“Either we give this a real shot, or we don’t,” my husband said during one of our nightly phone calls.
By that point, we’d been together for five years (off and on) and married for one. We’d skipped all of the ceremony and quietly wed at City Hall.
It felt quick, in part, for practical reasons — I could get on his health insurance, and know where he was when the United States Navy sent him out on deployment.
Shortly after we eloped, we returned to our separate lives, connected only by a nightly phone call and occasional visits. He went back to San Diego, where he was stationed at the time, and I returned to working my nonprofit theatre job in New York City.
It suited me fine: My marriage was a box I could check on a list of accomplishments. Now that I’d completed the task of acquiring a spouse, I had space to think about more important things.
However, things changed when my husband decided that he was no longer content to live separate lives.
I agreed to move to California, but it didn’t help our relationship
When my husband asked me to move to San Diego, I was hesitant. I didn’t know anyone but him, and I had spent the entirety of my adult life building a community for myself in New York City.
I lived within walking distance of some of my closest friends and commuted into a city I had always dreamed of living in to work for a feminist theatre nonprofit I adored.
However, I was tired of the grind, chronically broke due to the high cost of living, and not opposed to a big change. So I agreed: I’d give up my Queens apartment and join him in California.
I blew through my meager savings to make the move and arrived jobless, penniless, friendless. Still, I began to love San Diego almost immediately, the constant sunshine making me happier than I’d ever been before.
I loved the muted sunsets over the rolling hills, the prevalence of hiking trails and public parks, the proximity to the ocean, and the surprisingly robust theatre scene.
However, my relationship with my husband felt strained, like we no longer knew how to share a space with one another.
The rigors of military life had worn him down, and the protracted distance had made us strangers. I also didn’t get along with his military friends, the relationships he’d carefully cultivated to help him survive an increasingly stressful work life.
I was a ghost, haunting our home, shrinking, trying to make a marriage work when I never completely wanted it in the first place.
It was a bad marriage, but that wasn’t all his fault. Looking back, I also realize the love I had for him was rooted in the potential I saw for a future I didn’t know then would never come to pass.
Six months after I got to San Diego, our relationship ended.
Although our marriage didn’t work out, my move to the West Coast really did
After we officially split, I considered moving back to New York or even retreating to my family’s home in Michigan, but I eventually decided I wanted to give California a real shot.
I got my own place, a tiny apartment in a run-down part of town close to the ocean. I stayed for the sunlight … and because I couldn’t afford another cross-country move so soon after I’d just made one.
I didn’t know it then, but following my ex across the country to San Diego would turn out to be one of the best choices I’ve ever made.
Because here, I would find work teaching and writing books, make friends, and join a new theatre community. I would get an agent, a playwriting fellowship, a residency in Italy, and an opportunity to shoot my first feature film.
And a year and a half later, I would meet the man who would become my partner of over 12 years (and counting), and the father of my son.
I don’t know if I believe in the adage that “everything happens for a reason,” but I do know that the wrong turns and detours, the stumbles and backtracks, brought me to where I am now.
And I wouldn’t change a thing.
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