Raleigh: A Reflection (guest writer!!)
So, here we finally fucking are. GUEST WRITER, bet you didn’t see that coming!
It’s ya boi, Misha, comin’ at you hot from Perfect Blue. It’s 9:51PM on May 17th and I’m doinked out of my mind sitting in a cozy corner of our apartment. I was looking at campsites here in California, trying to plan a trip for Grace and I, when I opened up AllTrails and it automatically zoomed in on Raleigh. Memories flooded back, a tear or two fell, and I realized that I had to write.
I knew that, at some point, I was going to have to write this newsletter. I still feel incredibly pained to have left North Carolina. It’s a dull ache that just won’t go away, and I hope that in writing about it I might be cured.
I was trying to hold off and commit an evening to this; I knew I would need to get myself into the right headspace, and for the headspace needed to write thisnewsletter, I needed no small amounts of drink and weed. Here I am though, on a work night, inspired by the flood of emotions that came running back when seeing “William B Umstead State Park,” “Six Forks,” and “North Hills” so triumphantly pop up on my display.
I highly doubt I’ll be able to write this whole thing in one night, but let’s see. I honestly don’t know what I’m trying to get out of this, or what I’m trying to write: I just feel that I need to write something. Let’s buckle in for the ride.
On my last night in Raleigh, having just said goodbye to my friends 20 minutes earlier and knowing I was leaving for good in the morning, I felt violently ill. It was the worst kind of nausea - the kind that you can’t seem to shake no matter what you do. I did, admittedly, have a few too many drinks that night, but it was something more: it was a nausea born out of intense guilt and insecurity.
Guilt for leaving my friends behind while moving on and having to explain to them why I left a place I loved; insecurity for not knowing whether that decision was the right choice and wondering how much longer my life can go on in this cycle of transition and unceremonious change.
It’s a familiar feeling. I’d felt it when leaving Grace behind to fly to Scotland; I’d felt it when leaving my life in Scotland behind to come back stateside; finally, I’d felt it again just before moving to Raleigh. This time was different, though: I felt the weight of responsibility. In 2015, I couldn’t help it - I was going off to college! In 2019, the inverse - I had to come back. In 2019 again, driving from Chicago to Raleigh, I felt guilty but not necessarily responsible: I did what I could regarding my job situation, but the universe dealt some shitty cards. Now, in 2021, I felt agency for the first time, as though I finally had the power to make a genuine, honest to god, decision on my own life. What did I do with that newfound agency? I told a city I loved I had to leave and my closest friends that it wasn’t them, it was me.
Part 1: Getting Comfortable in Raleigh
The fact that I feel so strongly about Raleigh is actually remarkable given that, in July 2019, I was the furthest thing from excited: on the contrary, I felt acutely terrified. I wondered whether my relationship could survive another year of long distance and change. Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but stare with fear over the edge and into the abyss that was Raleigh. I knew nobody in the area, had no friends who’d ever been, and I’d never visited myself.
The foundation for all my fear over moving was the PTSD of having moved to Scotland. When I moved to St Andrews my whole family joined me for the trip; I had a couple days to adjust with them, but once they left, my whole world was turned upside down and I didn’t find comfort for three years. Now, moving into Raleigh, my dad joined me again to help with the move, and I counted with dread the hours until he left. I had absolutely no reason to believe that Raleigh wouldn’t be another repeat of St Andrews: another few years of loneliness as soon as my dad walked out the door. That first night, alone, anxious over my first day at work coming up, I was convinced I could never love the city. As soon as I could, I would find my way to Grace in San Jose.
My fears were immediately dissolved - or, rather, shattered - by the absolutely batshit craziest person you’d ever have the pleasure of meeting.
I was at orientation for Cisco. Sitting in the front row of a conference room full of new graduates, pulsing with anxiety and too nervous to talk to the guy next to me, I opened up my laptop to find my team in our company directory. I pulled up my name and looked at the team: there was the manager who had interviewed me, a couple other people who had interviewed me, and… somebody else?? ‘Lexi Weidman’: she had the same start date as me and was labelled a “college grad.” I was shocked, because I had not expected somebody starting on the same day as me; I was excited, knowing there was the chance to make a friend; I was terrified, knowing I had to try to make a friend.
I sat there for a minute debating whether I should message her, but I was never even given the chance. A message popped up on my screen:
Lexi Weidman: “Hey! What are you wearing?”
Okay, a bit weird. I told her I was wearing a tie.
Lexi Weidman: “Where are you sitting?”
I told her I was sitting in the front row, to the left of the pillar.
Lexi Weidman: “Oh my god I see you, turn around!”
I turned around and didn’t have to scan the room long to notice Lexi: in the very back a girl was hopping up and down, waving her hand maniacally, and wearing a beaming smile that told me I would either love or hate her. I walked over and introduced myself, we went to get ice cream, and we immediately bonded over whether chocolate or vanilla is the right base for a sundae (it’s vanilla, obviously).
As it turns out, Lexi ended up setting the tone for Raleigh. By the end of that week I already had weekend plans to go drinking in Durham with Lexi and her boyfriend, Nick, someone Lexi swore I would love and who was “just another guy that needs some help making friends.” I was, again, terrified, but it was a great time. By the following weekend I had plans to go to Lexi’s for a potluck and meet two more guys - Nikhil and another Nick - with whom I’d be embarking on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I still don’t fully understand how, but I didn’t have the chance to be lonely in Raleigh: I was aggressively pulled into a family that didn’t let go.
Do you know the feeling when, moving to a new place, the first few months are kind of fuzzy? You’re meeting new people, building a routine, trying to figure out what you do and don’t like? My first two years at St Andrews were like that; in Raleigh, it was only my first two months. I got comfortable, quick. Saturday mornings were spent making biscuits and playing DnD at NC State; we spent a few nights going out to Milk Bar with work friends; I started building a routine for me that worked.
After a few more months, some friend of the group called Jessica moved back to town from NYC with great fanfare. I was anxious about it for a few weeks, and on meeting her, spent another minute anxious over it before she stole - wait, sorry, acquired - me a T-Rex Santa mug that I had taken a fancy to at a bar. That’s all she wrote - within a few weeks we all really got a feel for what we liked to do: potlucks at Lexi’s, day drinking at Flying Saucer, a cocktail at Aunt Betty’s, the occasional weekday Piano Bar, the frequent Saturday night Piano Bar. Is it bad that everything involved drinking? Anyway.
Honestly, life was good. After a night at the bars I’d find myself walking home alone (I was the only one living downtown), and an unfamiliar feeling of belonging would wash over me. No matter how many years I spent in St Andrews, I always felt like a stranger in somebody else’s town; in Raleigh, I felt as though I’d lived there forever, and that’s owed both to the city itself and the friends I lucked upon there.
Part 2: Change
It wasn’t long before we were all on a trip together: Didney Worl. We knew that some new virus “COVID-19” had infected a couple people in Washington, but the show had to go on. We spent a total of four days exploring the parks before things changed in a more monumental way than we ever could’ve imagined: the parks closed, Cisco told us to work from home, and the whole damn country shut down.
In the chaos - spirits low, and our store of toilet paper lower - I called Grace to make sure she was alright. Almost immediately I had an idea: “if you’re working remotely, why don’t you move in with me in Raleigh?” We talked for a couple hours resolving the logistics, assisted by Nick, who was keeping our spirits high by sending us memes while we, in disbelief, realized we could end our five years of long-distance hell within 72 hours. That was March 14th, 2020; on March 15th I flew back home to Raleigh, and at 6AM March 17th, after five years apart, Grace and I were living together.
I was ecstatic! This newsletter, however, is not about Grace but about Raleigh, and the fact is her move had flipped my comfort in Raleigh completely on its head.
Grace’s first few months in Raleigh were weird. No lies there. I remember them like I remember my own first few months in the city - with scattered, foggy memories. My comfort in Raleigh was suddenly disrupted, and I was now preoccupied learning to be comfortable with Grace. It says something that my only strong memory from that time is me playing Super Mario Bros on the bed while Grace painted, blaring Dua Lipa’s “Break My Heart” on full speaker through our 500 sq ft studio apartment. Within a few months though we were comfortable living together, but now Grace had to go through what I did. She had to get comfortable with the city; and, where I was already comfortable with myself in Raleigh, I had to get comfortable with us in Raleigh.
That process itself took another couple months. We spent a bit of time figuring out our favorite walks, our favorite places, our go-to plans and our bare necessities. We didn’t mind Pullen Park, but we loved Dorothea Dix; Harris Teeter was okay, but H Mart and Wegmans were temples; Aunt Betty’s might be closed, but that new place Killjoy ain’t bad. Naturally, I was terrified to introduce Grace to our friends, but they quickly reminded me I had nothing to be worried about. Lexi, Nick, Nikhil, and Jessica were more welcoming than I think either of us deserved.
Eventually, Grace and I did get fairly comfortable in Raleigh together. We had a routine, we were able to manage our lives, things were working out. At the end of the day, though, California still tugged at us: Grace knew she (we) would have to go back, and she didn’t let herself get too attached to Raleigh. More than once we’d have a conversation that she would end with “Raleigh is nice, but I can’t see myself here much longer.” It always disappointed me, and after a while, we learned that it’s better not to talk about it.
Part 3: Home
I don’t know when it happened, but by some point we were living a life I was hopelessly in love with. It’s from this time that my memories are strongest, because those were the months that Grace and I really fell in sync with Raleigh. Our mornings were spent at Black & White Coffee, munching on a pastry from Boulted Bread; if we felt like it, maybe we’d go set up a picnic at Dorothea Dix; we had to go to Wegmans, but that was good because we had to buy chips for Lexi’s potluck later. A couple of weeks ago we’d gone to the beach, and in a couple more we were going to the mountains. On Friday nights we could watch a movie and grab a pizza from Mellow Mushroom; alternatively, the drive-in near us always had a great double feature on.
That’s just the usual stuff, but some genuinely tremendous memories were made in that time. Waking up on Hawksbill summit to admire the sunrise with Grace; swimming at Topsail beach at 2AM; playing poker by the fire with Nick and Nikhil; Jessica and Lexi’s god-like Harry Potter charcuterie; Grace renting out a private theater at the Alamo Drafthouse, surprising me with all our friends on my birthday.
Just thinking about those months, the thing that stands out most to me is how free I felt. I felt as though COVID had released me from the passage of time, and I could pretend the world would never go back to normal.There was no end in sight to the pandemic, and no progress on finding a job in San Jose. I knew we would have to move back to California one day, that whatever we had in Raleigh wouldn’t last, but for a while I let myself believe that it could.
I was surprised to find that Grace seemed to really be enjoying Raleigh too. We’d since learned not to discuss the potential of staying, and I think freeing her of that pressure helped her open up to the city a bit more. I won’t speak for her, but given our conversations since the move, I’d say she looks back on those months nearly as fondly as I do.
Out of the blue, on a rainy weekday afternoon, my manager let me know my move to San Jose was finally approved. After so many months of inactivity and so little progress, it dropped like a brick. I had two months left.
That wasn’t a good night. Lexi and Nick had stopped by so I told them in person; it was so difficult for me to hold back my tears telling them that when they left, I erupted. I texted Jessica and Nikhil as well to let them know, and they were more supportive than I deserved: I felt as though I’d thrown a grenade at them and was turning away.
Our last two months were even more cruel. I was hoping that, in my last two months in Raleigh, I’d realize I was happy to leave; instead, everything we loved about Raleigh only became better. We learned the names of the baristas at Black & White (and that one of them, Phil, liked to flirt with Grace); picnic at Dorothea Dix became an instant classic; the drinks at Killjoy tasted that much sweeter, and the tapas at Barcelona Wine Bar that much tastier. We even caught up on our traveling: we took a weekend trip to Charleston, saw some old friends in Atlanta, and visited Asheville for the first time (only to realize we wanted to move there instead). My last two months, which I had hoped would be a slow tapering off my time in Raleigh, instead became a kaleidoscope of everything I would miss.
That is how, on April 9th 2021, I came to find myself nearly vomiting from the guilt of leaving it all behind. By the following night we were right back where we started it all: exhausted, still nauseous with guilt, asleep in my old bed in Evanston.
Part 4: Reflections
It’s now June 19th. Grace and I just spent a night camping in Big Sur on the California coast; it was a night without phones, without distractions, with nothing but each other’s company and a couple of cold ones each (in her case, cold LaCroixes). Sitting in the dark and shooting the shit, we got into all sorts of deep shit - one of the topics that came up was Raleigh.
It started with me asking how Grace felt so far about our life in San Jose - did she like it here, what did she like, etc. She felt that she has a lot to like, but just doesn’t feel inspired by San Jose. She doesn’t feel she can be here more than a year or two. She asked the same of me; I used a different formula but got the same answer, remarking that I did like some things here but overall it just didn’t feel right. For me, it came down to the fact that everything in San Jose felt that little bit more difficult. Grocery shopping is that much harder because we don’t have a one-stop-shop like Wegmans; finding campsites is that much harder because there’s so many more people here; going for a walk is that much harder when we have to worry about Grace being catcalled. A few months in San Jose helped us realize just how good we had it in Raleigh, and just how easy our lives had been.
That question, inevitably, had us discussing our time in Raleigh. We both feel that, if the opportunity presented itself, we would jump on the chance to move back. Just like any other city we might move to, though, there are some things holding us back. For myself, I just want it to be slightlybigger; slightly more restaurants to choose from, slightly more people, slightly more things to do. Maybe some public transport would be nice. For Grace, it’s a bit more complicated. Everywhere she’s lived in her life - Chicago, Los Angeles, San Jose - have had huge Asian immigrant populations. Raleigh, not so much: we were lucky just to find Chuan Cafe.
Raleigh does have the distinction, though, of being the only city we’re rooting for. New York, San Francisco, Seattle, they’re all cities we’d move to if necessary; Raleigh is the one we’re hoping will give us an excuse to move back.
Part 5: Fin
When I started this newsletter I didn’t know what it was going to be. A love letter to the city? An apology to my friends? Honestly, reviewing it now, I’m still not sure what it is. It reads a bit selfish: what I wrote doesn’t give Raleigh, nor my friends there, the love they deserve. All I know is that I feel better, and more at peace with myself, for having spent these few months writing this.
Raleigh as a city itself - all its quirks, hidden gems, and everything that makes it so worth living in - will still get the newsletter it deserves. Grace and I will be writing a piece on that point soon. But, who knows, that might be another few months.
As for my friends, I don’t know if a newsletter will ever be enough to convey just how terrible I feel for having left and how big a part of my life they are. How grateful I am for them having taken me in.
I suppose all I can offer is the following. Why am I finally finishing this newsletter seven weeks after moving to San Jose - and a month after writing those first few paragraphs? It wasn’t just the fact that Grace and I had been discussing Raleigh over our camping trip; no, it was something a bit more visceral. Sitting at home, and inspired by the trip we just went on, I started thinking up plans for camping with the Gorge Rats™. A few minutes in, a song came on - “Natalie Don’t” by Raye - that I listened to a lot in my last few weeks in Raleigh. Having just talked about Raleigh with Grace, already thinking about my friends, and listening to the song that accompanied my breaking heart over those last few weeks, it all flooded in. I realized this trip we’re currently planning - this week in January that I’d be able to see my Raleigh friends - is the thing I’m most looking forward to over the next year. It was an abrupt - and tremendous - reminder of how much I missed that life.
The remarkable (or, sad) thing is these reminders happen more often than I’d like to admit, and they send a flood of memories with them every time. A print of the Linville Gorge hangs near our front door - rolling hills cloaked in red and yellow - and everytime I walk past I’m reminded of Nikhil’s supreme fire-starting ability. Captain Ted Rex Junior, the Santa T-Rex mug Jessica had acquired for me, stands over my liquor cabinet and is watching me as I write this. Every time I cook pork I think of Advance, NC. Any bottle of wine, beer, or mead I open, my first thought is whether Nick and I could feasibly recreate it.
Ultimately, I suppose it must be said that Raleigh - and the people I met there - have fundamentally changed me as a person. I used to consider myself as quite adventurous; I jumped on the opportunity to move to Scotland, I spent my time in Scotland wondering what country I could feasibly live in next, took a shot on living in North Carolina, and spent most of my time in Raleigh wondering what other US cities I might like. My mom once told me that’s a curse in our family: we’re constantly moving, and consequently, don’t have any roots. She’s not wrong, and I’ve felt that in me all my life. Since leaving Raleigh, though, I no longer feel that drive, that tugging need to explore and live somewhere new. Now, it’s difficult to imagine going anywhere further than Raleigh: when I think of home, I think of I-40, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and towns ending in “-boro.” I suppose this newsletter is my coming to terms with that fact.
For all the pain I still feel over leaving Raleigh, I’m happy to say at least I no longer feel the burning guilt, nor the crippling insecurity, of having left. The only thing I feel anymore is incredibly lucky to have lived there at all, and the enduring motivation to find my way back. I suppose that’s all there is left to say.
Thanks for reading.