What It’s Like…a pending love letter to a city I’m still adjusting to

TW: Discussions/mentions of mental health and suicide.

Considering this is one of the biggest changes i’ve ever made in my entire life, I’m actually going to try to keep this blog post really short. But considering my feelings for my new home, it actually makes sense.

August 16th, 5:47 am. I stepped outside of my Woodlawn apartment that I’ve spent that last 12 years of my life living in, a place that I spent my last year and half of college in, to get on a 9:00am flight to San Francisco International Airport. I waved goodbye to my parents (even though they would stay with me in my first week in SF later that night), kissed the love of my life one last time earlier that week, and said goodbye the memories of one of the best summers of my life due to the wonderful friends and family that were apart of my 22 years as a Chicago native.

I kept playing Goodbye by Bo Burnham on the car ride and for the first 15 minutes of my plane ride. A weird song to choose, particularly due to the suicidal undertones from Burnham’s special and this specific song, but considering my own past with mental health, Goodbye truly felt like the right song to end this chapter of my life. To end a chapter of a life marked by a life-long struggle with depression and anxiety, a suicide attempt and a young girl who sometimes sacrificed her own happiness and stability for the happiness of others a bit too much (and yes I still do this, working on it). I stepped out of the plane around 11:00am PST, the memories of the past 22 years still in my heart and my head, to a city that I’ve had the fortune of touring in the past, now a resident of.

Or a fake resident that is.

When you move to a new city, the movie or book image everyone describes, especially a city that is as magical as San Francisco, is this feeling of home. That yes, I’m here, I will thrive, this city will be mine. To be perfectly frank, yeah, haven’t felt that feeling. Like, at all. Well, that’s not completely true.

San Francisco is not like Chicago. Chicago doesn’t have a light-rail system that decorates the streets of the city. The houseless crisis is much worse than it is in Chicago and feelings of being a gentrifier cloud my mind every single day I walk out of my apartment building in downtown and I see a different houseless person sleeping at the door I walk through. The city is quite quiet. She dies after 6:30pm, and COVID surely has made going out late at night to a club or anything really, not something you do much—but maybe that’s because COVID has ruined my ability to go out and do anything but that’s for another day. The sidewalks, and yes dad if you somehow find this, i’m cursing because i’m 22 years old and you decided to raise me in a city where everything is flat, so when I want to go on a casual walk in SF i’m always doing a fucking workout with these hills. And don’t get me started about driving in this city here too. I have a lot of new road signs to learn and potential anxiety pills to start taking since no one follows the speed limit here but me.

Though when you push past those rough sidewalks and get to the top, you see a beautiful city. You see kids laughing and playing with their friends. Adults having fun with their dogs at all of the many parks and outdoor spaces this city loves and has spent a lot of time on. Walking through Union Square in downtown, you see people dance, laugh, drink and you feel like you’re in the center of your own coming-of-age movie each time. My lab constantly has a beautiful view of the the sunset valley and the Golden Gate Bridge that makes even bad days in lab always a good day. Jiu jitsu and Muay Thai have already brought me really great friends, my growing reliance to epsom salt baths and even more ways for me to push myself and be the best that I can be. Organic Chemistry. Yeah, no it doesn’t matter where you are she sucks, but hey, at least she’s also brought me a really great friend as well.

It’s only been a month and I have a lot of exploring to do. So much to see, so much to do, so many memories to make, so many exams to study for because I really love education so much that I decided that I wanted to do eight more years of it in three years (hopefully). So yeah, San Francisco is no Chicago, but yeah, she really is magical.

You know, I think I might actually be getting used to this place. Who knows, soon enough, I’ll be able to call it my home.

Cheers.