How long does it take to feel at home in a new city?
On four years in LA
Last month marked four years since I moved from New York to Los Angeles. So many things have happened since then – I got married, published my first book, and became a mother. I’ve even overcome my fear of driving (and parallel parked this morning with minimal maneuvering!). But, in many ways, I still feel new here.
I’ve written before about how deeply I always identified as being a Tri-State area girl: born in New York City, raised in the suburbs, back to the city post-college. There was never any question about where I would wind up in my twenties, and I felt an inherent sense of belonging and security in New York. It made sense: my personal history was interwoven with the city. The apartment building on East 34th Street where my parents lived when I was born, the Northwest corner of Washington Square Park where I held hands with the boy I liked, the bench I sat on in McCarren Park on the day I stopped drinking.
In recovery, they say that sobriety is a bridge back to life. I didn’t get sober to stay in the same place or keep revisiting old ones. I got sober to live my life, and it lead me to my husband, who was building his career in Los Angeles when we met. When we first moved — a little over a year into our relationship, and three months into the pandemic — I put tremendous pressure on myself to feel settled right away. I wanted friends, community, and the sense of belonging I had in New York, with a side of palm trees. But my adjustment to the West Coast has been slower. I have made wonderful friends, but relationships take time to build and deepen. You can’t make new old friends, and in so many moments — namely pregnancy and postpartum — I have felt impatient, wishing for the ease of sitting on the couch next to an old friend and really being known.
Four years feels like a long time to live somewhere and still not feel totally at home. When I zoom out, I know that four years can’t compete with the 30 I spent living on the East Coast. California is vast and Los Angeles’ sprawling landscape can still be daunting. Adjusting to a new place takes time, and it ebbs and flows; there are period where I feel connected, and others where I am deeply homesick.
Since becoming a mom, I have been focusing on two concepts: 1) the idea of blooming where I’m planted. As much as I miss the East Coast, I know that living there wouldn’t solve all of my problems. I would still feel lonely sometimes. My friends would still have their own spouses, children, careers, lives. The city would still be changing. I would still be changing. And so I’m working on blooming here instead of imagining what my life would be like if I was somewhere else. 2) is finding a third place. In sociology, the third place refers to a social setting that is separate from the two primary environments of home and the workplace. Examples of a third place include gyms, parks, cafes, and churches, and visiting these spaces regularly can help establish a sense of community and civic engagement. In that spirit, I’ve been more intentional with where I spend my time when I’m not at home. I bring Leo to the same music classes where “we” are slowly getting to know the other moms and babies. Instead of using ClassPass to pop in and out of random workout classes, I got a membership at my favorite Pilates studio and started taking the same classes every week. I chat with the instructors, recognize fellow attendees, and know people by name. It’s not decades of history, but it feels nice to be a part of a community.
I know I romanticize New York. I’m an unreliable narrator, telling myself stories about the glory days that were, in many ways, also some of the hardest of my life. My friendships weren’t always perfect. I fell down, I was lonely, I made mistakes. But I also healed there. And I think that I’ll always have a soft spot the place that held me as I lost and found myself, over and over.
If I was writing a book about a girl who moved to a new city, she would be settled by now. But maybe that would be a boring book, or one that would skip over the gooey, messy parts of being a real person living in the real world. The real story is that I feel both settled and unsettled. I like the quiet of my neighborhood in Los Angeles, and the way the sun hits the trees before it sets. I miss my friends. I like driving to the beach, even when it takes an hour with traffic. I miss the sound of sirens at all hours and the rush of adrenaline that smacks you in the face when you walk onto Park Avenue. I wonder how long it will take for me to feel at home here, or if this is just what home feels like when you start somewhere new. When every landmark is still a blank space waiting to be filled in with memories that are happening right now.
I relate to so much of this. I moved from Chicago to Denver and within months of moving, got pregnant, postpartum haze straight into pandemic. It felt like anything but home.
I’d never heard the phrase third place but that makes SO much sense. I, too, have do s a third place at my Pilates studio and then another one at a coffee shop around the corner. It helps and/but I know I just don’t feel the same sense of belonging here and I’m trying to make peace with home is a feeling not a place. Which I get glimpses of, but honesty, it’s fleeting. Sometimes I wonder if I would feel at home anywhere right now. These last few years both globally and interpersonally have felt like only transitions.
It’s beautiful to hear how you’re making space for all of it. The blooming where you’re planted is something I’m going to take on board too.