Three Months Down

I’m beat, just as beat as I am stimulated, the irony almost everyone here experiences. I’m still acclimating, naturally. I can feel myself slowly loosening my grip on life in Los Angeles, something I’ve been white-knuckling for a while now. Holding tight to what feels familiar, my body compensating for the lack of control and comfort that came with my community there.

Every so often, I’m hit with a swell of nostalgia. It’s not even that I miss it, it’s just the only other city I have to compare this one to, and that feels normal.

I’ve always seen challenges as worth taking on. We’re better for viewing life’s experiences as steps forward, so long as heart and head are in agreement.

Here, I’m finally starting to find my people. Not yet on a first-name basis with the baristas, but that will come. I’m no longer just a body at my local bodega, which is oddly comforting. I’ve found myself quietly studying the social cues of New Yorkers, it’s become a bit of a hobby.

When you first move here, it’s a dance. You try to blend in, both consciously and unconsciously giving off the impression that you’re not new, which, of course, makes it glaringly obvious you are. Rinse and repeat.

I’m not sure when that fades, if there’s ever a clear moment where the initiation is complete, or if it never truly is. The city is forever evolving, yet somehow fixed in its ways.