California. Or Kal-ayy-forn-yuhhhh, as I sing to wife sometimes, Mason Jennings style .
I will miss the place. All of it, gridlock on the 5 and the folks that waive me through at stop signs, even when I arrive after they’ve stopped. Five years waxes it all nostalgic.
This is my fifth move in five years. From OKC to LA County, to Orange County, to farther south in Orange County, to Santa Barbara County, and now, to North Carolina. Moving’s emotional, every time; a physical sorting, packing, and taping of time lost (or lived).
In every move, a swell of emotional waves hits me, but the timing’s unpredictable. Random, once forgotten moments, sparked often by the inanimate, get to me.
Today, the first wave arrived through an unidentifiable blemish on our table. The mark was the size and shape of a dime, hidden under the space where our TV had rested. It wouldn’t clear with our organic, natural cleaning spray, so I scratched the circular blemish off with my index finger’s nail. Naturally, I smelled my finger for its origin. The answer came; it was Minwax’s Dark Walnut wood stain. Here, in our current home, that console table served as a TV stand. Five years ago, in my 350 square foot Long Beach studio, it served as desk, dinner table, bookshelf, and where once I rested a can of that Minwax stain—leaving a single drop of residue, apparently—as I brushed the stain onto a bedframe I built in a rush before my girlfriend (now wife) traveled to California for our first weekend as a couple (we were long-distance).
Last night I sold that table. Moves are emotional.
When I moved to California for residency, I sought happiness via environmental transplant. My ask of California was significant: deliverance.
I lived in Long Beach for that first year and got thoroughly lost. I surfed a lot but not enough to keep the torch lit through months of psychiatric emergency department call and hours a day stuck on the 22. My new home was faster, noisier, and angrier than the one I’d known, and I grew to hate it. I ached for familiarity. I struggled to figure out how the place worked or how their game was played. I thought about quitting, going back, and starting over, often. Depression came after the anxiety, which eventually led to a truth: California was not going to save me. Like any good, dependent relationship, I despised the place that denied what I figured was owed.
Why wasn’t California bending over backwards to make me happy?
Responsibility was a slow-arriving season.
A year of that was enough, so I moved to a quieter location, slower pace, and shorter commute, trading my 350 square foot apartment in the bustle for a 600 square foot casita in Tustin’s burbs. My place was perched under a forty-foot-tall pine tree in a friendly family’s backyard, with plenty of space for my bike and surfboard. Though tranquil, when the children weren’t practicing piano at dawn, privacy was rare; I was in their backyard after all. All things considered, particularly during 2020’s uncertainty, the move was great; a strategic retreat of a year, a chance to reassess what I wanted, and an opportunity to use my experience as a compass. I got a therapist, there. I invested in real estate, there. I had my first, real confrontations with the medicine mirage, there. And responsibility, trickled in.
Southern California life rolled on as the second half of residency began. Still, I held a disdain toward the place I lived. California remained consternation, not be trusted with salvation (I wised up in ways). Now skilled at this sleight of hand, I did to California what I’d done to medical school; made it the place to escape on my way to greener pastures. I imagined happiness—post-residency—in Arizona, Texas, or back home in Oklahoma.
Yet, as time will do, I changed. Because I had to.
I moved to Irvine—five minutes south as the crow flies but twenty minutes south down the 5—for third and fourth year of residency, splitting a two-bed apartment with a friend and co-resident. After years of relative isolation and months of definitive covid-lockdown, having a friend to surf, watch a game, or snag a beer with was transformative. He was local—born and bred in the OC—and alongside his girlfriend, they humanized a place I’d worked to dehumanize. Over those two years, I joined his south county crew for waves at Doho, Trails, and San O, searching for surf every second I was out of the hospital. I got immersed in Orange County’s rich blend of Chinese and Vietnamese food, becoming hooked on boba and pandan anything. I even snowboarded, just 40 minutes from our apartment, snagging $13 lift tickets for midweek sessions. The locus of control shifted internal, slowly, as I even more slowly accepted responsibility for my happiness. And began to find it, in California.
By the time I graduated, I was waiving people through stop signs and cutting off nice folks on the 5. I was a part of it all.
My wife and I have been in Santa Barbara (flipping to the northern end of so cal) for a year. And we’re moving again, this time not to where our academic program tells us to go or where there might be a residency position available, but to where we want to live. It’s exciting because I expect Carolina to just be Carolina.
A few weeks back we were cruising up the 405 from a weekend with friends in Orange County, when we stopped in Long Beach for coffee. Back in that once dark home, all I remembered was light. I laughed as I asked my wife, “You think we could enjoy living here now? It’s pretty cool huh?” She smiled, mirroring irony with a glance. As we drove around, I felt warm, glowing appreciation. Meaningful memories popped holographically as we drove block by block. Then conscious realization streamed: I had already enjoyed living there, everything had been meaningful, I needed everything, and I needed California.
Can’t find the exact quote but Matthew McConaughey wrote something in Greenlights along these lines: you can only leave a place once you’ve known you can live there forever. I’ll fess up, not sure I got that far with California, but I got close. I now love the place for what it is. No resentment at its inability to provide something I had to own. Only gratitude.
As I prepare to tape off another box, another complex set of emotional waves—despair, hope, resentment, peace, joy—rolls on by. That was life in California, demanding I define who I am, by leaving what I was not.
(Photo Caption: in San Diego but somewhere between purgatory and deliverance, getting closer by the memory.)
[convertkit form=3846822]
Every time I read a post from you I wish there was a required class in HS that taught kids how to really think about the future. Not a class with answers, but one where they learned how to think about the journey to come and how to listen to their inner voices.
Thanks for posting 🙂 Would’ve signed up for that one. Actually, maybe I wouldn’t have. At 18 years old, I think I’d have thought better. Maybe life is that teacher? I needed it at 25 though..l
What drew you to Asheville? Sorry if I missed this earlier
Wanted to be closer to family than California. Also wanted a place where the pace was slower and we could be outside a lot. Looked around through Knoxville, Chattanooga, Greenville, Nashville, and we ended up choosing Asheville. Felt like the right choice!