Hey, stranger.

I used to lay awake as a kid, swallowing a dry throat and trying to stop sweating, thinking about a murderer breaking into my house. For some reason, no matter how many times I’d go over my escape plan, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to wake my parents up in time or get my dog or my sisters’ doors would be stuck. I’d lay like a stone in a river, silent and still, trying to figure out what I would do the second I heard the lock being broken. My family dying was one of two fears that felt inescapable, indescribable in their enormity. My second fear, one that was slimy and tricky and hard to put into words and would creep up on me during the middle of a math test or a swim race or the drive to school, was that I wouldn’t be brave enough to find myself.

I was terrified of my own lack of courage when it mattered; scared that I’d falter at the cross roads, choose the path that was safer or the one that’d make people happy. I was always choosing things because they made people happy, it seemed. The adolescent years of my life were spent at war with myself, always making the choices I knew my parents would say were smart but rebelling in small, secret ways, desperate to hold on to some semblance of what I wanted. My younger self seemed to grasp that if I never figured out how to stop doing that, I’d end up with kids I didn’t want in a town I didn’t want to live in working a job I didn’t like. There seemed to me that there was no bigger betrayal, no worse fate, than to squander whatever freedom I was lucky enough to have been born with in exchange for an easier path. I forgot about my fear of a knife in the dark but I’ve never stopped laying awake at night worrying about my own courage.

I spent this past December in Portland. When I was a kid, the idea of staying in Portland forever sent a shiver down my spine— the thought that one day I’d never make it to any of the places on my List Of Cities To Live In haunted me at every step. It haunted me when I applied to universities and when I thought about getting a job and when my high school boyfriend moved to Milan. But this winter I ran my fingers down the spine of the place that raised me and thought about how much Portland has woven itself into my bones, no matter how far I’ve ventured away from it. I thought about the people I’ve met in the past year and how much or little their resume of residences is written all over them. I thought about how many places I could call home before it broke my heart into too many pieces to safely carry around with me. I thought about how much a place makes a person or if the people make the place.

Out of every city I’ve lived in, San Francisco came the closest to filling me with a sort of glee every time I stepped out onto the street. I was so excited to live there and even more excited to find that the size of my wanting did not diminish my enjoyment. Only then did I understand that I finally found an answer to the question that has always seemed to plague me: how much does a place make a person? For better or worse, I’ve always placed a lot of value on my environment for a girl who spends a lot of time in her own head. My fear of losing my family in a house that was supposed to keep us safe, the one that kept me up late into the night, makes more sense to me now. The answer to the question that’s haunted me throughout my life is that it depends on how much a person invites a place in. I want to be a part of a city as much as it is a part of me. For me, the place will always matter.

So I drove through Northwest and cursed the roads on Burnside. I spent afternoons in the woods with my dog. I shopped on Hawthorne and 23rd and Division. I sat on the floor of my childhood room and stared at a piece of paper that read please, please find a way to live in New York, from a letter I had written to myself in 2016, if I had to guess from the shape of my a’s. Back when I wanted my handwriting to look like a typewriter. I ate Por Que No tacos and Khao San chicken skewers. I sat at Cheryl’s for hours and had a stack of blueberry pancakes with lemon compote and whipped cream on my birthday. I thought about the shape of my life and how much I have had a hand in determining its grooves versus how much has just, well, happened. I drove over the Burnside bridge and stared at Big Pink and watched the rain drop races on my window. I decided to move to New York.

It’s not so much that I decided randomly to make the move I’ve seemingly been dreaming of since I was old enough to think about what I wanted. It’s more so that I realized, with no small amount of horror, that every moment I don’t is fulfilling that second, terrible fear. Being home gave me some solace, I think, to know that leaving is not the same thing as abandoning, and that all of the places and people I’ve loved and left will still be there whenever I return. In other words, my ass suddenly found itself with a fire underneath.

I’ve never understood what people mean when they say they’re running from themselves, but I do know what it feels like to move closer to the core of whoever the hell you are. It feels like saying a decision out loud and not detecting a waver in your voice. I said I’m moving to New York in March and I wanted someone to say I shouldn’t so that I could say but this is what I want. I wanted some excuse to announce loudly that I’m finally doing the selfish, scary thing I’ve dreamed of doing for god knows how long. I wanted to say I’m no longer scared of my own wanting! And is there any reason that’s less powerful than that? I want it so I will not deny myself of it any longer.

So I’m going.

xoxo,

Evie