Today is my one-year anniversary of the great move to California.
Technically it’s been a little longer for me (I spent my first six weeks in the Bay Area living in a teepee that I found on Airbnb), but one year ago today, my husband and I loaded all our possessions into a moving truck and drove from Portland, Oregon, to the San Francisco Bay Area.
A lot can happen in a year.
My post-move feelings ran the gamut from disorientation to culture shock to gnawing doubt, and then, at last, to new friends, happy hours, favorite restaurants, and a long-awaited sense of home.
This country is big. Before I moved, I had no real concept of just how big, of just how many different people, cultures, and subcultures inhabit this vast space we call the United States of America. I’d traveled to various states and noted their differences, even spent a year abroad, but I was woefully unprepared for how hard it would be to move a mere one state south.
It’s a shame, because people move all the time in this country, and no one talks about how hard it is. When people ask me how I like California so far, the stock answer is supposed to be, “It’s great!” A light-hearted comment on the differences between Oregon and California will also suffice, but an honest answer about loneliness and homesickness in a new place is met with surprise and awkwardness.
And so we get the sense that moving should be easy, and if it isn’t, then we are simply weak.
We convince ourselves that technology will ease the pain of leaving friends and family, that homesickness has an expiration date of weeks, or a few months at most.
Maybe our collective silence on the subject of intranational culture shock has something to do with rugged American individualism, as if it were a sign of weakness, or worse, an abdication of personal responsibility, to admit our dependence on culture, context, and people.
Our national narrative of self-reliance doesn’t leave much room for the nuances of human interdependence, and my unexpected culture shock is a very minor casualty of that narrative. But it was an eye-opener for me, even as someone who long ago abandoned the idea that sheer will and a bootstrap mentality are the only requisites for happiness and success (loaded terms all).
We would do well to introduce some humanity into this narrative, some thoughtful context to temper the ideal of the Great Individual, dependent on nothing and no one.
Especially here, in this supposed hub of human and technological innovation, and especially in an election year, we could use some honest discussion about the many ways in which we are reliant not only upon ourselves, but also upon the many cultural, institutional, and interpersonal forces that surround us, shape us, and are shaped by us.
Indeed, we always have been, and maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it can even be a wonderful thing. But first, we must learn to accept our intertwined destinies and speak openly about the challenges and opportunities we must face together, whether they relate to the broken healthcare system, the melting Arctic ice sheet, or, on a personal note, the very real difficulties of moving to another state.
If you’ve ever made a significant move, whether to a neighboring town or a neighboring continent, I would love to read about your perspective in the comments, should you feel inclined to share.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve moved in and out of 4 states (5 if you count N. Cal as a sep state from So Cal), left & come back to Virginia 4 times, recently counted nearly 40 addresses in my adult life. Some easier, some harder. Moving as a 17 year old was full of things like how do I get a driver’s license when I don’t have a car? How do I get a job? How do I get the utilities connected? Mundane stuff that feels easy now. Moving in middle age much harder emotionally. Moving to San Francisco hardest of all, though because that got worse the longer I was there, I attribute that to SF just not being the place for me. But there were crazy moments in all the major moves — choosing a place to rent over the phone & arriving to chaos with no clue what I was in for until I arrived (I can’t do justice to how crazy that place was), being short-term homeless & living in a van, living in a youth hostel & hanging out with a paranoid schizophrenic…the list goes on. But those were short-lived obstacles, and long-term the difficulties did revolve around issues of community: making friends, learning where to shop, how to get exercise (did you know you can’t just walk anywhere you want in some places?), how to move large pieces of furniture when I didn’t know anyone with a truck, all the little things that make up community… The friends part was a snap as a younger person, harder now I’m older. This most recent move required 2 years of active campaigning to finally assemble a group of friends I really like and can hang out with on any given weekend. I know I need friends and community, and most everyone around here I’ve talked to feels the same way. And they look at me like, Duh, when I bring it up. It’s not even a question. Which I think is kind of cool.
You know, another thing that the question of community brings up for me is the question of homelessness. And it’s interesting that your photo – of beautiful City Hall with homeless people laying out on the lawn in the Civic Center square – brings that in. Wonder if that was intentional? Anyway, I was talking a little while ago with someone I know about how people who are homeless are handled here in Floyd and it’s such a striking contrast to SF. They don’t sleep on benches for more than a night. They’re taken into peoples’ homes and then helped out – a bus ticket, a ride to where they’re going maybe hundreds of miles away, connected with social services, whatever it is that they need. Maybe it’s the enormity of the survival stresses that most people face every day to live in San Francisco, maybe the sheer numbers of people who are homeless (it’s overwhelming really), maybe the fact that San Francisco is often not a stopover point but a destination. At any rate, it adds up to a very different sense of community and one that ultimately left me chilled to the bone. But I don’t have any answers. I keep hoping someone will come up with something. But maybe that’s making complicated what is really simple. Like that Indian chef who quit his lucrative career as a gourmet chef to feed, bathe, care for the homeless in his city, Bombay (Mumbai), one person at a time. He said of his work, “I love them.” Maybe the things that make community more than a novelty carnival or a tableau for personal achievement but genuinely nourishing and vital are the less glamorous, not always easy, yet simple things–paying attention to each others’ uncomfortable/awkward/inconvenient needs, caring that’s backed up with action, love.