San Diego, CA
Elevation: 72 ft.
18:43

Sea - Adrift

Growing up as a first generation American my relationship with the American childhood revolved mostly around being excluded from it. I had no favorite bands, I didn’t play or watch sport ball, I rarely had sleep overs, and I went to maybe one show ever. My tweens and teens were guided by movies and burned CDs - glimpses into the void of firsts that never happened. To be fair, my parents were doing the best they could to make it in this new country and they were absolutely killing it. Two kids, two sets of in-laws, owning their own business, AND still finding the time and means to show us the ocean? Snowboarding? Game Boys? How did they do it? I very recently tried to hold down two jobs while simultaneously trying to hold up my sense of self-worth and I fantastically failed after only 5 weeks.

By no means did this mean that my childhood was a bad childhood. I feel blessed to have grown up close with my brother, my parents, and my grandparents. My brother and I created so many fun worlds and stories for our toys, I grew up helping my parents at their business everyday after school, eating delicious home cooked meals and watching TV with my grandparents every weekend. We grew together and we learned together, as a family. And not once did I ever feel unsafe or unloved. An incredible privilege.

I suppose this self-reflection is also context for me as I try to understand the well of tenderness and empathy that runs so deeply within my spirit despite the serial romantic tragedies of my teens, 20s, and early 30s. The most recent of which deeply affected, but did not define, my time in San Diego thus far.

I moved to San Diego from Bend 1 year, 8 months, and 6 days ago today. I moved here for love. To be with someone that I loved more than I loved myself, to give our relationship a second chance, to help her heal. I made mistakes, she made mistakes, we both had far too much placed upon us and in the end we could not support each other in a way that was good for either of us, and so we parted, and my journey in San Diego alone began.

In many ways it was a blessing that we didn’t last long enough for her to be my guide through this incredible city. I would spend my nights after work on my bike exploring the many towns and neighborhoods that make up San Diego. Biking late into the night I would learn how the vast network of roads connected to one another, where the valleys slept, where the ocean touched the concrete. And I did it for me and with me, my faithful bike carrying me through the night and away from a fragmented home.

Note: These are not photographs of my ex, that would be crazy. That would be wild.

Heavy music may be the greatest gift she ever gave me. After our initial split in 2022 I dove deeply into the things that reminded me of her. My mind a tragic book of plans and futures laid open and unread. Alone in Bend I searched for the heavy music that could bring me closer to her. Any sort of metal, any sort of dark, industrial EDM but as magical as that high desert town was, it just couldn’t provide. This all being context for how liberating it has been for me to immerse myself in these scenes here in San Diego. Live music has been the most amazing thing about moving here, second only to being so close to the sea. Discovering hole-in-the-wall venues and dives in San Diego and LA has been so fulfilling and healing for me. Finding community in music has made me feel so much less alone, so much more seen, and so much more myself. Being able to disjoin the music from the person has been my greatest feat of healing thus far. And I am proud of it.

My mind and writing is scattered. Back to the well and to this place and to my time here.

I am no stranger to picking up my life and starting from scratch. Finding and building community comes natural to me and I owe much of that to this seemingly endless source of empathy within me. Discovering this city as a single Pringle has been a blessing. It has given me the flexibility to explore, experience, and love freely. My Google list of coffee shops, restaurants, and taco spots is ever growing and my hunt for the perfect almond croissant never finished. I spent my first summer exploring San Diego’s coastline, finding its beaches and vanlife communities, learning the amazingness that is tanning one’s bum unencumbered by clothes at Black’s Beach. I poured myself into the bike scene, of which there are so so so many. The de-emphasis on mountain biking being such a welcome relief from the singletrack-focused town I had just moved from. I miss the volcanoes and endless gravel roads, but biking to the beach with a towel and burrito strapped to your fork is pure magic.

I would be remiss to not celebrate the greatest gift from my time here - my REI family. San Diego was the first time I moved to a new place fully counting on my partner to be the focal point of my community. My intention was to focus on building a community with and around her. A mix, of course, of her friends and my friends but the emphasis would be on us and the home and life we were building together. When that rug was pulled I found myself floundering. Adrift in an overwhelming sea of abandonment and fear - again. With no outlet or community my days at work were spent in silence and suffering, my mind a million miles away. With no chaser, the amazing human beings that happen to work at the San Diego REI opened themselves to me and provided a safe place for me to process my trauma. I have found that REIs seem to attract good, real, wholesome people, and this REI was no different. People I barely knew could sense my grief and were there for me. As I began to heal, my warmth and love and compassion returned and friendships punctuated by mourning evolved into wholesome celebrations of life and love. I found my chosen Ohana.

Sand - Grounded

Which brings us to now. I’ve spent the last 13 months healing, whatever that really means. It has been a rollercoaster of a journey. 1 truck and 3 different addresses later - my living situation has stabilized. I spent my second summer achieving the perfect tan at Black’s and searching for the best bean and cheese burrito (so far it’s Benny’s on 30th and A). I took a break from live music and going out to recover financially, and I started using the gym for more than just their bathrooms.

I was blessed to experience the Central Coast for the first time alongside a wonderful, loving person that I am lucky to call my friend. Being amongst the giant redwoods and the sounds and smells of the rocky coast was grounding for me. It reminded me of the Pacific Northwest, a safe place that has always felt like my closest thing to home (sorry Virginia). Even so, summer ran away from me and before I knew it I was entering my second Fall.

I like to joke that I have lived many different lives in my 34 years. Each one compounding upon the last, lessons on joy and sorrow diligently and neatly filed away to be drawn upon and referenced during the chaotic forward push that is existing and living each day. The biggest lessons of my San Diego chapter thus far have been a deepening of my understanding of love, empathy, and gratitude - and the perplexing well of which runs within me.

I have learned that I really do truly love myself. All of the versions of me but most of all who I am right now. I think about how lucky I was to have myselves in my corner during the toughest parts of the last 2 years. Like muscle memory, they rallied and took care of me even as I spiraled into depression. Moving my life into my truck in Bend, pulling from my days in Alaska to make the winter bearable. Setting up a home with a partner from scratch in San Diego, and surviving taking it apart thanks to dark times in Charlottesville, VA. I also realized how much I loved the people in my life, the new friends and family and the ones that have been there from the start.

In the loneliness of my healing I felt like I could see the invisible strings that connect us all. I felt empathy for the strangers that passed through my life each day. Like me, they were doing their best to take care of themselves and those they loved. Each one of us trying our best to navigate the cosmos of our own minds, my peers weathering the full and overwhelming gamut of the human experience alongside me. A shared experience made all the more powerful and important in light of what will come to pass these next four years.

And who am I today? Who is this Chris right now? As far as I can gather, I am someone filled with gratitude for the vastness of the sunset, but also the smallness of a “-berto’s” whose salsa rojo isn’t absolute liquid garbage. I am someone who has gotten much much much better with rejection, and someone who has learned that there is so much beauty and meaning to love amongst friends. I think when you really put everything out there on the line for someone else, when you do something like moving your whole life for love, you get a chance to see how a very specific person values you and the things that you bring into their life. And when those partnerships fall apart it is less about how you could not fill each other’s cups, but more about how different those cups were. Or maybe, how important it is that we can fill our own cups. I cannot do that for someone else.

When I close my eyes and take steps away from myself, I look back and see someone that is far from perfect, far from being complete, but someone that is trying to make the most sense of why they are here. I see someone that has taken good care of me and those in my life that I have loved. And I am thankful. I am happy to still be here.

And I am curious to see what comes next.

A hui hou,

Chris

Written to: Where Is My Mind (Piano Version) - your movie soundtrack