San Francisco: A jumbled up mess of contradictory feelings.

I haven’t really been sleeping well lately. I keep waking up every few hours, and I can’t really get back to sleep – deep sleep – no matter how exhausted I was when I went to bed.

This has been going on since about halfway through the New York leg of this trip.

San Francisco hasn’t been any different. I woke up at 5.25 a.m. today and couldn’t get back to sleep.

So here I am.

This is what I want to talk about: there comes a point on any extended trip abroad when loneliness and exhaustion start to take over, when everything feels overwhelming and you start craving – longing for – home. Home, familiarity, comfort, routine. My own bed. My own apartment. Knowing where everything is. Knowing that you can just pick up the phone and talk to someone who loves you, who’ll talk you off whatever ledge you happen to be standing on.

There comes a point when you just want someone else to take care of things.

The problem is that I don’t have that luxury. I chose to travel alone.

Yesterday was my first day in San Francisco. It was a ridiculously beautiful day, my favourite kind of day – clear skies, a crisp chill in the air, the sun beating down on my back, my hair glinting in its light. I was feeling pretty, and I guess it showed: I was flirted with, in quick succession, by the man selling cable car tickets (I’d asked him for directions), a vendor selling a monthly newspaper to aid the homeless, and a guard at the Embarcadero station. This is worth mentioning because it never happens to me in Australia. I had gone to the Ferry Building (didn’t get lost, too, woot!), where I was nearly paralysed by all the food options, and exchanging excited tweets with Drea about all! the! food!

There was a really cute boy behind the counter at Acme, where I’d bought a rosemary roll, and I don’t know, was he checking me out? Whatever. I bought my breakfast at Cowgirl Creamery (oh, cheese, how I love you) and ate it while sitting in the sun, looking out at the Bay.

iPhone photos only for now, because my camera died while I was at the Golden Gate Bridge. I KNOW, RIGHT? I should go recharge it, like, uh, now. 

Feeling blissfully, recklessly happy the entire time.

Falling hopelessly in love with San Francisco.

Remember this: the Ferry Building. Eating breakfast in the sun. The Bay Bridge in the distance. Seagulls.

Remember.

And then I went to Pier 39 to look at the sea lions, and God knows what happened, but I started feeling so lonely and homesick then.

I hate admitting this: I’m lonely.

Right now, in this very moment, I am lonely. All I want to do right now is to go home – or rather, Bella’s home – and crawl into bed, and just stare at the ceiling for a little while.

I am in a beautiful place, in a beautiful city, I am enjoying the sun on a beautiful Californian winter day, and I am lonely.

I’m trying to shake it off.

Shaking it off involved randomly deciding to hop on a cheesy bus tour of the city’s sights. Um. Yeah.

I saw the bridge though, which was nice.

I made a flippant joke, later that night, about it having everything to do with just how touristy the place was, but that’s not the whole story, I guess. I’m chalking it up to a kind of travel fatigue. Like I said, there always comes a point on any extended trip when everything feels overwhelming, when exhaustion – the exhaustion of making sure that you have all your shit together – becomes almost unbearable. I’ve felt this way before, after all: two years ago, on that last day in New York, about to fly to London, when the key got stuck in the door of the apartment building in Greenwich Village and, in that moment, all I wanted to do was go home to Melbourne.

Feeling this way is entirely normal.

This, too, shall pass.

Going to Four Barrel Coffee later in the evening helped. That place is just so much like Melbourne; walking in was immediately comforting.

Same old, same old, but in San Francisco

And I’d just like to stress this: that despite the loneliness, I was feeling so incredibly happy to be here, in this city that’s fascinated me ever since I first discovered Maggie and Holly’s blogs. I’m falling in love with this place – how could anyone not, really? I want to move here. I feel it in my bones: I want to move here.

I just don’t know how to make it happen.