Yeah, I Guess I Could See Myself Leaving My Heart Here

A long time ago, I read a quote that stuck with me: "nothing very, very good or very, very bad ever lasts for very, very long." I think it was from a Douglas Coupland novel, or maybe not, but anyway, it's been going around in my head for a few days now, dredged up from whatever notebook I scrawled it in during the 90s. And it just seems to fit.

Leaving Singapore was a wrench---but then, it would have been; I'd been lucky enough to spend six months (on and off) living at home with my family, which might have been pure hell for some people, but for me was pretty much the best thing ever. I mean, there was food! In the refrigerator! For free! There were dinner parties and private jokes and games of Balderdash and lots of laughter and trips to the grocery store where your mother would let you buy the expensive kind of juice. And there was always someone to talk to, whether the subject was the mass genocide in Cambodia or just Legwarmers: Yes or No?

But things end, of course, and there are new adventures to be had, and so I left Singapore on Friday, weeping far less than I thought I would. The thing was, there had been so much speculation, so much worry, so much panic and packing and OH MY GOD WHERE'S MY GREEN CARD, that when I was sitting in the airport with my parents and sister, waiting to board my flight, I felt more calm than anything. I was leaving. It was inevitable. Really, I didn't have a choice. Which made me sort of just get on with it.

And of course at the other end there was Jemima, sweet Jemima who proved that while a friend will pick you up at the airport, a truly great friend will pick you up at the airport, make you hot tea, let you nap in her bed, lend you her lavender-scented eye pillow, feed you filet mignon for dinner, and then let your cats and your boyfriend sleep on an air mattress in her living room for however long it takes to find an apartment. Well, not however long: I expect we shall all be turfed out as soon as someone pees on the rug. (I'm looking at you, Sean.)

Speaking of apartments, we've seen one that we love---correction: Jemima and I love it; Sean hasn't actually been inside it yet---and we're waiting to go back tomorrow and have another look. The pros side of the list is almost all full up---high ceilings, hardwood floors, a billion closets, a little courtyard with an avocado tree, black and white tile in the bathroom, built-in glass cupboards in the kitchen, A DISHWASHER---but the cons side is a little weightier than I'd like, too. For a start, it's on the first floor of a pretty busy street, and I'm worried the noise would keep us awake, and second of all, it's, um, kind of close to the hood. There's still about a block of buffer, but it's definitely sliding a little further into crack whore territory than I'd like. When we walked past the building yesterday---we've been walking past it about eight times a day, in case we end up moving into the neighborhood and need know where to buy falafel at 3am---there may have been a homeless man sitting on the front steps rolling a joint. I mean, possibly. It's hard to say; he might just have been having one of those days when everything else is in the laundry. (I don't think this excuses the man we saw on the street wearing a pirate hat, however, or the one in Trader Joe's with a TAIL.)

When Sean arrived on Saturday, we walked down to Union Square and got cell phones, which felt like laying down the first root. I kept thinking "if anyone calls me, they're calling me in San Francisco!", like that 415 at the beginning of my number was some sort of badge of belonging. Because until then, I'd been wandering, dazed, around the streets, thinking "what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Who the hell do I think I am to just move here and expect it to work out?" It just all felt too big, too scary, too new. Everyone else knew where they were going and what they were doing and what they were meant to be wearing for this thing they were doing. And there was me, in my gold Indian slippers and my sweatpants, no sweaters packed, no scarves and gloves, holding desperately onto the hand of an unshaven man with a large camera on his shoulder and a grey coat that made him look like Bob Dylan, looking up at everything in fear.

We're getting there, though. For a whole two weeks before I left Singapore, I was so nervous that I started to have a Pavlovian response to the Golden Gate Bridge whenever I saw it on TV or in a magazine, and it would mostly involve nausea and shallow breathing. But when I welcomed in the new year last night, standing on the roof of Jemima's building with a glass of champagne in one hand (the other was holding onto Sean; we were six flights up), I looked out across the panorama of San Francisco, all the twinkly lights and pretty vistas, and thought "oh! there's the bridge!" And I didn't vomit at all.