three years in the bay area.

Content Warning: This post talks about some mental health struggles.Leaving behind your whole life and everything you'd ever known is not easy. But I had to do more than survive, and something had to give. I knew this when I was sobbing in my bedroom night after night, wanting to be swallowed whole, to disappear. My online friend and my best friend both knew this intimately when I would turn to them for a sense of normalcy in those last few months. When the offer came in from my online friend about a prospective listing in February of 2023, I felt an instinct from within to gun for it. This was essentially the last ditch effort I had made after being rejected from multiple potential housing opportunities nearby. The caveat? The place I'd be moving to is across the country in California, a place I'd only visited maybe two times prior to see said online friend. Despite this, it was my best bet. So, a month or so later, I hop into a video call with my prospective roommates and have a…