The California Experiment is over.

“California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath the immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.” - Joan Didion

Well, the continent ends in the other direction too. 

That loss and hope and pale blue sky were passing through my lungs on a daily basis in Santa Cruz. The ambivalence hasn't gone away, but it has changed. It didn't change there. Santa Cruz was always too beautiful and too lonely. When I started to put a bandaid on the loneliness, I realized that I didn't want to live with covered pain. I'm too young to say "this is enough." 

It sounds dramatic and it was dramatic, and it is dramatic. I still can't think of it without crying. There's my extra motivation to keep looking forward.

So what is my ambivalence now? An intense love that is being tested as the infatuation remolds into a relationship. Processing what my last relationship taught me, in terms of my needs but also in terms of my expectations. I say that this new love raised the bar, and he did, but the old love had it's strengths too. I can't expect to never fight when I am trying for something more complicated than I had before. I hope that I can feel unconditionally supported. I don't know where this fear comes from, but here it is. 

I will finally try out the other side of the country, as I intended to do for college. Reed was the only West Coast school that I applied to. I nearly committed to try out the other coast for school, but at the last minute (well, in the last day) I changed my plan. The girls at Bryn Mawr talking about their Cotillion Balls were a major factor.

It could be bad and it could only last 6 months, like my travels, like my life in Santa Cruz. Like this break. Part of the appeal of Washington DC is the idea that I could stay there for years and years. I could put down real roots and build a real life. For the first time, that kind of commitment appeals to me. 

I'm in Oregon now, in my family's beautiful house. I'm in the beautiful spring, looking at warm rhododendrons and cool irises. I'm watching white blossoms turn into green fruits. The cherries and the pears are the same size and the same color today, but the glossy berries will turn red while I'm in Washington next month. The pears might be ready when I'm at Burning Man. 

I'm emerging from a hormone-induced funk. Ethel says I shouldn't reject my sadness. My love and I read An Unquiet Mind this week, and it doesn't encourage me to let my dark moods in.