Goodbye Hello

Shit happens.  Most of the time when you stumble you just dust yourself off, take a couple deep breaths, and hope no one saw you “pok gai”.  Of course, there are always those times where the fall is prefaced by you screaming like a little girl and afterwards you can only just sit on the ground and laugh along with them.  It just leaves you with a bruised ego and a pair of scraped knees or in my case, a fleur de lys.  (Mardi Gras 2011 see right).  But it's nothing a shot of goose can’t take care of.  Confidence building and sterilization.  But there are those times where you can’t escape with just a surface wound.  Sometimes you fall onto the business end of a meat cleaver, roll down a flight of stairs, crash thru a window, pinball down the side of two adjacent apartment buildings, land in the middle of a Nascar race to find out that Jeff Gordon would rather go thru you than around you. 

About a month and half ago, I made the life altering move back to my childhood home, Arcadia.  I had come full circle, or... fallen so hard I was back to where I started.  Either way you look at it, everything in my life changed.  Leaving SF was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life.  I became an adult in SF.  I found my identity in SF.  I discovered my alter ego, Lason Jin, in SF.  I met the people that will be attending my wedding in SF.  The eight years I spent in SF made me who I am today. 

In Arcadia I was faced with my old nemesis.  Ever present, unvanquishable, as consuming as the darkness that it represented.  Loneliness.  I’m a very sociable person.  I’m happiest when I’m surrounded by my friends.  Like at my birthday potluck where everyone was roasting me and telling embarrassing stories about my shenanigans or having a heart to heart with my bestie in the parking lot of Target.  Moving back to slow-paced suburban Arcadia, “Community of Homes”, from the bustling city life in urban SF required a lot of adjustments.  Gone are the catch up lunch dates with girl friends.  No more spontaneously calling out the boys after a crappy work day to happy hour. Sayonara to coming home to Anthony’s “what’s up playa?”, Daniel’s “ballin!”, Steve’s taco bell, and James stretching in the living room.  Au revoir to the weekly email chains of weekend activities.  Good bye SF.  Good bye to all the daily interactions with the people who are irreplaceable in my life.

It’s a lot to deal with.  I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty depressed in the beginning, going as far as becoming a “silly emo little girl”.  It took almost pushing away the few people I had left in my life to make me realize that wallowing in self pity wasn’t the way to go.  Shit happens, don't bitch, be a man.  –Winston Churchill… paraphrased.  I vowed to make the most of my new life here.  If Michael Cera can win the girl, time and time again as a different nerd in each movie, I can live happily in Arcadia. 

All it took was rediscovering the simple joys that I used to love as a child.  I got a library card.  Started writing again.  Hung out at friend’s houses.  Started insanity with Jeff.  Basketball. Spent time with family. Boba.

It’s a work in progress but I can honestly say that in the past month, I’ve settled in and am back to my normal confident, exuberant, obnoxious, perverted, active, caring self.  Although if you ask Sol and Jeff, I still sound like a silly little girl.  But they’ve been saying that my entire life.  I hate my friends... =)