It’s been almost 3 months since I left Shanghai, and I finally feel at home.
Apartment hunting in San Francisco has become quite ridiculous. Even at a budget that was double my previous rent, I couldn’t find anything in a remotely comparable location. Then by sheer chance, I ended up finding a unit in the same building I lived in when I first moved to San Francisco 4 years ago, to the month.
Since I had gotten rid of all my furniture when I left, I spent a few days sleeping on a new mattress in an empty room waiting for my new furnishings to arrive. The desk and chair came first, then my bed, and finally my IKEA clothes organizer. It’s been a while since I used power tools, and I made a mess of one of the walls drilling holes (and found out the hard way that one of my walls was made of concrete). As I stood on an unwieldy chair with wheels to put up the top shelves, I let out a sigh and thought, it would be nice to have some help.
But no. In fact, the day before, someone had told me “you look like a girl who knows how to use power tools.” I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or a mere statement of fact, but I sure would have rather heard “need help?” instead.
That’s when I remembered this lovely comic strip. Oh yeah, that strong independent woman crap.
Sometimes I wonder how many strong independent women got there because they really wanted to, and how many just ended up that way because they didn’t have much of a choice. I’m pretty happy with who I am in general, and I’m rather grateful for the way my life has run, tribulations and all. But there are some moments when I just want to close my eyes, fall back, and know that someone will catch me.
Then again, it’s the middle of the night, Ingrid Michaelson’s Parachute is on repeat, and I’m probably just experiencing a not so rare moment of weakness. Tomorrow, back to the whole strong independent woman thing.
Leave a Reply