In six months (give or take about 4 days) I'm going to be completely changing my life, leaving the west coast where I've come of age behind and selling most of my belongings to go chase a new dream in New York City.
I know, I know, everyone and their mom has, at some point, entertained dreams about dropping everything and moving to New York City. I mean, what, with shows like "Friends" and "Sex and the City" and "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" shoving that narrative down our throats, it's common enough in our culture to entertain such fantasies. (Not that I expect my life to be like "Friends", other than that one line in the theme song - "Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D.O.A.!")
It's not like I think I'm any different from any other human being who wants to do this.
Except that I'm not following a dream, per se. I mean, I kind of am. There are great grad schools over there for what I want to pursue. But... I also am trying to escape.
I love San Jose, I do. I love my job at the world-famous Winchester Mystery House. I love many of my friends dearly. I love my cat. But at the same time, I often feel like a ghost haunting my own body. My bones are only hostels for the spirit of a person I never really was in the first place. I like it here... but I'm stagnating here. I'm stifled. I'm pushed down, forced to haunt this life that doesn't quite always feel like mine - my mother doesn't know me at all, she knows the daughter she never had, who she wanted me to be. She doesn't know my interests, she just shoves me towards hers. I can't talk to her about gender stuff or sexuality stuff or religion stuff. She thinks I'm making a mistake. She thinks my whole life was a mistake. Sometimes I think she thinks I was a mistake.
When Sarah, my best friend and the light of my life, first told me she wanted me to move to New York with her - even if we did just end up "two broke idiots together", in her words - of course I jumped at that chance.
Of course I'm terrified of this big move. I'm not naïve enough to think that I'm gonna get over there and suddenly be a lesbian Carrie Bradshaw. Unlike so many people with these dreams, it's not the city itself that enchants me. It's...
Maybe I won't feel so much like a ghost haunting my own skeleton once I'm out on my own and living with someone who accepts my identity instead of constantly expressing doubt about my life choices, my career path, my sexuality. I'm having a second coming-of-age in a way. And of course it isn't easy. It's hard navigating this labyrinth of self with my family constantly making it about how inconvenient my identity is for them. But any time I try to explain this to them, they act like I'm attacking him. It's frustrating to constantly be robbed of one's own humanity like that.
And as scary as the future is sometimes, at the same time I am so ready to exist in that world, to exist as myself, a living and breathing entity rather than some sort of revenant in an oppressive and suffocating home environment. I feel more at home with Sarah than I do with my family who doesn't make any effort to know me at all.
That's what this blog is. To document my big move and "second coming of age", yes, but also as a love letter - and a bittersweet good bye - to my life here in San Jose. To the me I am now.
In six months I'll be in New York. It'll be fast paced and different and scary but at least I'll be myself.
-Nym-
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