset, my objectives, my worldview of that time.

It was all different.

I experienced this city detached from myself. Detached from the person I was in the past. I'm different now. San Francisco is no longer my city. I felt no twing of remorse for not living there. I regretted nothing. I enjoyed my time remember many things. And at the same time felt so happy to have left. Happy to know that my home is Los Angeles. There is nothing that I own in this city. Happy also to have spent my last months in San Francisco in complete love and awe and cherishment of her wonders.

I realize, I never felt at home in the Bay Area. Sure, I made myself feel good, I was successful, found things I liked in the city with the people and my friends, I had an apartment, then a house, a boyfriend, then a marriage, a couple cats, a garden, a view of the bay area, but it was never home. Never had the cozy womblike comfort that Anthony Kiedes croons about in a red hot chili pepper ballad. I feel that feeling in Los Angeles. It makes me so happy to come home. Home to the Lost Angeles I love. To the city of my birth. Why did it take so long for me to realize this and return?

Comments

[Carson]

Often enough one has to leave in order to have somewhere to go

[Kieffer]

... and Naysayers be damned, eh? I can't tell you how happy I am you're proving me wrong! *LOL*

[happyvescent]

Rob, oh yes, I know. How funny life is, but it's truly the way I feel. I wonder if I still have the message you sent me way back when... trying to convince me to have second thoughts. I hope you are loving Oregon as much as I love LA. Come and bring Chris down sometime soon.