I’m back in my beautiful hometown of San Francisco this week for my best friend’s wedding. I purposefully took the week off from work to relax and reconnect with people here. It’s been great to see my friends, but now that the work week has started, I’m wandering around the city by myself.
I love my alone time and sing its praises as much as I can; I believe it’s very important to not be fearful of being alone. I’ve enjoyed many big and small moments in solitude.
However, I would be lying if I did not also mention that being alone invites the feeling of being intensely lonely sometimes.
What I have noticed about loneliness is that nostalgia magnifies this feeling. I tend to look back to my past with rose-colored glasses, and I think that’s actually psychologically beneficial (imagine if your painful memories always stayed raw and painful, we’d never get anything done lol). But the trouble is that sometimes I recall the past as being more favorable than the present… Which is not possible, from a quick read through my journal. Do you ever do that?
Your girl has been mad nostalgic recently, though, and it’s heightened because I am back in the Bay. I am super attached to this idea and feeling of home – to me, that’s the opposite of being lonely. When I am in NYC, I don’t feel fully at home, which makes sense because it hasn’t been so long I’ve been there. The kicker is that I just realized I’m not feeling at home here in San Francisco either.
I wonder if this feeling is a delayed response to breaking up. I’ve been living single for several months now, and I can’t tell if this loneliness is an effect of no longer having one person to share with, or whether this feeling will visit me throughout my life. According to my small ever-shrinking sample size of single friends, it sounds like the latter. So that’s fantastic. </3 womp womp.
Before I scare everyone with my emo puddle of emotion, I will say that these moods typically do have a start and finish, like the nature of all things. By the time I write my next blog, or even the time I have dinner with my friend tonight, the cloud will have passed.
Until then, I will walk with my friends, loneliness and nostalgia, up and down the hills of SF. At least the views are worth it.
See you back in New York!
xoxo,
Trace
Trace in the Place 