Life Keeps Getting Better

A reflection of the most chaotic(and best) two years of my life.

The past few years have been a challenge for many of us. I began in 2020 as I had begun in 2015 and 2017. With a new haircut and a new city to “start over” in. I knew that I couldn’t hide behind geographical cures anymore and I had to embrace whatever life threw at me wherever I went. I decided on San Francisco.

Everything happened so quickly. I escaped a troubling relationship with only a suitcase and a room promised to me by a friend who lived hours away from London. I rode the train on a three-hour commute to university every other morning and crashed in the flat of a cutie I had only met a few weeks before. With each that passed, the world changed faster than I could understand. In January, after narrowly escaping my ex, I booked a hair appointment. The girls at the salon couldn’t stop giggling about a zombie virus. They said that it had already killed 80,000 people(that was misinformation).

One even had a pink mask on and comically yelled at people too close to her. The next week, I went on a date with a cutie I met at a Black dominatrix party. He was 27 ( I was 23) had like 2 computer science degrees, spoke Mandarin, and was about a foot taller than me. Talk about intimidating. We walked hand in hand in Soho as girls smirked at me, as if why he’d even be seen with someone as lowly as I was. We barely noticed the guy with a megaphone yelling “The End Is Nigh”. I was too drunk with insecurity that getting sick was the least of my worries. 

The next week, on my three-hour train morning commute to London I saw a man in a hazmat suit. You know, like the one in Monster’s Inc. Everyone laughed at him.

The next week, like osmosis, everyone was wearing gloves. Nobody rode the metro. I didn’t get the memo.

A week after, a friend and long-time crush asked me on a date. She and I planned to see a sapphic suspension / aerial kink performance but, it was one of the first of many things canceled due to COVID. We decided to support a restaurant in Chinatown instead because business had been bad for them the past few months. We gossiped over the cutie who I crashed weekly with, they had been high school sweethearts. As the world got weirder we all sort of dated one another. I got nervous when she held my hand in public, afraid someone would attack us for both being girls.

A guy invited me to a D&D night at a gaming pub. New year new me, I actually considered going. It was canceled.

The next week I booked an emergency ticket to Los Angeles and decided to crash with my aunt in Orange County. I felt like I had hit rock bottom – These past few years I ran from my upbringing, ran from my family, and ultimately ran from what felt like fate. People took bets on how soon I’d be back to Michigan. My life was over.

I decided on the OC with my Aunt. She’s new age. Loves clean eating, yoga, meditation, and Donald Trump. An interesting experience. She supported my plans to go to San Francisco although she assured me she could never step foot in such a cesspool of heathenry. 

It was strange because only a few weeks prior, I had a plan – I would go to San Francisco and re-invent myself in 2020. I’d work at some cute place and my bevy of cuties would send flowers to my office. This fantasy included me owning a Pomeranian and Volkswagen Beetle. Or maybe I would make a startup and hand people flyers on the street about it. I’d go to Burning Man with a ton of friends and have kinky dungeon sex. 

Then - A Japanese guy in his 40s I dated a few years prior asked how I was. He offered to fly me to Okinawa, we could rekindle while the world burned. Without sharing too much information, he is/was a lawyer working in some fashion for the LDP, Japan’s nationalist regime. The extent of our dating was him giving me $500, taking me to a mid-range restaurant chain and taking me to a love hotel. He was attractive, nice, and the arrangement suit both of us. That was behind me though. Plus Okinawa doesn’t sound that fun with an old guy.

I finally made it to San Francisco and life wasn’t easy. I struggled financially and it was impossible to find work as a new graduate…in a global pandemic. I watched the streets burn beneath me during the Floyd uprisings. I saw the Oakland Police Department teargas high school students directly outside my window. My building mates shrugged.

I went to parties. I got to reinvent myself with a group of people that didn’t know how much of a dork I was or my dirty secrets. I dated. I went hiking with friends. The sky turned orange. I began to love how the world was ending. I let go of all expectations.

Nothing went to plan. Life just seemed to fall together. As I write this I am sick, in bed, with Coronavirus. After years of fantasizing –  I finally have an “honest”  job. I get beautiful flowers regularly. I’ve even learned to arrange flowers. I’ve started to build a community here where I feel comfortable embracing myself. Most importantly, I have been able to stick with therapy for longer than a year now. Quite the record for me!

I went into this at barely 23 years old. What I saw as failure in relationships, failure in career choices, and failures in me just don’t even occur to me now. Although this whole pandemic thing has been a whirlwind it feels like a light has turned on. Suddenly life doesn’t seem so scary. I feel ready to take the world on. Even though things haven’t always gone the way I expected them to, life keeps getting better.