There are some people who seem tickled to take on your sad history as their own. It’s an object to cuddle and sculpt to their floating aspirations. They see a chance, in you, to be their best selves. You can be the prettying gleam they turn their profile toward. –From Darin Strauss’ Half a Life
People have opinions, and they’ll do anything to share them short of buying a megaphone and shouting from the rafters. Their point-of-view resembles a three-piece luggage set they’re desperate to unpack. Everyone wants to warn me about Los Angeles, a vapid wasteland suffering from a drought of intellect. I don’t understand why you’re not moving to Santa Cruz, some says, to which I respond, it’s not for you to understand. I read endless articles where long-term tourists anthropomorphize New York, throw glitter on a city and call it their unrequited lover, while I sit mute, incapable of reply because New York is my home, not some romanticized idol from one’s misspent youth.
Some want to spend time talking about my move through the lens of their life. They use it as a filter to validate (or question) their life choices. Should I move too? Should I be making a major change? Am I okay? There are those whose sole responses are nothing more than plentiful and positive platitudes. This will be a needed change for you! Let in all the light!, etc–reductive, airless words that don’t invite dissent. My fear feels like an intrusion in this pretty space, and I’m left to express thanks and move on. Others have spent the past six months asking me detailed logistical questions about a move I’ve only started to plan–they want the story neat, packaged, and digestible so they have an aperitif worth passing along to others come brunchtime. Everyone likes the status update about me finding my dream apartment but no one wants to hear about the paralyzing fear and uncertainty of leaving the only home I’ve ever known. Give me a picture painted in sepia without the details.
I’m baffled and exhausted. I’m moving across the country–I’m leaving my home, friends, everything that is comfortable, convenient and known–yet I’m shouldering the weight of the collective self-analysis, the burden of opinions. I’m moving. I, first-person singular nominative case personal pronoun. My move is not about you or your life choices. Over the past few months I’ve felt subsumed by the noise that comes with people telling me how I’ll feel, where, when and how I should move, however, I can count on one hand the number of people who’ve asked, quite simply:
How you holding up?
No one’s asked me how I’m doing. Are you okay?
Instead, every encounter is an hour where I get it up for someone else. I present a tidy story that can be repackaged and sold elsewhere. Sometimes I watch the discomfort when I talk about being afraid of making my rent, my fear of driving and not being able to buy a car. I think: what if I can’t start my new book? What if I fail? (Though I know failure is a good thing, but it doesn’t make the sting of it any less cruel). I watch people wave the fear away, change topics, tell me that everything will be okay because I’m like a cockroach in the apocalypse. In the end, my fear feels small, not worthy of casual conversation, and I go home and collapse into bed and wonder if I can tape record the story of my move and press play so as to avoid all the good things people want to hear.
Don’t get me wrong–I just closed on an apartment and I’m thrilled beyond measure. The idea of biking along the beach and hiking in the mountains makes me quiver. The notion of navigating a new place and creating familiarity amidst the foreign is a challenge I welcome. I’ve friends in L.A. I haven’t seen in years and reuniting with them excites me. But still. I’m afraid, and this fear isn’t simple or neat–it’s raw and ugly and is like a suitcase overturned and the contents strewn all over the place. I want to feel this mess, the whole of it, and perhaps this is why I’m not seeing a lot of people. Perhaps this is why I’m withdrawing. Because I don’t want a broom just yet. I don’t want to spend my time making you feel okay about my major life change. Right now I need to be selfish. Right now I need to go through this.
Right now I need to surround myself with people who will hold my hand through the way–just as I’ve always held their hand during their moments of disquiet.
INGREDIENTS: Recipe from A Modern Way to Eat, modified slightly.
12oz gluten-free penne
1 head of radicchio (about 7oz), shredded
For the pesto
1/3 cup shelled walnuts
1 small garlic clove, peeled
sea salt, freshly ground black pepper
1 bunch of fresh marjoram, leaves picked
1 bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
Juice of one lemon
DIRECTIONS
In a large pot, bring salted water to a boil. Add the pasta, stir to separate and cook to al dente.
While the pasta is cooking, toast the walnuts in a dry pan for 2-3 minutes. Remove the walnuts and blitz with the garlic in a food processor until it’s a thick paste. Add the herbs and blitz. Add the oil and lemon juice and blitz. Season with salt and pepper.
When the pasta is done, take 1/4 cup pasta water and drain the rest. Mix the pesto, pasta water, pasta until completely combined. Add in the shredded radicchio and mix. Serve hot!
