"Okay, take care, and don't board the flight to Columbus by mistake!" Sushant chuckled as I was hugging my almost 2-year-old, leaving her with her dad, and heading for a work trip to San Francisco.
"Haha! Funny you say that. I won't. " I replied with a silly face.
He wasn't wrong at all. This was my first time alone on a flight ever since we started living together after almost 3 years of long distance. As soon as I stationed myself in the cab to Sea-Tac airport, I thought about the times when I used to fly almost every month from SF to Columbus to my happy place. It was the darkest time of our relationship.
Not sure who needs to hear this -- challenging times don't last long. They only have a cameo role in our lives.
As I was preparing a presentation for the offsite, my mind parallelly was running through the streets of San Francisco. The Salesforce Tower, Bay Bridge, a bike ride on the Golden Gate Bridge, my first internship/job after grad school, streets of 4th and King, daily commute on the bay bridge, drinking the power smoothie with an extra scoop of protein powder from Joe and the juice, lunch at noodle me or miss tomatoes, and those hustling-bustling streets of mission and market. Everything lingered in my mind. What should I say, I was enjoying this walk down memory lane.
The moment I saw the bay bridge from my hotel room, I knew I had missed this place. I had missed the gentle walk in the cold breeze of Karl - the fog in Embarcadaro. (Yes, fog in San Francisco has a name!) I sensed this feeling of home. But my home, my happy place is probably napping in her daycare.
What is this feeling of belonging then? I guess, as they say --
Once you have been to so many places, you can never truly be home. No matter how many places I will go, San Francisco will always be my special place. The place where I learned to live by my own means. The place that gave me freedom. The place that brought a strong and independent woman out of me. More than anything else, San Francisco is the most compassionate city among the places I have been to. That right there, I found what I was missing. Self-compassion! Because --
You don't really miss the place, you miss the person you once were when you were at that place.
The ding on Slack interrupted my chain of nostalgia. Without realizing it, my work trip was turned into an emotional trip.
Thank you to my current employer -- Twilio for providing this opportunity to relive the days -- from the 61st floor in Salesforce Tower to Joe & the Juice.
