My Own Little Place

I'm still a firm believer that I will never feel the same way about some place as I feel about San Diego.

San Diego was like a first love. It was new and completely different from anything experienced before. SD was every thing that New England was not. It was warm, inviting, and calming. In Boston, you always had your back up, waiting for either the next blast of cold air or the next blast from a disgruntled Bostonian. In SD I always felt like I was walking around with wide open arms, ready for anything and everything.

We broke up though. I was looking to grow and SD was holding me back. I left with out a backwards glance and made my way to bigger and better things, but as always what I had imagined my new life would and what it actually was, did not match. The new career did not magically appear, the wonderful new friends that I would make in graduate school never materialized. I was back into the same pattern as I was in SD, but missing one thing. The place itself.

I'm sure in some way I am romanticizing SD to no end, but I can't help it. There will always be a soft spot in my heart for that gorgeous southern California city. Even now I grasp at any information about SD. I google old location, I look for jobs and apartment. I imagine the "what if". There are some days where it may not even cross my mid, but more often than not I am nostalgic over the place, I am jealous of others who get to live there or who talk about it like it is theirs.

Don't they realize it was mine first?

Like a jealous ex-lover I sneer at them. They will never know you, SD, like I know you, I think with a self satisfied smirk. They will never hold a job in the most beautiful place in SD like I did and they will never know the secrets about you as I do. They are not worthy of you as I am.

Sometimes there is panic that I have made the wrong decision, that I don't belong in Boston, but out there, and I've just been sidetracked. I know nothing is written and stone, there is always a way back. I know SD will always welcome me. It may not be financially forgiving, but it will always be there.

I've been very homesick for SD lately. I don't know if its because the end of summer is in sight, I don't know if its hormonal, I don't' know if its because my constant SD link is out of the country. All I know is that when I get that tell-tale homesick feeling its always for SD. I never felt homesick for Boston, the way I do for SD. G said I'm not supposed to call it homesick because SD isn't my home, but I disagree. SD is the place where I feel most at home and most at peace. Home does not necessarily have to be where you were born and raised. I think home is more of feeling that an actual place.

There s a hold that keeps me here, in the place where I am now. The needs of others has always been a stronger presence in my life than my own needs. For now I am here and I accept it, but every once in awhile that feeling of longing for SD just consumes me. I know I have to ride it out and let it pass, but that ride can sure make one sad.