i have a friend who, of his own admission, has a tendency to break up with and then get back together with girlfriends over and again. it’s a grass-is-always-greener sort of thing. in a lot of ways, it’s a rather apt analogy for my departure from chicago. now that i’ve been away a few weeks, i miss it so bad it hurts. and i look around and think, “i had a wonderful life there! what on earth made me leave it?” and i can’t remember a single bad thing about chicago. i remember only the good times. sound familiar? yeah. it’s just like breaking up with someone. there’s some reason why you did it, but now that a few weeks have gone by, you can’t begin to fathom what the reason was or why you didn’t stick it out and figure out how to make it work. yeah, i was bored with my job, but i had a good promotion on the table at my company in chicago. it wasn’t quite the direction i had intended for my career to go, but maybe i should have been more open to taking what life presented me instead of trying to mold my life around some idea of what i want to be when i grow up. i know the winters sucked and i hated commuting but…i had friends there. i had family. i had a place. here? here i have a job that is the work of three people which i will never be equal to, not for lack of trying or talent but because it’s not humanly possible. i have my cat, who, let’s be honest, is kind of a jerk as cats go. i have a hilltop apartment full of spiders. i have…a saturday evening to myself, and it’s like one big pity party in here. well, crap.

heraclitus wrote that “no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” of course chicago is still there. people i love are still there. but when someone told me not to worry, because if california doesn’t work out i can always go back, well, i’m not so sure about that anymore. yes, i can go back, but it will be a different chicago. chicago kept moving on without me there. getting in the car by myself and driving out of the city was one of the hardest things i’ve ever done, and if i knew how i’d feel right now, i probably would never have had the courage to do it. whether that was the best decision or worst mistake ever, it’s not yet clear. but i don’t think it’s so simple as going back. it’s not the same, and i’m not the same.

last fall, i attended a conference for young theatre managers here in northern california (and it’s actually how i got this job, come to think of it…) a workshop speaker said he had a few hard truths for us: “one: no one cares about your art more than you do. and two: no one’s coming.” he repeated that, several times, while the room chuckled uncomfortably: “no one’s coming.” that is, no one is coming to save the day. it’s all on you.

my first night away at college i remember being alone in my dorm room and absolutely petrified of going downstairs to the dining hall by myself. i literally couldn’t move my feet down the hall. i was about to bail on the meal entirely and hide in my room when valerie, who lived across the hall and down one door, popped her head in the room, introduced herself and said, “want to go down to dinner together?” it was a simple invitation but she had no idea how grateful i was for the kindness.*

i came home this afternoon, and, alone in this apartment that’s been mine for all of two weeks, looking at the havoc i have wrecked on my personal life, i have to accept: no one’s coming. no one is coming to invite me to the dining hall.** no one is going to save me from this. this mess was of my own choosing.

fortunately (for everyone), my capacity for self-pity is matched only by my inability to sustain it for any significant period of time. it was a heartbreakingly beautiful afternoon in Mill Valley (every day is), and i sat out on the porch amongst the trees and the sunlight, and i cried until i was out of tears. then i dried my eyes, walked down the hill to the market, and bought some asparagus for dinner. i came home, made dinner, and resumed the unpacking and settling into my new apartment. i can’t undo the choices that i made, or get back what i lost. i can only go forward and try to make a good new life here. spiders and all.

* and it led to what is now nearly 13 years of friendship, plus the beginning of what has been life-long awesome roommate karma.
** more as a metaphor, here – i do technically have people who will go to dinner with me now and then. but i’m not in a college dorm any more, and there’s no res ed department concerned with manufacturing my social environment for me.