I always considered myself the type of person who loved change. Every time I packed up and moved, whether it was to a neighboring city or all the way across the country, the thrill of anticipation would shoot through my spine.
For most of my life, I chased opportunity after opportunity to run away from the present — toward a future that would be, if not better, then at least different. One where I might like myself more, accomplish more, prove myself worthy of love and respect in ways my younger self couldn’t. Every move was a chance to shed more of my fears and push myself to unearth more of my potential.
I repeatedly felt like I had outgrown my hometown(s). But really, I was just constantly trying to outgrow a version of myself: the mute child who stirred gasps whenever she managed to speak, the bumbling teenager who overcompensated for her insecurities, the boring college student who only knew work and nothing else.
I wrote in my journal in 2019: “I can’t seem to believe anyone in the world truly loves me for who I am. Because yes, my parents love me for being their offspring — but they would not otherwise. I just feel so dirty in my own skin, and that’s part of why I cannot wait to escape. In Boston I can wipe my slate clean. Who I am today can be shed here and forgotten.”
I wrote about how smothered I felt in my high school town. How I had to be out all the time because otherwise I was just sitting in my family’s squalor while emotionally torturing myself about one thing or another: friends whose approval I could never quite earn, people who didn’t believe in me, or even those who believed in me a little too much without me having done enough to merit it (maybe I was unreasonable for that one, but it felt patronizing at the time).
Despite having carved out a life in so many different places, nowhere ever felt like home. As I struggled to shape my sense of self, I couldn’t handle that the communities I was surrounded by knew a version of me that brought me shame.
I wanted to flee California, where I’d grown up nearly my whole life, for college in Boston, simply because it was on the opposite side of the country and represented a new life, a new chance to define myself. Like many young adults do, I also romanticized New York City, and I jumped at the opportunity to intern there for a summer. In the end, neither made me want to stay.
I kept fearing that nothing would ever satisfy me — that accomplishing one dream would only make me impatient to check off the next, or that moving somewhere new would only be exciting until I settle in and once again grow restless for something more. It was the pattern that had ruled my entire life thus far.
Near graduation, when my first salaried job offered me the choice to work either in NYC or Los Angeles, my gut told me to choose the latter. Surprising myself, I rejected my lifelong ambitions of building a career in NYC. I missed the relaxed pace of life in California, the Chinese ethnoburbs of the San Gabriel Valley, the unreplicable magic of LA. It was the first sign that I was finally ready to slow down.
So I signed my lease in LA waiting for that familiar feeling to creep back in. But nearly two years in, it still hasn’t come. For the first time in my life, I feel wholly and contentedly at home. I’ve found a peace I had never quite known before.
And maybe that’s because the chase is over. Rather than needing something new to run after, I want more than anything to stay in place — because this is the future I’ve always dreamed of. In fact, it’s a future beyond what I even dared expect for myself.
I have a high-paying and flexible job that I enjoy, allowing me to experience financial security and stable housing after growing up with neither. I’ve achieved enough professional prestige that I’ve lost the desire to burn myself out seeking more (what do I have to prove, and who do I have to prove it to anyway?). Now, I’m deepening friendships with people I can laugh endlessly with and confide in about anything. I’m investing my time in hobbies and also learning to rest.
Beyond all that, I finally like who I am. I am proud of not just the life I’ve built so far, but of who I’ve become as a person. And I can’t wait to keep growing here, embedded in communities I’m so grateful to be a part of. The time has come for me to appreciate the present, because I already know I’ll miss this chapter when it ends.
