I Don’t Want to Be Anything Other Than Myself

There are things that I’ve recently realized about my East Coast existence.

I appreciate the old buildings, the oak-lined neighborhoods, and the feeling that history is woven into every nook and cranny. I appreciate the seasons (all eight of them) clamoring for your attention. I appreciate that where I come from, I was equidistant from the beach, the mountains, and a major metropolis.

But living in California, as briefly as I've been here, has made me notice something I didn’t fully grasp before I left: My nervous system is shot.

And by "shot" I don’t mean tired in a charming, “I need a girls’ trip” kind of way. Not busy. Not temporarily overwhelmed. Fuh-ried.

I think I’d gotten used to living in a state of constant calculation. I entered adulthood working in a fast-paced, responsive retail environment. My family dynamic and friend groups have consistently leaned on my ability to problem-solve. Who needs what? What mood am I walking into? What schedule am I working around? What will I have to explain, justify, absorb, or clean up later?

On the East Coast, my life sometimes rewarded this kind of planning. I checked the weather. I looked at the whiteboard schedule. I learned to anticipate discomfort and prepare accordingly.

There’s competence there, and I’m proud of it. Or, at least, I’ve learned to accept that it’s fundamentally part of who I am. I’ll always carry some of it with me.

But I’m beginning to understand that I wasn’t only planning around inventory or logistics. I was planning around other people’s needs, expectations, and emotional deficits. I was organizing my days around someone’s work schedule and someone’s version of “help,” which often meant I had less room to hear myself think.

Here, there's more space.

Not perfect space. Not magical space. California has its own complications, and anyone who is not presently living under a rock knows paradise comes with politics. But there’s a different kind of ease in the way life can unfold. A little more padding around the container. A little less friction between wanting to do something and actually doing it.

It’s going to sound weird, but I love being able to walk to places.

Again, that sounds small, but it’s changed the shape of my days. I can decide I want something for dinner, walk to the grocery store, and let the meal come together aisle by aisle. I don’t have to make a whole event out of it. I don't have to stockpile for the week as if preparing for weather, inconvenience, or exhaustion. I can think, maybe salad tonight, and then go get what I’m envisioning.

And maybe more importantly, I can cook for myself again. Even if I change my mind mid-grocery trip, I know without a doubt that I can repurpose or extend a meal for a few days.

I can stand in the kitchen and make food because I’m hungry, not because I'm navigating someone else’s timing, commentary, or interference. I can choose what sounds good. I can chop vegetables slowly. I can make a mess, and trust me, I will. I can feed myself without having to defend the meal, the timing, or the fact that I want to listen to music while making it.

There’s something deeply pleasant about not having to know everything in advance, for once.

There’s also something deeply healing about not having to explain yourself all the time.

When I’m struggling, I can manage without turning my pain into a public relations campaign. I can rest. I can take medication, use heat, lie down, and let the day become smaller without anyone needing a full briefing. I don’t have to explain that it’s bad enough for me to need to stop. I don’t have to make my discomfort known before I’m allowed to respond to it.

That kind of privacy feels like mercy.

I can take breaks here. Real breaks. Not the kind where my body is still braced for interruption. Not the kind where I’m listening for footsteps, heavy silence, or the sound of someone needing help. I can stop in the middle of a task and come back to it later. I can let the dishes pile up and not feel too guilty. I can leave something unfinished without hearing an internal alarm go off.

That may be one of the biggest differences I feel between East Coast and West Coast life.

Yet, as much as I revel in this feeling of simple, uncomplicated existence, it makes me worry: Am I being selfish?

It’s strange how quickly peace can start to feel like indulgence when you’re used to measuring your worth by how available you are. Rest can feel like neglect. Privacy can feel like withholding. A quiet afternoon can feel suspiciously close to laziness if you have spent enough years believing that being good means being useful.

That’s something I’m still untangling.

Because here, no one is asking me to be anything. I don’t have to anticipate the mood of the room before I decide whether I’m allowed to have feelings of my own. No one is making my body’s limits into a referendum on my character. And instead of immediately accepting that as freedom, some part of me keeps looking around for the catch.

And let’s be clear: No one was asking me to do any of this explicitly, at least not all the time. I did, and therefore I set the expectation that I always would. And when I finally found my voice? I’m sure it seemed like I was a totally different person.

But maybe that's what happens when your nervous system has been trained to treat ease as temporary.

Lately, my go-to "get your ass up and move" song has been Gavin DeGraw’s “I Don’t Want to Be.” It’s one of those songs that sounds, at first, like pure early-2000s main-character confidence. A big chorus. A little defiance. The kind of song that makes you want to walk faster than necessary.

But when I hear it now, I hear something different.

I hear the exhaustion underneath the declaration. The ache of trying to figure out who you are when you have spent so much time becoming what other people needed. The desire to stop performing competence, availability, helpfulness, toughness, or ease, and simply be yourself for a damn minute.

THAT's the part that gets to me.

Because I don't think I moved to California and in two weeks became a different person. I think I just finally have enough room to notice how many versions of myself I've been carrying. The problem-solver. The planner. The anticipator. The one who could read the room before she had fully entered it. The one who could push through pain, make it work, figure it out, and keep everybody else comfortable.

Those versions of me were real. They helped me survive. Some of them are still useful and I know that I'll always be a giver, in some form.

But I don't want to be only that.

On the West Coast, my movement can be more fluid. A walk can become coffee. Coffee can become an errand. An errand can become 20 minutes sitting somewhere sunny, watching people move through their own afternoons. I don’t need a packed itinerary or a full free day. I can borrow a different view for an hour and come back lighter.

I’m also realizing how little I need, in terms of stuff. (I still haven't added much more to the kitchen cabinets than what was here already...)

Not in a severe, minimalist way. I’m not claiming some beautifully empty life with a single shirt and a two-handed ceramic mug. I still have my things, my preferences, and my small domestic attachments. But California has made it easier to exist with less. Less gear. Less preparation. Less emotional bracing.

When life is not constantly asking you to armor up, you start to wonder how much armor you were carrying out of habit.

There’s freedom in that, but there’s grief in it, too.

Because if this much ease was possible, even in small doses, then I have to admit how long I went without it. I have to look honestly at the difference between being needed and being depleted. Between being thoughtful and being overextended. Between loving people and organizing my entire life around not inconveniencing them.

I used to think abundance meant having everything on hand. A home. A full pantry. A plan for every possible version of the day.

Now abundance feels more like access. A grocery store I can walk to. A place nearby where I can sit and people-watch for a while. The right to stop before I break.

I don’t think one coast is better than the other. Like the relationships we enter, different locations, and different people, ask different things of you.

The East Coast sharpened me. It taught me how to move quickly, prepare well, and read the room. It gave me grit, urgency, and an appreciation for a well-framed plan.

The West Coast is softening me in ways I didn’t expect, but hoped for. It’s teaching me that not every day needs to be optimized. Not every outing needs to justify itself. Not every need has to be explained before it is honored.

And maybe that is the thing I’m enjoying most right now: the way California lets my day stay open. The way it leaves space for appetite, weather, pain, rest, curiosity, and possibility.

The way it reminds me that a happy life doesn't always require more.

Sometimes, it requires just enough of the right things.