Seven years ago I took a car from JFK to the Upper West Side to Ten’s house. It was nearly midnight on a Tuesday and after greeting me and setting me up with some sheets and blankets for her couch, she said goodnight. Buzzing with the enormity of what I was embarking on and still on west coast time, I poured myself a large glass of rum (she didn’t have any whiskey) and went up to her rooftop that had a beautiful southerly view of Manhattan. I stood for a long time looking at it—this city that I had always loved to visit, that I was going to try to call home.

I was a California native, a 24-year denizen of San Francisco, who up and moved a few of my physical possessions and all of my emotional baggage across the country. No job. No apartment. Just a sort-of-kind-of sufficient amount in the savings account, my best friend and her couch, and the deep, undeniable sense that I had to leave San Francisco right then or I never would.

Since I have moved, I have wondered sometimes about that alternate reality in which I never left San Francisco. (I won’t say I “believe” in alternate realities. But I will say I love the idea of them—the other versions of me living out the other side of decisions both considered and impulsive, for good or ill. I have SO MANY thoughts about this but that is for another Sassbak.)

These are the things that I know:

I know that while I did not “flee” San Francisco, per se, there was a similar element of urgency. Most readers will know about the absolutely mortifying, awful insanity that preceded my departure. And while that was certainly a propellant, it was not the inciting incident. There was no inciting incident. In the cinematic version of my biography, which will never happen, the mortifying, awful insanity will certainly be portrayed as the inciting incident. Because it makes it a better, tidier story. But the truth is, I’d “tried” and failed to move to New York three or four times since I’d graduated from college. I just never got the funds and the impetus to match up at the same time.

I know that I love this chapter of my life in Brooklyn as much as or more than all of the many wonderful chapters of my life. I have had a fortunate existence that has known mostly ordinary hardships and sorrows.

I know that New York brought me Ant shortly into my first foray into the east coast dating scene, and that finding him mercifully curtailed any further dating activities. I had given up totally on finding a partner. I was content to remain single and to use dating as a way to visit new places and meet new people when the mood struck. I had no expectations, or desire, to find any sort of relationship. He and I are about to have our six-year anniversary. The longest I’ve been with anyone.

I know I never would’ve been a dog owner in San Francisco. I wouldn’t even have been able to conceive of how happy our silly little dog makes me.

I know moving to New York has enacted a chain reaction of existential consequences that are responsible for my contentment here. The first of these is my job. The community among advertising agencies in San Francisco, when I left, was insular and small. Furthermore, I was timid, unconfident—both by virtue of possessing an introverted, non-confrontational nature and having reexperienced so much of the worst parts of high school at my first advertising job. When I got my first job in New York, about six weeks after I arrived, it was not the job I wanted. I didn’t want to work in pharmaceutical advertising. I’d always heard that was a professional death knell. But I needed paychecks. I’d signed a lease; my savings were dwindling; I had to pull a trigger. So, I did.

My career has flourished here. I have learned confidence in my job. I have had the fortune of coworkers who have mentored me and validated my strengths and helped me overcome my weaknesses. I now work at my third agency here (and hopefully my last for the foreseeable future) and on good days I love it, and on bad days I know how much worse it could be. My job affords me a level of financial security I never enjoyed in San Francisco. Even if I was given the opportunity to return to consumer advertising at my current professional level, I’m not sure I would take it.

I know that I would not have weathered the pandemic lockdown in San Francisco well at all. I would have lost my literal mind alone in that studio apartment, no matter how much I had loved it. I probably would have gone down to my mom’s in an attempt to feel less isolated, but that would have eventually isolated me further. And if I’d gone down to Los Osos—well, that is an alternate timeline that I’m glad this version of me is not living. (No offense, Mom.) Spending the worst of the pandemic with Ant and Bruce in our relatively commodious apartment was peaceful, cozy. Sure, I was as frustrated as anyone that the world had shrunk down to ten square blocks around my apartment. But we settled in like hibernating bears. We were kind and patient with each other. We got into a pleasant quiet routine that kept us from getting on each others’ nerves. If I’d had any doubts that Ant was the guy for me (I didn’t), the way we handled the pandemic together would have banished them.

I know that while I love and miss California and all my people there, that the east coast is where I belong for the time being. This is where I want to be.

And finally, I also know that in the seven years I’ve been here, my red sauce recipe has evolved into a goddamn masterpiece. Maybe it’s the proximity of the original red sauce joints all over the boroughs just intently, quietly asserting itself.