Bi-Coastal

I flew into Seattle very late last night, or maybe very early this morning, and by mid-day I was cruising up I-5 on my way to my sister's. The rolling landscape, the brilliant sky, the far off ridge of mountain peaks - it all felt like home. But it also made me sad because it is such a far cry from Brooklyn, which IS my home and has been for longer than anywhere else in my adult life. I love Brooklyn, I love NYC, and I love the Pacific Northwest, and I am torn because I want to have both all time. I wish I didn't have to choose.


Every time we come back to the NW, it gets harder. It gets harder because it is increasingly expensive and time-consuming. It gets harder because I am balancing my emotional and spiritual energy, my identity even, between two coasts. It gets harder because I am trying to maintain MANY relationships over very far distances.


I think I might be at a breaking point. I might be at the point when I can't maintain those relationships anymore, and they are going to start deteriorating. Maybe I have already reached that point and now I'm just at the point where I'm realizing it. I think I might be at the point where its no longer okay to split myself - my time, my heart, my dreams - between these two places.

The tensions are thickening. The unspoken (and sometimes VERY spoken) accusations are flying. There isn't time to address anything, mend anything. There's barely time to catch up, get some hugs, and get back on the plane.

The NW makes me love Brooklyn even more. Brooklyn makes me love the NW even more. I've long passed the chance to move back and pick up where I left off - the last three years have changed me. Maybe the changes are just the natural effects of that much time, but I think a lot of it has to do with the place that I've been during that time - a place where so much of my life is lived in public, so many people crammed in a small space, so much competition for jobs, apartments, good seats at the bars, so little space for quiet and reflection.

I'm not ready to leave NY, not even close. I missed it as soon as I got off the plane, and I'm not ready for that missing to be a constant part of my life. But I don't know how long I can keep stretching my heart between both coasts. I am tired of having the same fights about love and time every time we come back here. I am tired of always feeling guilty and distant and aloof and separate. I'm sick of missing every milestone in my friends' and families' lives. Even when I manage to be there for the day, the weekend, I'm not really there. Every trip is marked by the people I didn't get to see, the gatherings that I had to cut short. And even if I moved back here next week, I would just switch the coast that I was cutting short. I'd start feeling guilty and jealous every time I visited New York.

I'm in love with two places. I think it must be like being in love with two people. You can make it work for a little while, but eventually the one or the other catches on, and everyone knows you can't keep both.