far too familiar

I didn’t expect to, but I really miss SF.

Or rather, I miss being able to come home and experience silence, maybe glamorously looking out of my floor-to-ceiling window while sipping some chamomile tea. I miss playing squash at the Bay Club and running along the Embarcadero while listening to my hardstyle running playlist. I miss the familiarity of my morning commute, my view of the Ferry Building at work, and my foggy weekends. I also have routine in Santa Teresa, but the routine I have created for myself here isn’t really something I enjoy. Surfing every day after work was fun for a bit, but it is not a lifestyle I want to have. Cars are loud here, but mostly because they are old and not because people have removed their mufflers. There are a lot of bugs here, and I don’t like bugs. I’ve been eating a lot of meat and carbs and sugar, mostly because I don’t want to cook anything complex when I am surrounded by bugs but also because the availability of fresh produce is limited.

My time in Santa Teresa reminds me of the month I spent in Salt Lake City. I was changed by a couple of people, and I was processing my change, and I wanted to go somewhere unfamiliar where I could process my change. I was also eating unhealthily during that period because I didn’t have a kitchen. It was mostly sandwiches every day since deli meat and bread was the only thing that fit into my mini-fridge. I’m still feeling out the magnitude of my change this past summer. It was less than the change I experienced in summer ‘21 but still significant nevertheless. The feeling might be less, but the magnitude is probably the same.

I wonder how I am going to live my life differently when I get back to SF. It is very hard for me to describe exactly how I want to change my life from this summer. Even now, it is hard to describe exactly how I have changed from summer ‘21 because the change happened so quickly yet so consistently. I felt as if I were pushed off a cliff, but I couldn’t feel the sensation of falling because I reached terminal velocity so quickly. Yet, I am on the ground now, far from the cliff I started. Besides the time I spent in Salt Lake City, I also spent a year in New York, where I was surrounded in a completely new environment for the first time since college. I met a lot of people during that stint who have changed me, and all of this change builds on one another, leaving it very hard to pinpoint where one change started and another ended.

All this change feels similar. More broadly, I just want to be more beautiful, and I have a different understand how I could become more beautiful with every notable person I meet.

I think a defining feature of all these girls I have been into over the years is that I feel that I am replaceable to them, and I feel that they are not replaceable to me. They live a vivacious and meaningful life without me, and I want to take part in it, hoping to learn how to live a meaningful life independently as well. A part of me wants to be them. A part of me wants them to validate me for my own individuality and all the growth I have made in the past couple of years. A core drive of my change is the desire to be irreplaceable. I mention rarity a lot in conversation as the ultimate virtue in what I look for in friendships and relationships, and I am drawn to people I think are rare. I would also like people to be drawn to me because they think I am rare, and I actively work towards that. Rare people hang out with rare people.

I don’t need my feelings to be reciprocated for them to be meaningful. In fact, I derive more value, change and evolve more, when they are not reciprocated. I learn what I do not have, and I grow because of it. And as I tangentially still see these people in my life, I am reminded of what I was not at one point in my life. I am always in a constant state of weakness, and I grow and evolve to remove these weaknesses and discover new weaknesses in the process. I am proud of the progress I have made for myself within the past seven years (four years of college plus three years of post-graduate life), yet I understand that growth is a lifestyle, not just a retrospect. I continue to pursue heartbreak and growth.

This feels far too familiar. There was a time when I felt that change was a unique feeling, and I would relish in it. I would write a lot about my experiences and believe them to be unique. Now, I still feel change, but I don’t write about it anymore. The change I thought was unique is no longer something special, something worth writing about. Change is a familiar feeling. I change too much for my own good. I am too dissatisfied for my own good, but I recognize that this is the lifestyle I chose: to grow as opposed to be happy. I just wish that I could come closer to a life that I want, but I am still so far. I am so far from being beautiful, yet I am moving towards it, one block change at a time.