It had been eleven years since I’d been to New York City. I’d wanted to go for a visit, but while flights were cheap, hotels in Manhattan were not and I didn’t know anyone who lived there who I would willingly impose myself on. But when Ten moved there in January, I knew I’d be finding myself in NYC more in the next six months than in my whole life.

New York City is its own mythology. It is both of fable and history, and no one cares where the line between the two is. It is America’s golden idol and unofficial capitol. It is the favorite child. It is a city of great extremes yet is a great unifier. It is vast and grand and dramatic; it is dirty and crowded and confounding. It is a place of feckless wealth and audacious poverty, and everything in between.

I love San Francisco and cling to it stubbornly despite the not so favorable changes over the last seven or eight years. Despite, for example, the fact that it is next to impossible to live in this city and enjoy it meaningfully if you don’t pull in something that approaches six figures; despite the fact that business all over cater to the weekend bridge and tunnel crowd, forgoing their local patrons by keeping their doors closed Sunday through Wednesday; despite the fact that the city is slowly starting to resemble a whimsical corporate park.

Upon arriving at JFK my first trip back to visit Ten, I hurried to the taxi queue, having no interest or courage at the time to sort out the labyrinthine subway system. I was anxious, remembering my disoriented attempts to navigate Manhattan in the past, my directionless wanderings after I’d completely given up trying to find what I was looking for. The neat grid of Avenues and Streets rendered incomprehensible by my directional dyslexia and my complete lack of geographical common sense. I sat in the back of the cab, terrified I’d misunderstood Ten, gotten her address wrong, transposed the numbers or written Street when actually she said Avenue. I ran her address through my head again and again. I knew it was West 16^th. Or was it East 61^st? There was no 16^th Avenue—I knew that much. I watched the city rise up out of the rain-wet windshield of the cab as we came out of the Queens Midtown tunnel, my stomach twisting.

We turned right on Lexington. Then made a left and I noted Park Avenue as we crossed it, and I was amazed to find I knew exactly where I was. I sat back and beamed while the driver carried out turns as I predicted them in my head. He did go left on Fifth. He did go right on 17^th. And there I was. I entered Ten’s apartment gushing. For the first time in my life in a city besides San Francisco, I knew which way was north.

On my second trip to New York last week, I braved the AirTrain/A-train combo and felt emboldened—ready to take on the public transit systems of the world. (If I ever go back to Paris, maybe I’ll actually use the Metro instead of traversing the city on foot to avoid doing so.) I had happily anticipated this trip, New York becoming like a vacation home for me. I craved the energy on the streets, Ten’s cozy apartment, the narrow bars and dim restaurants. The vibe is amazing in that town and everyone you see seems absolutely in love with being there—like they put something in the water. It is an intoxicating place.

I was going to move to New York when I graduated from college. That was the Plan at the time. Move to New York, get a charming walk-up in Greenwich Village, become a famous writer, fall in love with a tall, handsome, gifted artist, and live the bonhomous bohemian lifestyle. Clearly, none of that happened. What happened instead was I got a job bartending to make some extra dough, presumably to help set me up in New York. What happened was I was having far too much fun with work and friends to enact the Plan. What happened was I learned the huge, significant difference between saying and doing.

I have always wondered what I would have made of my life had I gotten to NYC. Most of the time I’m pretty convinced I would have ended up back in San Francisco before long—especially in the event that my expectations weren’t precisely and promptly fulfilled, as they rarely, if ever, are. But what if I stuck it out? How different would my life be? Would I still live there? Would I be a little further along in life—more goals having been met in the hive-like artistic energy of New York? I would have had no friends at first, and I would have been dead broke, both of which would have forced me to spend more time writing and less time cavorting as I did in SF. Maybe I would have found my way to my adult life a little sooner.

You can take the girl out of California, but you can’t take California out of the girl. So even as I walk the streets with Ten, one of the friends I couldn’t bear to leave behind in SF when I was 21, I imagine myself a permanent resident among them—as if I’d been there for the last twelve years instead of here. It does fit—to an extent. But I have California in my bones and there’s no getting around that. My family is here, my friends are here, my life—with all of its shortcomings—is here and I haven’t the desire or the resources to leave all of that. It’s a strange and wonderful feeling to love a place so intensely, and to know, no matter what lies ahead, no matter where I might live or travel to or wish for, northern California will always be the only place for me.