Today is my 32nd birthday.

Nobody at work other than my coworker Jesse knows it's my birthday today. I've only made a couple friends in the city so I'll be meeting up with one of them, Chuck, a 56-year-old eccentric nurse who only wears Hawaiian shirts and shoes with springs for heels, after work at Milk Bar, which I'm only choosing because I know they'll get me plastered for next to nothing. Graham, Sissy, and Eddo came across the bay last night to enjoy pre-birthday dinner and billiards with me, but it didn't exactly go as planned, as Sissy reached her liquor threshold and an angry climax was reached at about 11:30pm, when she stormed out of a bar in the Mission and intended to get herself home drunk and alone, which I could not in good conscience allow. The boys went after her, and as I waited for the bus, depressed that my night with my only friends had been cut short and that the midnight hour was quickly approaching and I was now alone, a man asked me if he could buy a cigarette. As I always do, I gave him one free of charge, and halfway through the bus ride he thanked me with a 3 Musketeers bar, which briefly lifted my spirits. I got back to the Tenderloin and began serpentining the streets for Patrick, who had said he'd be on my block for midnight, but had likely forgotten. After the shit storm I had just experienced, I just wanted a hug and a friendly face, and to not feel completely alone at the moment the day turned from August 1st to August 2nd. But my search was unsuccessful, and midnight came with me sitting alone on my balcony table, crying, coughing, and sipping Ancient Age from the frozen bottle Graham had gifted me hours before and that was now 2/3 imbibed.

I'm trying not to be bummed about being mostly alone on my birthday, but frankly, I am. It bums me the fuck out in every conceivable way. I miss my boyfriend, I miss my dog, I miss my parents, I miss August weather that actually feels like August weather and doesn't instead resemble Edinburgh on a particularly gloomy day. I'm tired of my relationships with the people I'm closest with existing primarily over the phone, and even though I know that's all only temporary, coping on my birthday is difficult. I typically have great birthdays because I hold low expectations for them, and treat them as if they were just another day. It's pretty easy for a normal day to turn into a great day when everybody's automatically being nice to you, hugging you, and buying everything for you. It's a birthday trick that hasn't steered me wrong yet, but today just doesn't feel that way. Falling amidst a period of time when I've already felt lonely and isolated, it's particularly hard to keep my chin up today, because a birthday is a day most people like to celebrate, and I'm not able to celebrate with those I really want to. Chuck is a wonderful person, and I suspect we will become close friends, but right now, on this day, he's not Robin or Wusty or Turkey or my parents or Amanda or Hank or Susie or Perry or Meg or Cam or even fuckin' PK or any of the people who make me feel a sense of home and inclusion. At least not yet. And alternatively, the crew at Milk Bar all warmed up to me quickly and then never bothered to pick up the phone after I stopped coming around, which seems to be the case for most people I've met out here thus far.

This transition has been extremely hard on me. I've suffered through every obstacle thrown my way and have generally tried regardlessly to stay optimistic and positive, but sometimes it weighs heavily on me. I've been living without any of my things, any of my people, without my companion, without my dog, without any legitimate human interaction for the 8 hours that make up the work day, and I keep waking up and doing it every day, knowing that it will get better with time. But being in a long-distance relationship with someone who's not adept at phone communication is challenging, frustrating, and discouraging, as I'm not getting quite the amount of support that I'd ideally like, and therefore have to basically make it myself, with mantras, peace and quiet, self-communication, and weed. Most days I do alright. Other days prove more challenging than others. No matter how low I could possibly make my expectations for my birthday this year, the year I decided to pick up and move 3,000 miles across the country unaccompanied, I should have at least expected it to be one of the difficult days.

I'm trying to make myself write as much as possible, partially to keep my creative mind sharp in an otherwise not-so-creative work environment, and partially to make sure I continue to appear productive when I've got nothing to do for at least 20 hours out of every week I've worked so far. It beats the hell out of chain smoking to pass the time and feels good to be participating in a creative outlet. For me it was always either writing, designing, or photographing, and I submerge myself entirely in one at a time. If I'm not doing at least one, I become depressed and feel like I'm not utilizing the creative mind that I consider to be one of my greatest assets.

That said, today's the first day I really don't know what to write about, so I think as a prompt I'll talk about something everybody has an easy time talking about when it's something that exists in their lives: Love, and more specifically, MY love, my partner, my companion, my person, Robin. So let's start at the beginning.
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This requires a little bit of back story. I was in a long distance relationship with a guy named Kozmo (pictured above) who lived in Detroit. We been dating about six months and were pretty good about traveling the distance to see each other, but the majority of our relationship existed in text messages and phone calls. We had a mutual understanding that while we were apart, it was OK for us to sleep with other people, but we were monogamous when we were in the same state, and in the meantime we were obligated to let the other person know if a sexual relationship with someone else was beginning to transform into something more serious. On my end, I didn't see anyone else, but Kozmo would tell me that he often slept with friends on a platonic level. This looseness in our monogamy even lead to me finding him in the shower with another girl... on my birthday. To avoid launching into too many details and making this post about him, I'll just say that Kozmo fucking sucked, and the only reason our relationship lasted as long as it did was strictly because it was long-distance; the more face-to-face time I spent with Kozmo, the more unlikeable he became to me. He was very self-righteous and despite often having no money to his name, no job, and no legitimate ambitions in life, he was no stranger to telling me everything I should change about myself to become better, i.e. more like him. In his mind, he had all the answers I needed to become my best self, and he was never shy in telling me this through constant criticism. He always justified whatever shitty thing he was doing and always condemned anything that I was doing, no mater what it was. He once criticized my hobby of billiards because being in a bar atmosphere wasn't appealing to him and he didn't understand why I liked it, which I attribute again to the fact that he never had any money. He asked what I wanted to do one day and I responded that I'd like to play some pool, because I hadn't all week, and his response was simply, "Why?" as he shrugged begrudgingly and rolled his eyes at my request. But before I had realized any of this, I was still dating him, and had a flight booked for the beginning of December to go out to Detroit and see him. I didn't know it at the time, but that would be the last time I would see him.

That's because, fast forward to the day before Thanksgiving, 2015, I was across from the divorce court at a bar called Esox. I had just ghosted an awful Tinder date that I had only gone on as a social experiment and admittedly out of boredom. Dipping around the corner and away from my "date", I found myself at Esox looking to play a couple games of pool and tell a familiar face about the comically awful experience I had just had with a drunk Tinderer on a crutch.

​It's funny to think that at the moment you meet the love of your life, you likely have no idea that this stranger you've just struck up a conversation with is going to become an incredibly important aspect of your life and your future. In that moment, Robin was just a person to talk to; someone to joke about botched date experiences with while waiting for a beer. In that moment I was still Kozmo's girlfriend, and just as random to Robin as he was to me. I'd never been unfaithful to Kozmo and at that time still didn't know that we'd be broken up in less than two week's time and I'd be sprinting through the Detroit airport desperately trying to catch my plane so I could get the fuck out of Michigan and my horrible relationship. While engulfed in excellent albeit slightly drunken conversation with my new bar-mate Robin, I saw the Tinder date I'd just escaped trying to enter the bar, and I turned to Robin and asked him politely if he would do me the incredible service of making out with me, so that this guy would get the hint that I wasn't interested. Robin, despite never being one for PDA, didn't want to turn down the "hot, stinky girl" asking him to kiss her, and obliged politely. When I came up for air, the Tinder date had left, and I had just experienced my first kiss with the man I had no idea I'd still be kissing 3 years later.

Even though I ended up going home with Robin that night, and spending multiple more days and nights with him in the weeks to come, I did not consider Robin relationship material when I first started hanging out with him, and not just because I was still with Kozmo. He showed signs of his youth and I wasn't sure that someone like him would be able to keep up with someone like me. I wondered if he had even ever met anybody quite like me before. I remember feeling like "I could never take a shower with this guy, it just wouldn't feel right." He had some sloppy drunk tendencies and also hadn't graduated into the phase of adulthood in which a bedroom floor is actually visible underneath the thick layer of clothing scattered all around it. He didn't look anything like any guy I'd ever dated and I assumed before getting to know him that he was slightly on the basic side (wrong, but I've had plenty of time to learn how wrong that snap judgement was). Nevertheless, we continued to hang out often, and even though I didn't want to sleep with him until I knew what the status of my relationship with Kozmo was, we continued kissing and sleeping in the same bed. I knew that I liked him, but still didn't believe I could ever "date" him. He made me laugh and made me feel beautiful, and I could tell he was enamored with me but remained incredibly patient while I figured out what was going on. The more time I spent with Robin, the less I liked Kozmo, and the less I even thought about him. But I still had my flight booked and still planned on making my visit to Detroit, and Robin was well in the know about my current status.
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Fast forward again to my last day in Detroit. I spent a week and a half in Kozmo's company and it had been exhausting and completely unenjoyable. Most days I just kept silent while he hung out and drank outrageous amounts of coffee for hours while doing crossword puzzles and I awkwardly sat around not knowing what to say or do. I never laughed. I was always awkward and uncomfortable. Kozmo thought he was like a gift to me, and one I should utilize, but every day I spent with him just made me draw further away from him. Every day I was in Detroit, I found myself thinking of Robin; guiltily daydreaming of his kiss and his touch and the way he made me laugh in the way you do when someone doesn't even realize how funny they are. Even on the plane ride to Detroit, I found myself sending songs-of-the-day to Robin, leaning my head against the window to watch the world go by underneath, thinking about the next time I'd get to see him, and completely not caring to think about the boyfriend I was actually on my way to see. And whether because it was obvious or because Kozmo was a complete fucking piece of shit, the distance between us culminated until my last night there, when Kozmo became black out drunk and we proceeded to get into a massive argument that would lead to him calling me no less than a hundred times to scream incoherently at me. I slept at his friend Veronica's house that night, spooning with his other friend Stretch who I had always felt close with and who had been there for me the night before while I realized how much I really didn't like Kozmo or have any interest whatsoever in dating him anymore.

The next morning Veronica drove me to the airport, but due to her fear of the highway, we only took back roads which took about 30 minutes longer, and I found myself late for my flight, sprinting so furiously through the airport trying to make it that I tripped over my own feet and ate shit on the carpeted floor of the Detroit airport. Luckily, the Detroit airport is in Detroit, which means it's pretty much always desolate, and nobody saw me fly face first into the ground. I ended up making it onto my plane, dead last, huffing and puffing for breath, only seconds before they closed the gate door. Meghan picked me up from the Boston airport that night with two Twisted teas and a bottle of Fireball, and I proceeded to call Robin's work and leave a message for him (unknowingly through his manager) that said simply, "be in my bed tonight." Three hours later, I arrived home, and there he was, waiting for newly-single me to jump excitedly into bed with him and finally be his.
​

Three years later, we're 3000 miles apart for the time it takes us to organize our lives on both sides of the country so that we can begin the next chapter of our lives together in the city of San Francisco. Three years later, it is utterly amazing to me that I almost managed to make enough excuses not to date Robin. Three years later, I've never dated anyone like Robin and unsurprisingly have never had a relationship as strong and as successful as the one we have. I have never been so sure of the fact that I will marry someone as I have been with him, even when I was engaged to marry someone else and was a solid 85% of the way through planning the wedding. Robin is my companion, my partner, and my best friend. Never before have I met or been with someone with whom my "alone time" can be spent and still feel like "alone time." I never knew what it felt like to have such comfort in my companionship with someone, or what a relationship could feel like without intimidation or some kind of "challenge" to it that I thought was the secret to keeping relationships interesting. It is effortless to love him, even when both our sets of imperfections make it difficult sometimes. We and all of our friends who have been around to see the progression of our relationship know that we are in it for the long haul, and our relationship is one that others aspire to find for themselves. We have traveled to different countries together, experienced change in our career lives together, been parents to my dog Otto together, and made a lovely home on Decatur Street together. We talk about marriage and a possible family in the future (of kids or dogs, not quite sure) and I know that he will be by my side no matter what life throws our way or what adventures we decide to seek. We love each others' families and they love us together, and even though I may be a little rougher around the edges than what his mother had envisioned for him, it is safe to say they can tell at this point that I'm not going anywhere.

We are growing together and improving together, rather than through judgement and intimidation the way Kozmo and plenty of other ex-boyfriends I've had clearly preferred to do it. Our changes are natural and caused by inspiration in the other to become better partners and better people. Robin has helped me become less selfish and less anxious, and work on my temper and tendency to make a big deal out of things that aren't worth it. In turn I have helped Robin mature and take initiative in his life where he may have not otherwise. He's found a career path outside of the kitchen that he truly enjoys and wants to pursue. He has made an effort to become cleaner in his home life and I have found the strength to sometimes step back and take a breath and brush small things off, and to generally become more of a patient person. I wholeheartedly believe that with more time spent together, we will continue to grow and change and mature together, bettering ourselves every step of the way because we have the support of the other. If he asked me to marry him tomorrow, I would say yes without a moment's hesitation, which is a realization I think I made the moment my face hit the faded carpet of the Detroit airport.

The Tenderloin is rarely peoples' first choice when it comes to San Francisco neighborhoods to call home. Most people want to live in a nice apartment in Cole Valley or Inner Richmond, or if they're willing to chop off and sell their body parts, perhaps a contemporary high rise in SoMa or a gorgeous victorian in Russian Hill. The Mission, while still very much the Mission, has become gentrified, and North Beach for some reason has always just felt completely out of reach unless you've inherited an incredible amount of, um, luck. Chinatown is bustling and eclectic, but should you manage to find a place there, you're usually crammed into a glorified doll house that an Asian family of 6 would somehow manage to live comfortably in. Over the last couple decades, San Francisco rent has skyrocketed and pushed many of its residents out to the East Bay, or out of the Bay Area entirely. But one neighborhood has managed to avoid the gentrification and hold onto its cultural roots that make it what it is. This is due to many underlying reasons, but one major reason in particular, which this Reddit user points out better than I'd like to attempt explaining:

In a nutshell, the Tenderloin CAN'T change. So it's remained the same glorious, shit-ridden homeless mecca that it's always been. This gives the TL a terrible reputation because on the surface, it is indeed fucking disgusting. But in my experience, it's common for people to misunderstand dirtiness for danger. Now, I'm not naive; I don't pretend that there aren't elements of the Tenderloin that are in fact dangerous. Crime DOES happen there. Crazy, untrustworthy people DO live there. But what I will say is that those things exist literally EVERYWHERE in a city. If you don't have your wits about you in the Tenderloin, you can absolutely get mugged. But contrast that with the fact that if you don't have your wits about in Potrero, you'll more likely absolutely get shot. And straight up just fuck walking alone in Oakland after dark. Simply put, any area of a city is dangerous if you're a dumbass. I'm knocking on wood as I write this, but I managed to live in the TL at the tender, stupid age of my-early-twenties, and nothing that bad ever happened to me, which is why I felt totally comfortable moving there again, despite it's seedy, poopy reputation. That's not to say that I won't be smartening up and equipping myself with a stun gun and a knife, I just don't anticipate having to use it in the TL as much as I would elsewhere.

All that said, I thought I'd compile a list of slightly more lighthearted tips for someone living in the Tenderloin for the first time. Robin has only ever walked through the Tenderloin once, while drunk with me and two other girls, and we were up the hill enough on Geary that I'm not sure he's really gotten to *experience* it yet. I know he'll like it, because he loved Allston (different but similar in some ways), and because it's central, and because if you want to jump head first into the cultural anomalies of San Francisco, what better place to do it than the good ol' Tenderloin.

Literally. This is literally to avoid poop. When you're walking in the TL, you cannot look around above you until you know what is around below you. An amateur comedian in SF has a great bit about how tourists who take a wrong turn exploring Union Square end up in the Tenderloin, and walk around like they're Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom. Alternatively, seasoned veterans of the Tenderloin walk around those sidewalks like they're Michael Jackson on stage doing the god damn moonwalk, shuffling over and around and in and out of literal piles of shit like they're the King of Pop. I find this bit to be a perfectly accurate description of what it's like to walk in the TL. At any moment of realization, you have to be ready to shift the entire weight of your body to avoid taking the step you were about to take. Maybe you'll stumble or step awkwardly, but at least you won't have poo on your shoes.

This comes with a disclaimer. I want you to know that if you live in the Tenderloin, eventually, you WILL step in shit. It is unavoidable. It is an inevitable and unfortunate part of this life. It has happened to every single one of us and friend, it will happen to you too. Consider it a right of passage. Try not get angry, just accept that we've all experienced it, and now you're one of us too. Welcome home, friend.
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I can't stress this one enough. I wholeheartedly believe that part of the reason I never got fucked with in the years I lived in the Tenderloin was because the homeless people who live there knew I wasn't some asshole looking down on them as I rushed back to my apartment. When they spoke to me, I spoke to them back. I like to call this by a very complex ideology that is far above the heads of many people in this world, called "General Human Decency." Seriously- the people in the Tenderloin are just that: people, and usually they appreciated being treated as such. Don't you?

I've found that actually many many MANY of the homeless people in the TL are incredibly friendly. I attribute my amazing relationship with Patrick to my openness to speaking when spoken to. Because Patrick knew I was good people, other residents of the streets knew I was good people. It's a wild concept, really: I was nice to people and they were nice to me back. Sure, there are plenty of people passed out in the middle of the sidewalk with their pants around their ankles, and plenty of people frantically scratching their welts as they pick through the sidewalks for loose crack; you don't need to talk to these people. You don't need to talk to everybody, but just try, I implore you, TRY to talk to the people who talk to you. If somebody says "Have a nice day," say "You as well," or simply "Thank you." If you ignore them, if you remain invisible, they won't remember you at a time when you might need them to. Patrick helped me to realize that they truly are people just as anyone else is; at some point their lives took a different turn and they ended up here. They're not all drug addicts or gang members or likely to rob you to get their next fix. To most of them it is simply about survival, and interestingly enough, some of them don't seem to mind it at all. I know for a fact that Patrick is smart enough, well-mannered enough, and has enough wits about him to shape up his life, get a job, a home, etc. He COULD do it, if he wanted to. But he remains here in the Tenderloin where he's been for decades now, somewhere between Leavenworth and Larkin, just as humble, kind, generous, and content as ever.

The other day I was walking with the leasing agent who ended up selling me on the apartment I moved into yesterday. We met up at a tiny studio on Turk and Hyde, one of the worst intersections in the TL. The studio looked a bit small and I wasn't crazy about the corner (we'll get to that later), so I asked her if there was anything available in the Towers (a block up and over). She said she had something in my price range so we began walking together. On our way there, a friendly homeless man began walking beside us, and he greeted us with a friendly "How y'all doing today, ladies?" Not in a creepy way, just in a friendly way, like he actually cared to know. I acknowledged his gesture and responded (feeling genuinely good as I usually do when I walk through the TL), "Very well today, man, thanks, and you?" He continued to smile and walk with us for the remainder of the block, having friendly small talk along the way. The leasing agent remained silent and let me do the talking, which I handled as though I'd known this homeless person for years of my life. "You ladies look lovely today, I hope you have a wonderful day," he said, as we began to part ways. I thanked him and he said, "ya see there's still nice people in the world!" to which I responded, "Yeah; most of 'em are in the Tenderloin."
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There are intersections in the TL that are better and worse than others. For example, it is generally a good rule of thumb to avoid Jones and Taylor streets. They're just that much nastier than all the other streets, and a common meeting/sleeping ground for the seediest members of the neighborhood. Usually where either of these streets meet up with Turk street are good corners to avoid. There are shelters around these areas and oftentimes when people don't show up early enough to claim a spot in them, they camp outside, which generates a population. Turk and Golden Gate are the perpendicular equivalents to Jones and Taylor, and thus nice to avoid.

Anything above O'Farrell street is usually a safe bet. O'Farrell and Geary are still considered the Tenderloin, but when you walk up one more block to Post, you're entering TenderNob or Nob Hill area. Simply put, the hills start to get steeper the further you go up, and many of the homeless don't have the capacity to climb that high, so the higher you go, the less dense a population of homeless you'll see. I know that when Robin's parent's come to visit, I'll likely take them up Geary and then down Leavenworth. That way I'll expose them to the least amount of grossness so that they won't entirely lose their shit, or step in someone else's. They'll still freak out probably, but the more I can shield them from some of the harsher realities of the Tenderloin, the better.

That said, the lingering stench of pee is another inconvenient truth that eventually your nose will get used to. Your mother's nose will not. Ever. Because she's your mom and you live in a neighborhood that smells like pee and at the moment of your birth she inherited an ability to smell when you're not living the perfect life she had envisioned for you. But oh well. Just hope and pray that when you find your apartment, your lobby isn't carpeted. And if it is, sorry, it's gonna smell like pee. Marissa lives in a beautiful junior 1BR on Geary and Leavenworth. She's one of the classiest girls I've ever met in my life. She's successful and does well for herself. And her lobby smells like pee. In my apartment hunt I was shown a gorgeous studio out of my budget even higher up on the hill on Post, and the lobby smelled like pee. Your actual apartment won't smell like pee, unless you pee all over it, but you'll have to get used to the fact that once you exit, the smell will be there.

On that note and to circle back to Rule #1: Always look down, never assume that any liquid on the sidewalk is water. In fact, if it's in any kind of "stream" form, step over that shit, er, that pee. Yeah, because that's pee. And while stepping in pee isn't nearly as bad as stepping in poop, it's still not on the list of things I want to step in, like a giant penn filled with St. Bernard puppies. Work on your MJ footwork because generally, all bodily functions excreted onto the street are to be avoided.
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I remember first moving there and watching the world out the giant window I had on a ground level apartment on Leavenworth between Eddy and Ellis. In polarity with the title of this section, we called my window TL TV, or Tenderloin Television. But what we saw out that window was anything but television. There were times when I first moved to the Tenderloin that I was just purely shocked by what I was witnessing; that peoples' lives really could take turns that would leave them here, doing whatever it was they were doing. Across the street was the unsavory entrance to the Hotel Western, an SRO hotel, which we nicknamed The Gateway to Hell, because it was clear that nobody who entered it was up to anything virtuous. The first times I saw people splayed out across the street with soiled jeans and no shoes, the first times I saw crack being smoked casually on the sidewalk, the first times I saw gang violence (which thankfully seems to have exited the TL since I last resided there), I remember it feeling like a bitter pill that didn't swallow well and got a little stuck on the way down. It was just plain shocking, and at first it was hard. It was saddening, really. It wasn't so much a fear as much as it was a reality check and a sympathetic feeling. You realize there's nothing you can do for these people; nothing that anybody can do for these people, and you wonder how many wrong steps they took on their journey through life to get where they were.

I can't say you ever completely get used to it, but perhaps you get a little jaded to it. It becomes less and less of a shock to you the more you see how common it is, how most people turn and look the other way when they see someone else's reality that makes them uncomfortable. I think it's important to look though. I think it's an important thing to see a part of our world that you've never seen before, and learn from it. Whether you like it or not, this place exists and so do the people in it. It's not television, it's not a fictional world that you can just turn off. Exposing oneself to other cultures is no new thing in the process of "opening your third eye" and discovering the truths of who you are; if American people send themselves on spirit quests to India and Africa to submerge themselves in unfamiliar cultures in an attempt to learn more about themselves, the Tenderloin should be no different just because it's on a different level. In my own experience, I don't think I ever would have gained the insight and the smarts to live unharmed in the 7th, 8th, and 9th Wards of New Orleans had I not spent the time I did in the Tenderloin first.

I'll leave you with an excerpt from an article written for KQED by someone who shares the same love for what makes the Tenderloin endearing as I do:

I've just bravely signed an entire year lease at a new spot on Eddy Street, so I'm sure over the course of the next year (or more?) of living back in the TL, I'll recognize more ways to help my fellow humans survive their stays there and come out with a positive, albeit real opinion. So get out there, don't be an asshole, and don't step in shit.

I always liked and generally preferred to be alone, until I put myself in a situation where I didn't have a choice in the matter. When I decided to move to San Francisco, I knew Robin and I would have to be apart for a while, but I figured I'd be OK because I still had some lingering friends in the city, and a few close friends outside of it in Berkeley. But I think I underestimated just how little time I'd actually be able to spend with those people. My work schedule owns my week and I'm barely able to wake up in the morning when I haven't had a drop of alcohol the night before, let alone when I'm handicapped by the brutal hangovers that have blessed me in my 30s, so I'm unable to really go out and enjoy myself on weekday nights like I could in Vermont (I guess freelance was good for that).

When I came out here I anticipated meeting people and making friends at work, but nobody at work hangs out with each other outside of it, and more bizarrely, nobody even really talks to each other in the offices, and when they do, it's not above a whisper because everyone's so awkward about talking or making any sound whatsoever. The other day one of the girls in the office accidentally had her Spotify linked to her work computer instead of her phone, so randomly, like a siren blessing the deepest depths of hell, music started to play. Hark! What is this beautiful sound I doth hear with mine ears? Is it... But how... It sounds like... Could it be... Music? Bless my soul and this sweet sweet sound! It went on for about 30 seconds before everyone realized it wasn't a ringtone, and then everyone awkwardly shifted in their seats while two grown men frantically attempted to stop the tune and restore the office to its normal state of deafening silence. And let me just say, that that one minute and thirty seconds of an actual, audible melody coming from those shitty laptop speakers was the most comfortable minute and thirty seconds I have spent in this office since my first day here, and maybe that one other day where I actually had some work to do and actually knew how to do it.

Since nobody talks to each other, and nobody hangs out with each other, work days are excruciatingly lonely, which only succeeds in making them excruciatingly long. I spend lunch breaks completely alone, when I even bother to take them and don't opt to skip lunch and leave work an hour early. I smoke far more cigarettes than I'd like to just because it's an excuse to get up and move around, particularly away from the World's Most Muted Office (Tagline: "Shhh"). I check my phone constantly, hoping for any kind of communication from the outside world, but it is limited considering that somebody decided to build a copper museum in basically the middle of the woods and make everyone work in the basement of it. Going outside to smoke provides not only an average of 7,000 extra steps a day because you basically have to walk a mile to get outside and to a respectable distance, but also an extra moment of exhilaration that somebody might have texted me and it might finally come through. I sit on a variety of benches off the property and sigh when it reaches the end, because I've run out of things to look at on my phone and I can only kill a couple more minutes sitting here until I have to go back to the cave of solitude and pretend to have something to work on for the next two hours until it's subtle enough for me to slip out again. Sometimes, I even say fuck it and light up another one, even though it always tastes like shit. 

I also anticipated meeting people at the Red Victorian, the hostel-type community house I stayed at for the first month I was out here. There's dozens of rooms and different people staying in them all the time. There were 4 bunks in the room I stayed in and different people filtered in and out of the other beds during my time there, but people rarely made contact with other people, and only one 23-year-old Australian techie transplant was cool or brave enough to engage with the other people in the room, making friends with everyone for his week's visit before jet setting off to Hong Kong because money and youth and possibility and youth and money. I found that typically after work, I was so exhausted from somehow successfully making it through another day in San Francisco without having a complete meltdown that all I really wanted to do was rest. I didn't have the energy or the capacity to talk to other people, or try to make friends. Being social with new people has oftentimes just felt like yet another chore or task I need to complete, on top of the thousand other things I've had to do on my own since getting here. I found that if it was something I could put off, I might as well until I'm less physically and emotionally exhausted by life. So as a result, I met few people at the Red Victorian, a house where there probably would have been a multitude of excellent people to befriend, had I felt I was able to.

Many of my friends who are still out here from our college years together, of which there are about 3, all have their own lives and social circles and cultures and happenings already established. I just found out my friend Ryan who was my connection at Google just got engaged to his girlfriend and is expecting twins. Fucking twins, dude. I don't expect anybody expecting twins to give two shits about me, and yes I meant that pun. Marissa is a beautiful, free-spirited party girl who makes her own schedule around her party lifestyle which usually leads to her doing the bulk of her work between the hours of 2 and 4am. She's the kind of girl who won't call you first, but will always call you back, and I am always guaranteed a good time with her, as much as I am always guaranteed a hangover the next day. Craig is an amazing friend who is always participating in something awesome and often invites me along, and who is always trying to help out my situation as much as possible, showing me a great time and offering to stay with his girlfriend so I can sleep in his bed even though I had just traumatically left a bedbug-infested punk house. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't always worried about burdening him with the transitionary phase of my life, and also if I told you I wasn't and wouldn't always be a little intimidated by Craig, simply because of how high up he is on the "cool guy" scale. Which isn't his fault by any means, it just deters me from being able to hang out with him regardless of whether I'm in a let's-have-fun mood or a I-just-want-to-ugly-cry-and-eat-spaghetti-on-the-toilet mood.

I'm moving into my apartment today and will be spending my first night in a place that is actually mine, and ONLY mine. It will be ONLY mine until the end of August when Robin comes out permanently, at which point it will be our's, and ONLY our's. It's weird that I am excited to be alone there, because being alone in a place that is your's is different from being alone in a place full of other people. Sometimes the largest crowds are where one can feel the most alone, and I have definitely been experiencing that intensely over the last month. I am hoping that with the ability to poop in my OWN bathroom, one that doesn't have 30 other people pooping in it throughout the day, will help me to cope with the painful loneliness I've been feeling since I've been out here. I'm hoping that the ability to take as long a shower as I want, and stand around naked for as long as I want, and play my music as loud as I want without headphones on, and for fucks sake TALK TO MYSELF will help the remaining couple months alone go by faster and smoother and happier. Maybe I'll finally be able to recharge and gain something from my solitude, rather than feel myself crushing underneath the weight of it. I am hoping it will be productive, healthy, and nourishing. I am also hoping it won't suck, because today is my very first payday, and I just realized that I totally can't afford it. 💁🏻

Between the years of 2010 and 2013, I lived in New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans, being one of the most magical, cultural, colorful, beautiful, eccentric, and fun places one can ever hope to visit, is also in my experience one of the most terrible, toxic, fucked up places one can ever be unfortunate or stupid enough to live. Granted, I may be bias based on my personal experience there; plenty of people I used to know there still live there and love it there as much as they did the first day they set foot on that swampy Louisiana soil. In contrast, though, plenty of people I used to know there have since died from drug overdoses, health problems, and murder. So I guess you could call it subjective...

Anyway, I considered those years in retrospect some of the worst and unhealthiest of my life. I was very unwell during my time there, and in January of 2013 when I finally managed to escape on a permanent basis, I was thankful to have gotten out alive and before it had caused any serious life-long issues, aside from the post-traumatic stress I took with me to intensely psychoanalyze over the course of the 5 years that followed. Attached above is a video of the PechaKucha I did a few years later after I'd had some time to dwell on and evaluate my experiences there. In said presentation, I contrasted what I considered my most vibrant, wonderful, extraordinary photos that I had taken there, with the darkness and harsh realness of my adventure there. In seven minutes and twenty two seconds, I made a good handful of grown men cry. My voice shook uncontrollably as I spoke with complete vulnerability of how I wondered if the ceiling fan would support the weight of me, while photos of beautiful girls in baby doll dresses and gorgeous men paying guitar in the sunshine showed above me. Unfortunately I was forced to cut the photo of two middle-aged men having sex in a motel room in Metairie, but even without my climactic photo, I made the desired impact with my story, one that required no embellishment or exaggeration; it was as sadly unbelievable as it was sadly real.

Why do I bring this up? Why do I allow myself to fall down the rabbit hole of the dark years and awful hardships and grotesque memories of New Orleans? Because last night, I moved my things from my quaint, colorful, shared room at the Red Victorian, to my new "home" on Haight and Stanyan, and felt for the first time since January 2013 like I was back there. Not physically there, but emotionally. Like I was back on a crummy old hotel mattress with no sheets and listening to all my roommates have sex at the same time in every other room. Like at any moment a rodent could crawl through my window or floor. Like I'd start coughing up a lung and wouldn't be able to stop or breathe for a solid hour. I moved into the room I'm to be subletting for the next two months, and realized I had just agreed and paid to live in a reincarnation of the worst period of my life. At one point in my life I may have considered it glamorous to live in a punk house, but that only lasted until I moved out of the punk house and into adulthood, where dishes and towels are clean, and there's always toilet paper on the roll, and the bed doesn't have a lingering smell of piss when you lay your head on the pillow. In the frenzy of transition, and the fear of failing my move to San Francisco a second time, I moved into a punk house on Upper Haight with 12 other roommates without a second thought of how depressed I'd be when I finally spent my first night there, and all its reminders of a person I didn't want to be anymore became a reality.

To be completely transparent, I'm scared of what parts of myself I'm sacrificing just to be here. I'm scared to tell my mom that I've picked up smoking again and that I've completely lost my appetite and often go entire days without eating. I drink through hunger, I drink through boredom, I drink through loneliness, through horniness, through fear, through drunkenness, and even through contentment. I'm scared of the fact that without my dog, I don't seem to force any kind of routine responsibility on myself. I'm scared of the fact that without any close friends nearby, I talk to anyone and everyone, which aids both in making me more social, and making me realize how many people I fucking hate. I've made myself more vulnerable in this move than I have since the day I stood up on that stage and told an audience of 100 people that I once sold my underwear on Bourbon Street for $69. And now I'm living in a womanizing douchebag's dirty room that smells of pee and feet while he moves to Portland to become another hipster who can't win the hipster contest. I cried myself to sleep last night, wishing I had my dog to hold close and cry into, while the hookah bar below my room blasted reggaeton until 2AM and the sounds of drunk roommates echoed from every corner. I tried to close the window to gain some semblance of shutting myself out from the rest of the world, only to realize the giant hole in it covered with cardboard, and its inability to close all the way without breaking more. I awoke to scuffling sounds in the hallway, only to find nothing moving outside, and wondered what kind of creature must be living inside the wall, and when it would shut the fuck up and just die there so it might mask the pee smell. I found myself knee deep in my past self, only this time I was smart enough to know that I didn't want to be there, which only made the fact that I had no choice in the matter even worse.

So as literally none of you know because I have not told a single person about this blog and don't have it displayed anywhere whatsoever on my website, I've been on the job hunt. I left my job as Art Director at a company I'd worked at for nearly 5 years in late September. I won't get into the gory details of the departure, but it's safe to say the break was not clean and I still get pissy when my boyfriend goes there to hang out, because to do so without getting a stinging pain in my temples, an anxiety attack, and an insatiable urge to tear down the walls with a sledgehammer while Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" plays at volume 11 would be, essentially, impossible. But let's move on.

If you're new to planet Earth, or have been living either under a rock or in Denmark, then I'll give you a little back story: The year is 2017, and job hunting is a fucking bitch. Like many things ruined by baby boomers and new-wave feminists, to find a job that actually succeeds at stimulating your brain, lifestyle, and wallet all simultaneously, is about as achievable as UK citizenship if your name is Mohamed. The long and short of it is that I have sent my resume to no less than 75 places at this point, some of which I'd love to work, and some of which I honestly have no idea what the company even is or does, and what I have gotten back is nothing more than every form of rejection, from friendly and encouraging, to completely automated. My quickest turnaround time for a rejection so far has been 3 minutes.

The hardest part for me right now is that I'm trying to find work in a state that is 3,000 miles away from the state in which I currently reside. And while I'm literally ready to pick up my shit and move across the country at a moment's notice, I worry about how many places are writing off my qualified resume and portfolio simply because they see that as a red flag. And with each rejection, San Francisco feels further and further away. Sure, some of the rejections are from those places you find via Indeed.com and their company and job descriptions are so vague and cryptic that you have absolutely no idea what the company is or even what your job would consist of, and the only thing you can really be sure of is that it would be incredibly boring. And those are often the rejections that are automated and sent from a no-reply email address so you couldn't even ask WHY they've decided not to pursue your application, which is even more frustrating when you're literally a mid-level graphic designer applying for a Mid-Level Graphic Designer position. All you want to know is WHY, and you have a right to know WHY, and in my case, you hope it's not because you live 3,000 miles away, and wonder if it's worth it to start lying and be prepared to board a plane the next day just in case they say "Can you come in tomorrow for an interview?" Um, yes. Yes, I definitely can. For you, potential, employer, the fucking world.

But perhaps the most confusing rejections are the friendly ones, because they imply, You're a fantastic designer and you're going to find work, but it's not going to be here, because it's 2017 and there are no jobs to be had, and even if we had a job for you, we'd only be able to pay you enough to live in a cardboard box in the Tenderloin. Don't get me wrong, it's good to get these rejections, because they assist in reminding me that I'm not just being rejected by all these other places and no-reply email phantoms because I suck. In fact, in about a half a dozen instances, employers have told me that I'm very talented and qualified, and that I'd be a great fit for their team, but there regrettably just isn't an open position at their firm. Check this one out:

Now if you've ever received a nicer or more reassuring rejection than that then you can just go fuck yourself because you're lying. But at the same time it's quite possibly the most frustrating thing to be told, You were perfect, you were just a little late. It beats the hell out of the automated responses, but it gets you no closer to changing your Facebook relationship status to "Employed." So here I am, 75 resumes and cover letters and copy-and-paste LinkedIn profile URLs later, and still without a job, with little hope in sight. To tell you this is discouraging would be an understatement, because at this point, I've fallen from hopeful and bright and seeking that dream job, to throwing my dreams in the back seat and taking a soul-sucker of a job just so I can finally get started with the next chapter of my life.

As someone who is aware of their talent and has often been told that it extends from the "Talented" realm to the "Gifted" realm, it's hard to face so much rejection, and to know that it's just become part of the process now. If you aren't ready and willing to get down in the shit-infested mud of the graphic design world, or go from being an Art Director on the East Coast to a Junior Designer on the West Coast, then you can kiss opportunity goodbye. I'm prepared to do whatever I have to do to get there, even if it means working in a cube with an obnoxiously content person popping their head over my cubicle wall every 15 minutes. If I gotta poop some designs out that don't mean shit to me every hour on the hour for a year, I'll do it. If that's the necessary first step to climbing some freakishly rickety ladder to my mother fucking rainbow designer dreams, I'll do it. Just please, for the love of God and all things holy that I don't even really believe in, give me a fucking job.

I guess I'll begin at midnight on December 31st, 2016, or I guess 12:01am on January 1st, 2017. That's when the Medicaid I'd had since my late ex-boyfriend impregnated me with a tiny little spawn of Satan that I would not entertain the possibility of birthing, turned into company-provided healthy insurance. In simpler terms, this was when health insurance was no longer free to me; I could no longer see the therapist that I'd been seeing for three years without paying, and being that she was good, that also meant she wasn't cheap. So aptly, this was when I stopped going entirely, because while I am a firm believer in the benefits of therapy, I had always considered it a luxury that those with larger salaries than my own could truly afford. You know, without compromising my wild drinking habits and footwear addiction.

It's weird; I've got a great life. Some of that greatness truly is great, and some of it is only great on paper. The staggering contrast between those things has begun to weigh on me, and thusly, I have revisited my age-old therapy of writing it all down, because honestly I have no idea what the fuck else to do. And because I know at least for now, nobody can see, and even if they could, they probably wouldn't care enough to read the ramblings of someone who appears to be depressed for no decent reason. But I can speak from years of experience here when I say: depression needs no reason.

Recently during a visit with my boyfriend's family in Florida, his father, who is notorious for documenting every moment of his family's life, entertained us with a slideshow of photos ranging in time from before my boyfriend's birth, to the family trip to Spain just last year. Meaning, from the 70s to the 2010s, I saw the family's every decade-based fashion decision and failure. But that was just a small aspect of the nostalgia I felt when looking through these photos. What I saw and reacted to even more so was the way life has changed for every single person as we know it based on the arrival of one earth-shattering invention: The Internet.

On the surface, the internet is a vast, incredible place. It is astronomical in its impact on the world. Now we can learn things on demand. We can communicate with people on the other side of the globe whenever and for whatever reason we want. We can evolve in almost every career-related capacity because of the wealth of knowledge it puts at our fingertips. We can have a better understanding of global events, and we can communicate about them based on territory and belief system. We can learn new languages and we can become our very own ill-informed doctors. And with the invention of the internet came the outstanding advancement of basically every kind of technology we had known. Functionality and performance of cameras, computers, and phones skyrocketed, until nobody was without. Ever.

In the age of technology, everyone's an expert, and therefore, nobody is. Now when we're bored we can pull out our pocket devises and play any number of games from the millions more that are being haphazardly invented every week. We can always have an excuse not to talk to people. We can spend hours scrolling mindlessly through the completely vapid happenings of our so-called friends, none of which bring us any sort of fulfillment because the majority of it is fake, and what's not fake just turns out to be a disgusting display of what humanity has become as a result of a) having too much information accessible to actually learn anything, and b) a perfectly socially acceptable outlet to display every little bit of information you don't actually know. Social media is just a perfect platform to lie, and how believable your lies are depends on how well you use flashy filters or use witty humor. The better the lie, the more people you have convinced that your ACTUAL every-day life isn't as boring and non-eventful as it truly is, and the more we succeed at lying to ourselves that other peoples' opinions of us and our fake lives actually matter or make any difference to our actual lives whatsoever. Because remember: we never have to remember anything anymore, because should we forget, the internet is right there to give us the answer we seek. And therefore, we remember nothing. We absorb nothing. We spend one week obsessing with the general populous over one thing, and move onto the next happening the following week, completely forgetting about the previous. 

See what that slideshow made me nostalgic for was what little life of my own I was lucky enough to experience before the creation of the Internet. When I knew that dialing 434-5475 would call my best friend Mandy Carmichael's house, but whether or not she'd actually be home or available or who would even answer the phone was unknown. When I would cure boredom by playing make-believe with my Legos, or just fucking going for a walk outside, or playing in the dirt in my yard, climbing trees and pretending I was a magical kitten with princess super powers. When getting somewhere unknown involved knowing how to read a map. When little brothers would go roller blading together, and when my family would play board games together. When entertainment, ACTUAL entertainment, not this fake sugar-coated shit, was so much easier to come by, and our expectations of fun and satisfaction were so much lower and therefore so much more attainable. But [sadly] as a [non-identifying but technically belonging] Millenial *shudder*, the Internet and I have come into adulthood together, and every little fucking idiosyncrasy, imperfection, brush with trauma, and personality disorder that I learned, the Internet, were it a person, would have experienced too. That means that when I was going through puberty, so was the Internet, and now, at full-grown adulthood, me and my ol' pal the Internet are just trying to figure out how to deal with all the excess baggage we developed, both mentally and physically. And all I want to do is shed the weight of it, but we've reached a time in history when an Internet-free diet is simply not acceptable, even when we know it kills every part of us that once mattered when it came to being a human, just living your life.

It was small for an apartment, but large for a studio, especially in Burlington, and for its size was not overpriced. The apartment was a perfect transition for him; we could finally have alone time together, which was important for us as a relatively new couple who couldn't keep our hands off each other, and was made even more blissful in its comparison to his previous roommates who were the type of people who lived under the delusion that nobody else in the world existed except for them. Sure, the shower was small, and there wasn't much cabinet or counter space, and Robin had no furniture to actually put in it, but at the time, we were just so happy to have space and time to ourselves.

Unfortunately, Robin had moved into the apartment in February, which with its proximity to work, at the time made the apartment seem perfect. But when the warmer months started to come, we realized that we really weren't as alone in that apartment as we thought we were.

See, it was clear that the guy who owned that house was making nothing short of a buttload from his tenants. The house looked small from the front, but when you saw it from the Smalley view, it absolutely towered. It was a fucking beast, with about four floors and what I'm sure was more than one apartment per floor. The studio where Robin lived was, quite literally, the basement of this house, which had been converted into the quaint little apartment. And I don't know if you've ever lived in a mother fucking basement, but if you haven't, I'll enlighten you on a little fact: It doesn't fucking belong to you. You may live there, but it belongs to the spiders.

They showed up small at first, completely non-threatening. Well, I guess I should say that even at their maximum sizes, these were still your average house spiders- as far as I know they're not harmful at all, and an average person who is not completely petrified of spiders, they're probably pretty useful at keeping the rest of the bugs and pests away. But I am not one of those people. Nay. Not even close. I see a spider and I absolutely fucking freeze in fear- I cannot move, even to run away screaming. They shake me to my very core and in one moment I am casually walking my unnecessarily large can of Twisted Tea to the recycling bin, only to be followed immediately by the sharp jolt of panic and anxiety that rushes my body upon noticing the spider just chillin' somewhere within ten feet of me. If I even see pictures of large spiders on the internet, I'm struck by the irrational fear of them crawling through my screen by the billions and using my body as a playground, and I'm left contorting in weird positions and cringing at a completely harmless computer screen. I even wanted to attach a picture of the kind of house spiders I'm talking about here, but that proved completely impossible immediately upon googling "house spider." Nope. No, thank you.

I tell you the story of the Basement Full of Spiders in, ironically, somewhat of a nostalgic sense, because this month, Robin and I took the next step in our relationship and moved in together, to a beautiful apartment on Decatur Street in the Old North End. So far, there are no spiders, but then again, it's March. However, it's definitely not a basement, so I remain hopeful. I tell this story because this morning, on my commute into work that took a little longer than two minutes flat and didn't involve any particularly stellar views of the lake, I realized that our WiFi network at our new apartment was still named after the studio, and that it was time to change it, in honor of the Basement Full of Spiders, and to retain the integrity and the validity of the basement, and all the spiders that dwell there.

So goodbye basement, and goodbye spiders. May the tenant who follows us not harbor a fear of spiders, or, for the sake of full disclosure, the occasional house centipede. But those guys are another story.