I’ve been in my beautiful homestate now for almost two weeks.  which honestly, as much as i would rather travel elsewhere (i.e. someplace new) is always nice, but… perhaps never particularly relaxing.

it’s usually for the lunar new year, and my time in my san francisco is always packed with lunches and dinners and drinks with family and old friends.  i mean, poor me, i’m loved, but i don’t often get much of my own time except the last few years, i’ve insisted on going to yoga every morning, so that that gives me an escape.  but it’s always shuttling my stuff from my parents’ in the outer mission to one of my best friend’s couch in the mission.

then i always fly down south and stay in suburban l.a. with my best friend from high school who’s like a sister to me.  that’s always more of my down time.  she’s got three kids and because i’m such a city kid, i don’t know how to drive.  (she barely knew how to when she moved down here ten years ago)  we don’t do much, but it’s nice and relaxing.  our lives couldn’t be more different, and maybe we don’t have much in common, but we’re still the same people we were when we were 17, at the core.

but now, she’s got three adorable girls who are so much fun to be around and sort of, as she says, “obsessed with me.”

I guess it’s kind of like that.  i’m the boho aunt from new york with the dangly earrings, and jangly bracelets and high heels bearing gifts of mood rings, temporary tattoos, and voice altering megaphones. (dad LOVES me for that.)  it’s kinda nice.  we go to the beach. i give mom a bit of breathing room to run errands and go over homework and lesson plans with her oldest, while i watch the kids.  she is an incredible mother and i’ve learned a lot over the years.  the best compliment anyone has ever paid me is that she told me once that one of the reasons why she wanted me to have kids was because she thought i’d be a really good mother.  

one night while i’m here, we’ll go out to dinner just the two of us, but usually we wind down after bedtime with a little wine and trade recipes or gossip. (i just got her mom’s black bean recipe.  look out!)  i’m barely recognizable even to myself.

anyway, the whole family is at a school lunch.  i’ve got some quiet time.

so, over the years, i’ve had friends who’ve moved out here or know people out here, but i really have no desire to hook up with them and sort of do the things i do in new york.  go out, drink, party, see shows, have fancy dinners, but very recently, another friend from high school, whom i’ve always been in contact with, though with wide, years long gaps in communication came out to new york.  she was a year behind me and back in the day, she and my best friend in high school, who was a year ahead of me, were crazy partners in crime, but we also had more in common in terms of our interests in culture, art and literature.  anyway, they both live in l.a. and i’ve been convinced to go down (up?) to see them where they live in los feliz, which i’m told is a neighborhood i’ll love.

i didn’t know there were neighborhoods here.

so yesterday, on my run, as i often do… i put my music on shuffle with the thinking that the first song that came on would be an omen for this weekend.  if i never see your face again, by rihanna came on.  and i worried briefly that maybe it would be awful to see the two of them again, but that didn’t seem likely.

anyway, i came home, made lunch for the kids and put the baby down for a nap, while friend mommy went to the doctor.  somewhere between making paper jewelry with the middle baby and after friend mommy and daddy retired to bed, i remembered him.

the guy who broke my heart 5 years ago, and have since been emotionally barren and perhaps a bit hard.  i’m over it.  two years ago, i found out that he’d married the girl he left me for (or rather the girl he didn’t realize he never stopped loving until i pointed it out).  he was awful to me not on purpose, just because he was so selfish and self-absorbed.  he reached out to me, i guess a year before he got married and even that was the most masturbatory apology i’d ever read.

but apparently, he worships this woman, and waits on her hand and foot.  i felt nothing when i heard that.  and i’m okay with him being happy.  his happiness has nothing to do with mine.  and i’m really glad for the lessons i learned then.  i had no idea how little i was willing to settle for until i did and everyone who loved me noticed it.  and the way he was to me the months after we broke up was the worst part about it.

anyway, i’ve known for years that he moved to la, and i remember upon hearing that how elated i’d felt.  because i got new york, and i’d never have to worry about seeing him.

i so don’t want to run into him.  because i don’t know how to act.  i have NO desire to interact with him, but i don’t want to come off as a woman scorned.  i’d like to continue to exist in parallel dimensions that will never intersect.  he’s just a reminder of how i let myself be treated.  what i thought i was worth.  and maybe i still have issues with that, but that’s not what this is about.

i mean, in many ways, this could’t be a better time.  i’ve changed careers and i’m super happy, but i don’t want him to know anything about me.  i don’t want to exchange niceties or banal pleasantries.  and, to be truthful, i’d like to cutting, dismissive and clever.  yeah. i said it.  i have no desire to extend any of my default california girl warmth towards him.

anyway, the chances of me running into him and his wife are pretty slim, and i don’t want to waste anymore of my time thinking about it.  two years was enough.  but, i hate that i’m not sure what i would do or how to act.  it was the last time i was in love with somebody.  that’s one of two times.  and it’s the only time i’ve ever had my heart broken.  disappointment is so much easier.

going for a run now.  let’s see what my music shuffle will tell me.

the temp today here in la is the same as back home in new york.  i’m not sure that’s completely non-sequitur.  anyway, i’m on unfamiliar ground.