This is a story about gratitude.

San Francisco. 2019.

I didn’t want to move here. All the high achievers from college came to this city and I was not like them. I was not here to pursue a high-paying tech job. I wanted to pursue my idealistic dreams so I moved to Berkeley instead.

I told my friend I would be living in a high-rise in the city at some point, I just didn’t think it would be so soon. I met someone who happened to have “status,” something I implicitly admired yet on the outside would regard with some sort of disdain.

I claimed I cared more about someone’s personality. Someone’s being — their energy, their essence. I may have been wrong, I cared about everything. Every little tiny part of a human, especially including all of the decisions that led to their lives in that very moment, was important. It was not only their job, the size of their bathroom, or the number of closets they had (these are all valuable here in SF), it was also the type of friends they chose, the activities they did in their free time, and their values. All of these aspects, among many more, make up for one entire human being. A million little pieces.

And the city was filled with people I didn’t like. It was loud. It was dirty. And, above all, it was way too expensive. I couldn’t both enjoy my day and spend less than $100. Not only that, everyone did nose drugs in the club and I liked to smoke weed. All my friends lived in the East Bay and that’s what we did. Communal dinners and weed, not cocaine and ketamine in the back room of a crowded nightclub.

Through meeting an amazing individual at Burning Man, of all predictable places, I was thrust into the San Francisco ‘scene’. Mind you, I did not want to be part of ‘the scene’. I had my own friends—my college friends—who, if I were lucky, I saw once or twice a year. I was not accustomed to all these people who went out 4 days a week and would run into each other at the same events. Were they even friends or acquaintances by convenience? I judged them poorly. I must admit -- I was afraid.

I had been in a co-ed fraternity at my prestigious liberal arts college and was already experienced with the social dynamics of a the party scene. But, we didn’t do hard drugs. We didn’t have access to it. Or, at least I didn’t.

That made me experienced in some respect. I didn’t have to ‘try’ to be cool. Instead, I tried to be as uninterested in being cool (I heard this apparently made me look like a huge bitch). I know I didn't want to be uncool, God forbid, so I went with the 'non-chalant cool girl' vibe. I'll probably mention at a later time how being yourself is the best way to be, and not any other way. Until then, lets continue.

So, how’s the scene, you ask? It’s pretty interconnected. Everyone seems to know each other through some respect, and there’s a power hierarchy at play. Some people own the clubs, some people work there. Some people want friends, other people want connections; there's those searching quietly for romantic interests and others numbing the pain instead. There’s more at stake than the college scene — people don’t circulate through every 4 years. There’s permanence, and people protecting their reputations. And then there’s the drugs, which makes it all more fun. And more dramatic.

And then there’s me, someone who moved into her (former) boyfriend’s nice condo with a view of downtown and the bay, who became club-frequenting arm candy, and who hated it all.

Here's the funny thing: I always get everything I want. We all do.

And if I don’t learn to appreciate it, I won’t matter.

This has happened before, and will happen again. The lesson will keep repeating itself until it has been learned.

The lesson is gratitude. Gratitude is the attitude.

If you look upon the world with wide eyes filled with appreciation, it will continue to surprise you with its abundance. Otherwise, you will only see what's been missing.
And I only saw what was missing, so I left until I could learn to appreciate what I had.

Part II.

San Francisco will continue to host its big parties, in its big clubs, and I will continue to pay for tickets and live in my basement studio in Oakland until I feel that I deserve to be in a position that is worthy of more. If you believe you are not deserving, you will also not appreciate it.

My mentality forces me to ‘earn’ what I want — I cannot accept receiving it so easily. I need to work for it. So, I gave it all up — the luxurious life, the fake friends, the overwhelming love, just to work for it all over again, to feel that it wasn’t all handed to me, but that I did something to deserve it.

And yet, I already had done so much to deserve it. I was already enough as I was, already good and perfect and loved.

Through my own sense of self-sabotage, was very keen to destroy it and to become self-made. DIY. A fixer-upper. I was ‘broken’ and only I could fix myself, not love, the scene, or drugs.

I moved back across the bay, to cheaper rent, food, and friends. To fun spent inside, empathizing, not maximizing being interesting or crazy or sexy or impulsively snorting drugs off someone’s private parts. And I would frequent the city less often, and miss it. Miss my chance to have been the crazy party girl I dreamed of. Somehow, I decided that wasn’t the best way to live life.

Looking back, I can’t help but feel like there’s something I missed out on. Like, I could have tried harder. I had purposefully isolated myself to prevent from being hurt -- exploited, rejected, or abandoned. The irony is that I ended up abandoning myself in the end.

That is how we learn our lessons, and how I learned to love San Francisco. I just had to get over the homeless people yelling in the street and my $5/day coffee habit. Oh, and all the codependent drug addicts who I so desperately long to be friends with, at least so I can say I have some friends in the city.

There’s a final lesson here: that which you do not like most in others is what you do not like most in yourself. Or, the qualities you see in others that are repulsive are ones you (subconsciously) wish you had. I saw all these social people, and had realized too late how much I had closed myself off to protect myself. I decided that silence was a substitute for being social and having proper boundaries. I knew I needed to do some more self-work, and that forcing myself to be social before I got there was not the solution. At least it showed me the problem… and that there was a way to be better.

We may not always like others, we may not always be grateful. In the end, your attitude determines how life treats you. Your perspective dictates what you see, what you notice, what you observe. And if everything is threatening, your reality will be similarly threatening. And if everything is received with an open mind and self-confidence, nothing can stop you, especially not some ketamine.