Why I Left SF For LA

I keep a journal, have written in it every day for 5 years. Most entries never get seen again, even by myself, but this one I reread and found both lovely and illustrative so here it is, written 6/22/20:

I’ve written about this before, now it’s different because it’s real, a move not a trial. In 5 days, I’ll be driving down highway 1. Away from a place I’ve called home for 4 yrs, towards one I will next.

LA’s been my planned next chapter for what feels like a while now. When you say something enough it starts to become a sound you make more than a sentence that means something. ‘I’m moving to LA’ I realize I separated myself from the reality of what that meant. I wasn’t ready when I first said it, there were things I still needed to see, to do, to finish in SF. I know that now and I’m grateful I took that time.

I don’t like endings, notorious for Irish goodbyes and unshut cabinet doors, I tend to finish things slowly, unnoticeably, a fade more than a close. I took the time to fade, slowly detach my identity from SF, begin turning towards who and where I was ready to be next. Now that next is now and I’m writing to learn how I feel about it.

SF, my city, I’ve never said that about anywhere else. A thought I can feel in my body when I think it and speak it, one that rests in a place in my chest, weighted with meaning and truth. My city. Maybe because so much of my self-narrative feels tied to this place and the time I’ve had here.

In four years, I’ve grown more than I could have anticipated that day in 2016 when I had my head out the window driving from SFO for the first time. I’ve pushed, adapted, opened and changed to someone that would be foreign to the me that landed here four years ago. I do believe people can change, but the change I experienced has felt like simply getting closer to my truth.

I believe we all have a core being that we seek to discover and actualize. That all internal work is striving towards figuring out what that is, and shedding layers to let it release and flow and be. In that foundational place we are integrated, whole. In these 4 years, I’ve had a lot of shedding, both self-directed and otherwise. I didn’t always welcome it. Sometimes it came from painful rejection, failure, disappointment, but it all taught me something that brought me closer to who I am.

I came here so wide-eyed. So hungry and eager to take in all the city had to show me. I was east coast to the bone. From a very conventional, stable upbringing in a small town, the values instilled in me were things like work hard, be kind, do well in school, study marketable skills and get a secure job along a proven path. Those were the pillars that held me steady and pointed me where to go. But for as long as I can remember, a questioning discontentment burned in peripherals, rooted in a defiance to the expectations set around me for that predictable, safe future. A discontentment that told me there’s more, let’s look for more, let’s go towards more. To different, novel, strange, precarious but big, meaningful. I felt it was out there then I got tastes through traveling, reading, watching and I knew it was.

It lit something in me, the itch became a burn I had to find it myself. I wouldn’t by staying where I was. California seemed to have it. I’d never been so it was an idea more than a conviction, a place that sat in my mind as one of beauty and boundless potential that flooded my dreams and kindled the fire that told me go.

I did and I was right. The first time I stepped foot in SF was with a suitcase and wide eyes looking at a new life. I was quickly magnetized. I saw a new way of being living working thinking that resonated more than I ever felt in Maryland. I saw a bar higher than I’d ever been exposed to. I had to reach it. I was used to being the bar, now it was high, far away. Closing the gap a little every day became an obsessive priority.

I worked so hard. I cared so much. Every minute had to feel like progress to better. At the time, I defined better pretty narrowly. Almost solely wrapped up in career and financial achievement. I learned though. Learned the value in human connection, candor, flow, the dance that is life—just a string of seconds lined up next to one another and the only one that ever really exists is the one you’re in now. Before, I lived in the future, always planning for the tomorrow, it left no time to relish in the now. Tomorrow me had expectations, milestones awaiting.

There’s a reason people call SF a transient city. People, at least in the SF world I know, come here for a reason and that reason is time-boxed. You feel it when you go places. Walking down Market st, squeezing on the 9 am MUNI, standing in line at Fidi’s Blue Bottle, looking in the SoMa startup offices, or people-watching at Dolores. Everyone’s here to get somewhere. There’s a rushed, weightless slipperiness to it. Like any person or thing you interact with could be gone tomorrow. People, businesses, they come, get what they need or don’t, and go. Everyone’s on a mission and that mission is internally-focused.

I value discipline more than most things, but what I grew to learn is the kind of discipline that feels good. I owe a lot to this place, but leaving feels exactly right. In LA, I see a life worth building and growing in, roots worth extending. Community, connection, lifestyle, being. Growing in a new way.

A consistent symbol in my life, or archetype as Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell would say, is an old, tall and deeply rooted tree. Maybe it means something, maybe my mind only tells me it does I’m not sure if it’d change the effect. When I was young I was either on one or under one, exploring the woods behind my house and making forts with my brother and the neighborhood boys or climbing any branch I could reach. My dad took us on hikes often, the blanket of green and bark, the vast quiet of a dense forest still feels like home. As I left the small town where I grew up, went out to find my own place in the world, I’ve kept the image and feeling with me. A tree. Rooted, grounded. Secure and stable where it stands but in the right conditions, upward growth that flourishes. The stabler the ground, the healthier the soil, the more it’s free to leave it.

I never felt ground in SF. Growth came despite that but after 4 years I’ve noticed it begin to wane, reach a peak potential to which current state is tied. It needs new nourishment, a more stable form, roots that can extend and rest.

My First 5-MeO-DMT Experience

I wrote this March 28, 2019, after my first experience with 5-MeO-DMT, a psychedelic of the tryptamine class that’s been used by South American shamans for thousands of years. It’s found in a number of plants and the venom of a single toad species called Bufo Alvaris (yes this is forreal, your guess is as good as mine for how it was discovered). I reread it recently after my third 5-MeO experience and found it useful and interesting to see where I started with psychedelics and where I am now. To reflect on how closed I was. Psychedelics are ruthless but my walls were thick. It took a few deep experiences to really start chipping them, opening and releasing what was behind. Inviting all the fears, repressions, vulnerabilities to be known, processed, and expressed (to be clear, still very much working on this, why we call it a journey). But it’s encouraging to see the growth in just a year. In this piece, which is intentionally more of my creative writing angle than usual blog writing, you can read the grip I held. The closed aversion to surrendering to the experience, letting it fully take me to the other realms of consciousness where 5-MeO can and wants to go. It was a necessary stepping stone to the recent experience I had with this medicine, where I let go maybe more than I would’ve liked. I’ll share that on another post.

Head to soft folded blanket, knees up, fingers and toes weave into loose carpet strings. There’s three of us in a small room, I lay while they primp around me. I sense them sensing my nervousness. They do the only thing they can for it, bustle around the room, perfect physical set up to ease me for what’s coming. For what we’re here for. I lay and watch the two, one my heart knows well, one my heart is trusting for today. We’re all there for the same reason, one the two are familiar with but I’m a stranger to. I’m nervous but trusting. This is a new journey, my decision to embark was driven by the support of two experienced travelers. One my heart knows, one my heart trusts. I cling to the connected familiarity that permeates between us and warms the small room, let it veil the details of what’s to come—a drastic deviation from my norm.

I lay, knees up, as comfortable as we could get my body it doesn’t do much for my mind. The one my heart trusts tells me the steps, he speaks slowly and methodically as if the whirring thoughts and pounding heart are blatant on my face, as if he doubts my ability to comprehend in this state. I watch, cling to the task of memorizing and understanding as a familiar distraction. Linear, methodical steps are a frontal cortex reprieve from the spastic firing in amygdala. I watch, listen, memorize, nod. It’s time.

One last look at the one my heart knows well, he nods reassuringly. It’s a familiar look, a narrow-eyed kind smile and encouraging nod that signals he’s proud and supportive. Proud of me breaking down one of my walls, venturing into the unknown and uncomfortable. Supportive of it continuing, of handling the aftermath. He likes me venturing into unknown. He’s traveled far and wide, more than I, he longs to share it. He knows what he’s gotten from it, confidently assumes it’d do the same for me. It scares me, maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to him. I don’t scare easy. Visceral, raw emotions like fear are less accessible, buried deep. It’s invigorating and challenging and novel I’m drawn to it. Drawn to him for guiding me into it over and over. I look one last time, he nods encouragingly I wonder if it’s for me or for him.

I follow the steps my frontal cortex recites.

Limp.

Muscles loosen, body collapses, mind drifts then accelerates. Accelerates in every direction outward in an ever-expanding vastness I can’t make sense of, have no choice but to surrender to. Awareness accelerates and expands, loses the room, the two beside me. Leaves behind body. At first it’s terrifying, then the definition of fear is lost with the rest of consciousness. But my mental grip is tight, it pulls me back in waves. Like the ocean onto shore, quickly pulled to shallow then slowly retreating to endless depth. Mental grip keeps pulling me back, sensation floods body in a foggy awareness of its existence. Awareness scans face and muscles, checks in on what they’re doing, remembers who’s watching. It clenches a reaction I long to release. The new higher self craves to stretch pull twist facial muscles, they feel stiff and cold from underuse. Mouth wants to open wide, lips expand, tongue hang loose, saliva spill, cheeks squeeze, eyes widen, throat scream. I lay in a tight limp, mental grip clenches physical reaction under the surface. Under the surface, a flowing spiraling chaos continues to propel awareness away from reality. My mind looks for something to hold onto, a thought to make sense of, a familiar neural firing to define. Spirals shake grip from catching anything solid, sends awareness plummeting in all directions. It’s such a hypnotic unfamiliar feeling. Incessant linear thoughts are forced to smooth into a disconnected fluidity of boundless perception.

The peak wanes, I ease back to the room to body to the two watching. I trust body to move now, I turn and curl. Eyes stay closed, observing the last drips of the experience. I feel the two sitting watching waiting. Like an audience anticipating the conclusion following the climax. The spirals slow, linear thoughts return. I weave memory to make sense of what happened, to attach words I can share with the four eagerly waiting ears. I don’t find words, only resultant emotions. A confusing mixture of shock, awe, calm, craving, disappointment. A disappointment both in a fulfilled expectation of familiar gripping and in an unfulfilled hope for answers. A craving for more to find them.