I am still going through my collections of old writings and I keep stumbling upon things that I wrote about San Francisco after I first moved here. I wanted to share a long piece that I wrote with you here. It’s about the first time that I came to this magical city and then the first experiences of living here. It’s about relationships and finding yourself and how San Francisco can help you with that.
The facts at the end of the story no longer apply - these days I’m in a traditional relationship and don’t mind being called his girlfriend at all. In fact, I love the situation that I’m in now because it’s perfect for me and who I’ve become in the years that I’ve lived here. But I think even that fact points to what is so great about San Francisco - that you can change and this city will not fail to embrace all of your changes.
And although the circumstances of my own personal relationships might have changed since I wrote this so many years ago, what hasn’t changed is that I’m one hundred percent in love with this city and wholeheartedly believe that it’s a great place to be single because just being here can fill you with love.
Here’s that old article from quite a few years back:
Single in San Francisco
Every once in awhile, I experience a few moments of unadulterated appreciation for where I have gotten in life. The best way to describe these moments is to think of them as an out-of-body experience, where I suddenly manage to escape the whirling monologue of my own brain and catch a glimpse of my life from an outsider’s perspective. When this happens, I am always impressed, because I always find that the current “me” is someone that all of the younger versions of me would have hoped to be when she grew up. Despite the fact that this happens on a semi-regular basis, I am always surprised each time that it occurs.
When I was eighteen, working at a local bookstore and trying to make grandiose plans for my life, I found myself wanting to see the world. On a long weekend, I impulsively got in to my pick up truck, with only a backpack in tow, and headed to San Francisco. I knew virtually nothing about the city, but understood internally that I had to follow my compulsion to go there. My journal from that time focuses on two things; the immediate love that I felt for every aspect of that city and the constant confusion I felt in trying to figure out how my newfound affair with feminism fit in to my life.
The only problem that I had when I visited the city for that first time was that the overwhelming joy that I felt just being there was splayed out across my face and this unbridled emotion drew unwanted attention from strangers everywhere I went. Random people on the BART trains would try to strike up conversations with me. Random men. I was no stranger to this experience. My outgoing attitude and ever-changing body had been attracting attention for years. But this was different, because I was at a point in my life where I wanted desperately to learn how to deflect that attention appropriately and yet had no parameters for learning how to do so.
I was at that stage in an intelligent young girl’s life when every possibility seems open to her. It is an amazing time in life. It is also immobilizing. I felt that every decision I made was going to fully impact the way that I experienced the rest of my life. And because of that, I was constantly assessing my own actions, reactions and interactions. What I was learning was that my experience of the world around me did not seem to neatly align with the experiences I felt the world was asking me to have.
This came out in a multitude of aspects in my life. It came out when I decided, two months shy of graduation, to drop out of my college preparatory high school in favor of being a student of life. I wanted desperately to find a way to live creatively without being restricted by the limitations of a formal school or work life. I was learning, through people’s reactions to that behavior, that it was not acceptable for me to behave in this manner. Defiantly, I worked to connect with people living unconventional lives, people who would appreciate this type of alternative lifestyle. But I found that I didn’t seem to fit in to their visions of how I should be either.
My journal from that first San Francisco trip details a conversation I had with a local street performer, a man named Marcus who made his living off of swallowing fire and escaping from a straight jacket. We talked of many things, but what stood out was that he seemed baffled by the fact that I, as a girl, would just get in to my truck and head to San Francisco on my own. In return, I was baffled by the inability of someone who appeared to live such an unconventional life, to understand where I was coming from in my urge to do such things.
These little interactions clued me in to the fact that I was somehow living a different life from what was expected of me. But where this fact truly stood out was in my experience of romantic relationships. I had my share of them, starting off with the traditional high school relationship complete with the limousine at prom and the dramatic fights about who said what first. I also had my share of the less conventional of them, mostly consisting of affairs with men like the bisexual grad student who tried to convince me that any relationship I had with a man would be oppressive to my individuality as a woman. Neither the traditional nor the standard anti-traditional relationship seemed to fit in to my life. As a result, I stayed single much of the time, and though it was sometimes lonely, I was usually comfortable with it. It gave me time to write, a hobby I was increasingly enjoying.
There was a part of my young self who was a complete romantic. Maybe I didn’t want to be thinking about corsages or white dresses, but I did dream of spontaneous vacations with attractive men who knew that roses could win a girl’s heart even in spite of herself. There was also a part of my young self who was a complete individualist, insisting that I could never be completely myself within the confines of a monogamous relationship. That first San Francisco journal shows me wavering back and forth between the desires of those two selves. I wrote one day about walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, wrapping my arms tightly around myself against the chill of the spring wind, and wishing desperately that I had some sort of partner to talk to about the confused feelings in my head. I wrote the next about the simple pleasure of waking up alone in my hotel room, with no one to consult about the day’s plans because it was all up to me and me alone.
That trip took place eight years ago. In some ways, it feels like it was just a few months ago that I threw my backpack in to my truck and headed west. In others, it feels like a lifetime has passed. I have spent the intervening years learning to balance the two different sides of myself, working to strike harmony between my romantic side and my fiercely individual streak, working to reconcile the dropout’s beliefs with my over-educated understanding of academia, working always to understand what will make me happiest in life.
A few days ago, I was sitting at my favorite local café, writing a story due on deadline that afternoon, when I suddenly had one of those out-of-body experiences. The story I was writing was partially about the way in which I had successfully avoided a conversation I didn’t want to have on the BART train. And I suddenly got this glimpse of my life as it is today from the perspective of that young girl I was when I visited here for the first time.
I live in San Francisco now not too far from Pier 39 where I had met Marcus, the street performer, on that first trip to the city. I make my living as a freelance writer/blogger, choosing my own schedule, living out the dream I always had of being able to survive in an unrestricted, creative environment. I have become confident enough in my own ability to navigate the world that I feel comfortable refusing to engage in conversations with random men who do not interest me. I also feel comfortable talking to those random men who do.
What I have discovered about men is that they can fit in to my life in ways which are both traditional and unconventional. I have a partner of sorts who lives in another state and who comes to visit me occasionally. When he does, we walk around the city with our arms around each other, enjoying the romantic possibilities in the air. He even buys flowers from the street vendors for me sometimes, through which I have learned that I am more of an oriental lily kind of girl than a roses one. When he is not here, I sometimes have casual affairs, which he knows about and is comfortable with. There’s a friend of mine that I sleep with sometimes, although I always leave before morning because I have also discovered that I prefer to wake up on my own than in the arms of someone else, no matter how much I may trust them. When not indulging in such affairs, I sometimes go long stretches without dating anyone at all, during which time my creative side seems to flourish, and I indulge in the creative passion of a life lived without focus on romance.
What I have discovered about myself is that if I am willing to approach my life with the creativity I use to approach starting a new story, I can create situations within which I can thrive. The one constant which runs through that first San Francisco journal is that I was seeking to define myself. I did so in the only way that I knew how at the time, which was to define myself in opposition to the things which did not work for me. The biggest of those things, at that time, was the label “girlfriend”. Through all of my changing relationships, I refused to identify as anyone’s girlfriend. To this day, I hesitate at the word and the things it implies.
The other day, when I had that out-of-body experience in the coffee shop, that familiar wash of emotion crossed my face. A random man sitting near me saw it happen, and it provoked his interest. He asked me what I was writing about, and my eyes glittered as I answered him, “my girlfriend”. He turned back to what he was doing, somewhat miffed perhaps, but I didn’t feel bad, because it was the truth.
What I have discovered about San Francisco is that it woos me in a way that no individual ever could. It entertains me, it seduces me, it humors me. It also challenges me. It acts as a mirror for the part of my self that I absolutely adore and allows me to change as time passes. It satisfies every need I could possibly fathom and yet it leaves me wanting just a little bit more. Rather than creating confines for me, my relationship with the city allows me to grow more and more each day. And I don’t need any sort of out-of-body experience to know that my eighteen-year-old self would be very jealous of the love that I experience every day as a woman living in this city.
January 21st, 2010 by | No Comments »
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