When I left my apartment on Valencia Street of 12.5 years, I was terrified that I was making a huge mistake. I just couldn't stand it anymore though. There were many positives about that apartment, and the longer I lived there, the more memories I made there. But being below someone who had parties several nights a week and who really was a dick about it, it genuinely made my life kind of hell. Plus the noise. The nutty people. The filth. The decay of the apartment itself. But that view, and so cozy & charming, and the location was great in many ways ...
I remember my last night in it, when I went to pick up my bicycle and ride it - via BART - to my new home in Alameda. I sat in the empty main room with all the blinds open and the orangey street lamps from the busy street shining in. It was raining slightly and there had been a protest that day that continued to linger throughout the city. Bursts of joyful shouting, drunk people, wild city kids, cars and clatter.
I sat there and cried because I felt like I'd failed. I didn't want to leave so much as I just needed - truly needed - to change something major in my life. It was January 2017 and the previous year had been one of my life's more astounding Fuck Yous.
In January of 2016, I was laid off from my job of 4.5 years. I didn't always love that job, but I loved my co-workers, really liked the work I did, and that job had radically transformed my life in a positive way. And in a moment, it all went away. No more co-workers, no more place to go every day, no more paychecks, no more software company feels, no more parties, no more anything. Just - some money and a bunch of nothing.
Over the next several months, unable to find a new job of substance, I decided to spend my time taking care of my friend (and guy I formerly dated and thought I was in love with) because he had brain cancer. He was dying of but his family didn't want to accept it. He didn't want to accept it. Nobody believed it was happening until a couple of weeks before he died, which he did the day before my birthday in August. It was wrenching. I mean, it was the worst for him I guess, but he was dead so he wasn't suffering anymore. But his family suffered, and I felt their pain. I'm an unfortunately sensitive and empathetic person, to such an extent that it's not very healthy for me.
The month after his death was spent arranging memorials and hosting a wake and cleaning out his house. At the end of that month, my friend Rob who I'd become dearly close to throughout the course of my difficult year, well, Rob finally convinced the company he worked for to let him work remotely 100% of the time, so he moved permanently back to Port Townsend to be with his wife and daughter. It was the right thing, but it was a loss for me, and I missed him. I still miss him.
Dan's sister gave me $6000 in cash for taking care of him, and random-ish-ly my friend Kristie decided to rally the troops and gather some dollars to donate to poor unemployed me. I bought a camera, a $2000 Burberry trench coat, and went to Iceland and the UK for a week.
When I returned, I started a new job (I spent the money knowing I had a paycheck to return to.) I swear to God, the first day at that job, I knew I'd made a huge mistake. I felt like I was in ... a hell of stasis and nothing and just absence of meaning or hope or joy or anger or anything ever at all.
My girlfriend, who I had acquired the year previously, could not understand why I was not available to help her process her feelings about some stuff in her very busy and involved life. I was jet lagged and depressed as all hell. I didn't have "professional" clothes to wear to this square jazz BS company every day and it was stressing me out. I didn't have the wherewithal to get any groceries, so I was struggling to feed myself. I didn't even know where to get lunch in the absurd unfamiliar office park.
The girlfriend and I broke up, harshly. It hurt me, but I was already so wounded and broken and numb and dead inside... shortly thereafter, the presidential election occurred and I watched - alone in my cubicle - on a dark November night, I watched the future I had been so hopeful for that morning... the ONE thing I was so sure about and so needed to buoy me up, keep me from sinking under completely... I watched along with the rest of the nation, and world I suppose, as it crumbled to dust and the worst person I could honestly imagine was elected instead.
I went home and drank bourbon and I think I took some melatonin, which I learned the next day was not a wise combination. That day I also reckoned with the fact that my boyfriend - oh yes, you read that right, and it only gets better - my married boyfriend with whom I'd been having a torrid secret affair, who I worked with at the company that laid me off (where he still worked), whose brother I'd dated in a shocking display of my lack of emotional intelligence and self-respect... my boyfriend voted for Donald Trump. And he wasn't sorry. He was glad. He thought - and as far as I know STILL THINKS - that he made the right call there.
I found myself in a very difficult situation. I was in love with him, truly. I had experienced such beautiful, tender, vulnerable and deep intimacy with him. It was something I'd been looking for my entire life, but nobody was ever the right fit, until he came along. He loved the hell out of me.
I was deeply conflicted about the deception and lying and hiding of the affair, primarily because in the beginning, I was told he had an "open marriage" but fool that I am, I didn't think to confirm that before diving in. I did not like that at all. I did not like how no normal future could possibly await us, ever. It just wasn't and isn't possible. I thought he'd get a divorce. I thought he'd tell his brother to suck it. I thought we'd show everyone. And for nearly seven years, I left that door open for him.
The Trump voting was a deal breaker of sorts. We'd heard other tales of couples, families, friends who had discovered the schism in their own lives and worked through it. There was a big article in The New York Times with interviews and perspective. Maybe it was possible. Maybe if that was the only problem we had, it would have been possible. But it was one of several deal breakers.
I broke it off - for not the first nor last time - and I found myself utterly alone at the end of that year. Sure I had a job and I had my apartment, but just a few months prior, I basked in companionship. I felt so needed and appreciated by Dan's family, I had a girlfriend, I had a boyfriend, I had another friend - people who saw me in real life and made plans with me and included me in their lives. The girlfriend and I had a thing we would say when we were super happy, when we were practically overwhelmed with how amazingly wonderful everything was - it was simply, "All the love in the world!" I had all the love in the world. I had a beautiful, intense, complicated, meaningful life... and in a year, it all fell apart.
I fell apart. I fell way down.
Two years prior, when Dan had broken up with me and started dating some mega rich super woman incredi-mom genius pin-up beauty queen who was friends with Michelle Obama... I fell way down then. Way, way down. Ert was down. On the ground. It was bad. But, I'd started seeing a therapist - who I saw throughout all the drama... until I lost my job, and therefore my health insurance, and I could no longer see her regularly.
By the end of 2016, all was darkness. I was afraid to call my family up in Washington - afraid I would learn that one of them had voted for Trump. I couldn't handle the thought. (Which turned out not to be true, by the way.)
I couldn't make it home for Christmas and there was no one to be with so I was just alone. Oh my fucking god I was so brutally alone and bereft and sad and hosting interminable pain in my heart. I cried so much that my eyes were constantly swollen and littered with little red welts.
So, I took the last of my savings and rented a new apartment in Alameda, nearer my job that I already hated. It cost about $1000 for movers. Because I'd been ill-prepared and afraid to give notice before finding a place, I ended up paying rent on two places for January.
I started sleeping in the new apartment with minimal belongings. I called it a campout. I had to go.
Now I've been gone 3.5 years. I've been on the island where it is beautiful and temperate, smells nice and is quiet, almost nothing bad ever happens - not to me anyway, but conversely, NOTHING EVER HAPPENS TO ME.
I'm still at the job I hate (not for lack of trying). I'm still in the same apartment. It's super cute by the way. Everything is just peachy. I have a garden, sort of - it's mostly tomatoes, and a greenhouse and a very large farm of basil with several varieties. I like to sleep with my bedroom window open on mild nights. I'm on the top floor and there is a big lovely tree right outside my window. The breeze is gentle and smells like just about the best thing ever. The leaves rustle sweetly, and when the sun is setting, they put on a show with their shadows dancing on my curtains. It's most magical during the magic hour of course and I can hardly believe how lucky I am.
But something has been bothering me.
Sure, the pandemic has been rough for me as it has for many. I am happier in some ways but the stress has been very real. I've gained weight and lost a lot of hair. I've done something awful that my feet do not want to forgive and so every day now I treat them gently and ask them to give me another chance - but I need to exercise! I love to walk and I guess I walked too much and my shoes aren't as supportive as I thought they were. Now in addition to very, VERY sore feet, I am woefully out of shape. Oh, and my heart - defective since birth - decided that it was not satisfied with beating normally and began racing, intermittently at first, then most, then all of the time. Much rigmarole and testing with my doctor resulted in a doubling of the beta blocker I've been on since this particular issue began to annoy me in 2012.
But, my heart is better now. I'm on some hair vitamins that are supposed to help after a couple months. But the emotional eating has been really hard to get around. Like many, I picked up a baking habit - mine was banana bread and chocolate chip cookies. Some days that's all I'd eat - candy, cookies, cake. And I went through a cocktail phase, and have rendered several bottles of wine all on my own.
The pandemic though has brought some positives. Since so many tech companies are moving to remote workers, there has been a substantial-enough exodus from San Francisco proper that the notoriously outrageous rents have began to come down. They went down 9% in May, and nearly 12% last month, in June. I'm seeing one bedroom apartments on top floors with dishwashers and astounding views for what I can actually afford to pay (if I stay employed.)
Not having any kind of life whatsoever beyond hanging out in my apartment and back yard has allowed me to save up money for the first time in the past four years. From 2011 until I lost my software company job, I was stacked with money. The pay was amazing, there were bonuses and most importantly, there was profit sharing. I bought an awesome car that I adore. And I had savings, really for the first time in my crazy ass life - I had around 17K and was actually starting to think I had a shot at saving up enough for a down payment on a house - something I had never, until that time, dared to dream possible for me. But then my life went sideways and the money went bye bye.
When I splurged before my new job back in October 2016, I had thought I'd build it back up easily. Back then I still had the rent controlled apartment for $925 a month. I had plenty left over. But I was - as I said - I was down, I was on the edge, desperate for agency in my life, and so I wiped out what was left of my savings to move to Alameda.
My life here has been lovely and mostly meaningless. Meaning is a hard thing to qualify.
Brad once asked me if I derived a sense of meaning from living in the Mission, like did I think that made my life more meaningful, and I said yes, actually. He conveyed how sorry he felt for me, which I said, thanks, yeah, my life is not what I want it to be, much at all, but from what I do have, where I live does add import to my sense of identity. I do think I'm better, I think I'm the better version of me because I live somewhere cool and where there is a lot of cultural focus. I don't even always feel like I belong. I'm getting older. I don't have a lot of use for bars or house parties anymore, but in the city, in San Francisco specifically - though it is fairly filthy and the weather is almost constantly suboptimal and it's loud and crowded and there is not enough nature - San Francisco is a world city. It has lore. It is the setting for hundreds - maybe thousands - of stories, tv shows, films. Important Things happen there. Impactful things happen there. I felt more and right when I lived and loved there in a way that I was not fully cognizant of when I was actually a resident.
They say you don't know what you got til it's gone. They also say you can never go back home again. Well, I can.
I know it won't be the same. I'm counting on that. It will be new. It will be loud and uncomfortable and too cold and windy and foggy and there will be strange afflicted people in my path. It will be hard, this I know. I miss hard.
I'm going to leave this heavenly island where I have dithered around for the past 3.5 years. i am going to pack up my things again and find a nest in the sky from where I will reign and rule. Over what? I don't know, maybe just my own sense of needing to feel like I could matter. I don't even feel like it's possible to matter on the island. I don't know how it's possible to do anything that is worth fucking doing here.
I don't have a family. I'm not old and ready to just stare out the window at the beautiful trees in the golden light with the clean, earthy breeze while I wait for Jesus to meet me in the middle of the air. There is no reason for me to be here. There is no reason for me to be anywhere. But, in the city, a reason is possible, and I am more afraid of not trying to find a reason, some meaning, some import, some relevance, participation in culture and history and life and society and humanity, than I am afraid of trying to find it and failing.
I might fail, right? It could be a big mistake. A waste of money. Maybe I'll move to the city and be like oh my god what have I done? Why did I leave where everything was so delightful? (To be clear, it is very much not perfect here. I could really live without all the dogs barking and sound of landscaping maintenance every goddamned day of the week.) But it is easy here. What if I leave easy and hard is just hard with no reward to make it worth it? What if I still feel utterly alone, with nowhere to go, no one to do anything with?
I can confirm this much. Since I have decided that rents are getting reasonable enough that it's possible and I have the money to do it and it's what I want to do, I have felt relaxed and excited and the angst has abated. The emotional eating has quieted down. I am not stuck here. I am still me. I'm still Ert O'Hara who did some stuff and was a little bit renowned in not an entirely flattering way but nonetheless made connections and changed a few people's lives (for the better, I think.) I am still that person. I can still take agency and make a change that I need to make.
No more cookies for breakfast... well, no more cookies for the entire meal, for every meal. That has happened. We're done with that now. There are things to look forward to, plans to make. Onward.