It's a weird feeling to have been practically living in a place you said you wouldn't move to and to be incredibly sad to leave it. But so it is. It doesn't feel real that in less than 24 hours I will be back in my flat in Liverpool and not in the Bay Area. I'm fully aware that my new job begins next week, but my brain somehow seems to think this will be across the road from where my friends live in Santa Clara, not on the other side of the continent, where right now, weatherwise, it's practically winter, while here it's still summer. I knew I was going to enjoy being with my friends, but I wasn't prepared for how much I would love being in California. And it's not like I haven't been here before, I have, but this time it felt different. This time I felt like I really belonged to it, I established some sort of ownership over the place (and as someone whose PhD was on affective ownership, believe me, I know the difference).
I haven't left yet and already I'm doing calculations in my head as to when I can come back. As I sit at gate A2 at San Francisco airport, I'm wondering if Easter is too soon when it feels unbearably far away. Suddenly the possibility of having to squeeze enough money out of my savings to again support myself in a Californian lifestyle at Californian prices for a month doesn't seem like that big of a deal. The possibility that I wouldn't have enough to do and that I would be bored doing things I did this time around all over again is too risible to even consider seriously.
I realise, of course, that this is the best case scenario. The fact that I'm so sorry to go, so resistant to the idea and so comfortable here speaks more volumes about how this stay has gone than I ever could. I have seen Santa Clara, San José, the Slow Coast, Fort Bragg, the Big Sur, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Capitola, amongst others, and loved every single one of them. How can I possibly conclude this? How can I wrap up 30 days of living somewhere and all that came with it? Only one way I know how...
That was bangarang
A graffiti outside an LGBTQ+ charity in San José
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