Last week my friend Carissa visited me here in San Francisco and I’ve felt in a little better mood ever since. Not that I was I was grumpy beforehand (but I was). Now I feel a little more hopeful about the people I meet and my place in this city.
When I travel to see my friends I’m always glad to see them, but there’s always this bittersweetness to the interaction. “Yes, New York is great because all my friends are here, now back to California.” Repeat for Chicago or Wyoming. But it was the first time a friend had come to visit me in California and it happened to be my best friend from undergrad.
Oh, this is what San Francisco would be like if I had a really good friend who lived here…
I have met some really great people in the city and I have good friends in the bay area, but there’s something so much richer about having that friend that really knows me that I can see on a whim. I know it’s going to be nearly impossible to meet friends like her again in this new place. Instead I’ll get some mismatch of people I see on a monthly basis. I do envy those folks who never leave their home- or college- town in that respect. Otherwise you only end up seeing people you date regularly—UGH ?.
To excess, I encouraged Carissa to move to San Francisco so that we could eat pastries and yakitori e’ry week. Alas, after the loveliest of times where both the mundane and the eventful were memories for me, I was back to a party of one in the restaurant waitlist of life. We both had to go back to real life.
But instead of returning back to California this time, I was already here. So maybe, I thought, just as good of times could be had here?(!). Carissa and I had a long talk about our role in friendships. We’re both reserved in different ways, I think. She’s absolutely charming and wonderful and everyone wants to be her friend immediately. But then she’ll disappear out of not wanting to bother people (which is false, Carissa. Never has happened, never will). I’m standoffish for an exceedingly long time and then when you finally get past that, I’m perpetually salty with occasional bursts of niceness so that you’ll remain my friend. Maybe, thought I, I should be less reserved? I don’t know. I’ll do some testing on this in the new year.
What has also made me feel more optimistic is that I moved into an apartment (read: small studio) by myself. I knew this would make me happier, but I didn’t expect just how settling…settling would be. It feels like I have a place in this city. One that I can invite people to!
But on that note of settling, I am about to leave in less than an hour for a two-week trip to India for my friend’s wedding. And for the rest of January I won’t be home a weekend at my little apartment as I go to Nebraska, Boston, and Durham, North Carolina. But it’s good to leave the old year hopeful for the next*. I will write more again, I almost promise.
*except about our garbage president-elect