Yesterday, during the time I spend trying to think as clearly as possible, I had a thought that I was surprised by; the sense that was I was not really at home in California.
For many, many years, I had considered myself a New Yorker, by birth and deep in my bones, and even during my first five or six years living in San Francisco I thought I was a member of that metropolis that just happened to be living here on the west coast. It's not that I didn't very much like the city here or the state that I have explored and continue to love to investigate; it's just that I didn't imagine that the New Yorker could ever be supplanted. It seemed like it eventually was.
At some point, I declared to myself and anyone who showed any interest that I had adopted California as my state. It wasn't that I had forsaken my origins, nor had I become a true member of this newer place; I had merely made a declaration to it.
Some years passed, and I imagined that the problem of figuring out how to refer to me had been solved (comfortable in thinking of myself as a sort of Californian) until yesterday, when I sensed that I didn't think of myself in the same way anymore. It was a bit of a revelation.
It's not that I had been aware of thinking consciously about the subject at that moment, but was perhaps a little more in touch with the lack of visibility and support I had often felt as a child. Sensing that I was and am not cared for has always made it difficult for me to feel rooted.
As I ponder it now, I wonder how to situate myself psychically when I feel so much like a visitor at times, even in a city that I know much of so well. While it is frightening to feel as if I am dangled in the world by an apparatus that I cannot verify, I sense that there is something good about this suspension, that perhaps the recognition of this very old and primal fear inside of me is a step towards it no longer mastering me so blindly.
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