The desire to move pours forth
Sometimes you move, and sometimes you just move on. Over the past 10 years I’ve done my share of both, but lately something has changed inside me, a little voice I hear now and again that beckons: “Don’t settle, but settle down. Make a home for yourself. Just be.”
To an outsider, I might appear nomadic, commitment-phobic, a total free spirit. Since the summer of 1993 I’ve lived in six apartments in four cities and worked at four newspapers.
Sure, I am adventurous, curious, intrigued by new things -- necessities of the journalistic trade. But I’m also very family oriented, traits I owe to my childhood. You wouldn’t know it from the path I’ve chosen: career woman, shifting from city to city, each job tougher than the last. It’s not that I’m unwilling to commit. I’ve just been waiting for the city, job and personal life to fit.
Which is why I just moved again. This time it wasn’t across the country, but just a few miles north to a recently renovated beach bungalow. I’d been considering this move since last summer, but I kept waiting for a sign that Los Angeles should become more than a rest stop. My signal didn’t come the way I thought it might. It came in the form of water -- lots of it. Which is interesting considering I am a Cancer and have lived near the beach almost my entire life.
Since I moved here in 1999, I have lived in two apartments a block from each other near the beach. I spent 2 1/2 years in the last one, which seemed, for a while, like it was going to be my last bachelorette pad.
But when my serious relationship ended, my heart started yearning for a big change and a place that felt more like a home. I didn’t rush into it -- just the thought of packing and unpacking my entire life again for the fourth time in five years made me sick to my stomach.
So I waited to see if my new life here would pan out, if living 3,000 miles away from my family would get any easier, if my dream job and my dream city would fulfill and sustain me for the long term. Last summer, my feelings of wanting a new start intensified. Then, as if the universe knew I needed a little push, the floods began.
The first flood, in retrospect, was more like a puddle. I came home one night to find my garbage disposal had exploded with waste from the apartments above me. The kitchen was soaked, walls and all. A month later, some of the shoes and clothes I hadn’t worn in a while were sitting in my closet adorned with mildew, thanks to a flood upstairs. In the fall, my bathroom was covered with disgusting black sewage that came up the bathtub pipes. And in November, after five days in Miami, I came home to a completely drenched apartment. The garbage disposal had delivered a repeat performance and the nasty water and sewage seeped across the rug. The only dry area was my bedroom closet.
That’s when I made up my mind to move at the beginning of this year -- but to do it differently. I would only move to my favorite part of Los Angeles (if I seem vague, it’s only to keep the stalkers away). More importantly, I would get rid of almost all of the possessions I’ve been trotting with me all these years but which no longer seemed to belong: furniture, clothes, knickknacks, housewares and my beloved pig collection.
When I found my bungalow in March, I set out to sell or donate all of these things. My piggies went to a gay man who assured me he would “treat them with affection,” and the rest of my donations went to Out of the Closet and the Salvation Army. On weekends, the artsy man in my life helped me find eclectic furniture that felt more like me, and took me to Home Depot to pick bright colors for the interior of my bungalow. I was excited but still suffered the occasional pangs of doubt associated with big life changes.
Then, in the middle of packing, it was as if the universe wanted to prove a point. Workers renovating the apartment upstairs left the water in the kitchen sink running. That water flowed through the walls and ceiling into my bedroom closet. When they lifted the soaked carpet, so much mildew was growing underneath that I moved a week earlier than planned.
But when I arrived at the new place with the moving van, the Department of Water and Power had closed off the street because of a water line break. For the first eight hours, there wasn’t a drop of water in my little house. The workers apologized, and I laughed. Just when you think you have something under control, the universe delivers the punch line.
A lot has changed since the days grew longer and I started living there, surrounded by new colors and furnishings. The process of sorting through everything I owned made me intensely aware of the life I haven’t had yet. The road ahead is always a mystery, but glimpses of it point to the City of Angels in a new -- dare I say? -- more settled way. This time, it seems, I have moved and moved on to the next stage of my life.
Maria Elena Fernandez can be reached at maria.elena.