Last Saturday, my cat, my partner and I squeezed into our premium economy seats on an Alaska Air flight bound for JFK from SFO. Almost to the day a decade ago, with a different partner, and different cats, I was headed the opposite direction, “forever.”
I’m not moving back to New York permanently. Instead, I’m taking advantage of this new remote working world we’re all suddenly living in to spend a couple of months with the family and friends I haven’t seen very much during the past year and a half.
People keep asking if I’m enjoying being back.
First of all? Give me a minute. I’ve barely unpacked, I don’t even have groceries in the fridge, and my cat keeps digging up the fiddle leaf in my rented apartment. I’m not sure I’ve properly breathed yet.
And honestly? I don’t know.
Over the past year, I’ve grown quite unhappy in San Francisco. The city core, where I live, emptied out. Friends left for safer, less cramped quarters elsewhere. The events and gatherings that kept us tethered together have all but disappeared; no more afternoon coffees to break up the work day, spontaneous dinners in the Mission, or raucous company Christmas parties. The circle of people I talk to, never mind see, shrank to the single digits. I describe myself as an “aggressive introvert,” but even I now understand what it means to feel lonely.
By contrast, New York is so. much. My partner is a short train ride away, so is my Mom. Childhood friends have invited me to (in no particularly order): get coffee and watch their kid play on the monkey bars, jump into their pool, attend a sunrise punk show at Transmitter Park, participate in a guerrilla theater performance in exchange for free legal advice. I already have an exhaustive list of restaurants to try and museums to visit. My community here embraced me without hesitation, Covid be damned.
Yet, I don’t feel like I fit. I’ve rented a barely converted Williamsburg loft nearly identical to the one I lived in for several very happy years in my mid-20s. But even though the apartment may be nearly the same, the streets outside have changed. The sticky remnants of the Domino Sugar factory are being converted into a luxury retail and residential development. On the site of the watertank factory my neighbors accidentally burned down is a boutique hotel. I’m also 40, not 25, and fuck you, don’t you look down your hipster nose at me, I had that oversized striped t-shirt in middle school, and it wasn’t flattering then either.
I miss San Francisco, too: the glorious produce, the 67-degree days, my car, the smell of eucalyptus on the fog at sunset. But when I’m there, I miss New York’s pizza by the slice, subways, and rain. After a life spent feeling not quite American, but no longer Belarusian, I’ve found myself an immigrant once more: “passing” for a native in both cities, belonging in neither. Never mind that this confusing duality has been brought to me courtesy of a worldwide pandemic aka “millions of people are dying and you’re whining about which world capital you want to live in?!”
Although I just arrived, I can’t help but mull over my choices when my lease is up to in two months. Do I go back to San Francisco where I own (!) a home? Rent out my place there and move back to New York? Find someplace new entirely? Split my time??? Without an office tying me down in a place, I find myself without one. The fucking privilege of it all.
Until I figure it out, I’ll leave you with Ms. Billie Holiday:
It’s autumn in New York
that brings the promise of new love
Autumn in New York
is often mingled with pain
….
It’s autumn in New York;
It’s good to live it again
