San Francisco Land of Hope

I once stood on a street in San Francisco and felt for the first time that a person really could have a new start. At the time, I had taken a long hiatus from travel, even though travel was the dream I was born with. When I was ready to travel again, I went to San Francisco.

That day, the fog caught light like microscopic pearls. It illuminated the red awnings and the yellow shirt of someone walking into a shop down the street. There was sun and a breeze; it all felt cold and warm at once.

At that moment, San Francisco gave me a belief that the past could someday drop from my shoulders. My mind could be new.

Maybe the feeling San Francisco gave me is from the power of a wind that has come from over the sea. The seaside city is an in-between world where things can grow.

A couple of days later, after one of my wilder all-nighters to date, I sat at the departure gate in San Francisco International Airport. I’d been happy. But something alchemical happened at the end. The goodbye to San Francisco finally cracked open certain grief.

It all came crashing down when the trip ended at that gate: the grief of a complicated relationship in my past ended with a suicide. I had been drinking and partying it away for some time. Far longer than for my visit to the bay city. That relationship’s end, and his life’s end, was why I hadn’t had the heart to travel for a long time.

For some reason, honesty with myself came at that departure gate. It showed me my face like a mirror in dim light. The next six months back in Denver were dark but healing.

Thus San Francisco jump-started me from a death in my life. The relationship killed my faith in myself, and his death made grief into complex grief.

San Francisco was the first journey in the After times. Yet, it was the first of what has become many since. Traveling is my calling — San Francisco gave it back to me.

Traveling is my calling — San Francisco gave it back to me.

I next went to Portland, Athens, New Orleans, Paris, Reykjavik, and many, many more. Thank you, San Francisco. For too long, I had lacked the spark.

I was only there for a visit that time. Little did I know, in a couple of years, I would have to move there.

Years passed. I got my dream job — a flight attendant! But then came the night I had to pack up my humble treasures from my Denver apartment. Denver, the ol’ home base of my travels, where I was born and raised. I had to move to San Francisco for work.

I love that city. But I choked back weeping, handling my artifacts, knowing I was leaving home only to go into a lot of uncertainty. A thought came to me then: That true love is like a cleansing fire.

The love of one man can cleanse a great deal from your life, for example, I know.

And true love of travel inspired me to become a flight attendant. That necessitated my move. Thus, it burned away so much of what the prior five years were. When you move, clothes go into giveaway bins, savings go down the drain. I left the brick apartments that had made my survival seem guaranteed in my early twenties.

Going for a good job that brings travel to the center of my life burned so much away, destroying and testing and using up… and lighting up.

It is hard. I was so shaken after the first night of packing, my boyfriend, now friend, asked me if this was the right choice for me. I think he brushed my hair out of my face, I was so upset I am not sure; but his clear voice reached me. The question hit home.

Faith can come easy, but sometimes it comes only when you call upon it.

Everything in me knew that a time of my life was coming to an end. I didn’t expect the cost of certain things to be so high. I would find out later.

When I called upon faith the night I moved to San Francisco, faith’s answering words seemed to be this:

That it’s San Francisco! I am going there, where the soul can go to know for itself that fresh starts are possible.

What did my only hopeful thought at the time look like? The picture of that luminous fog as it seemed to me the day I first went to the city on the bay.

Usually, my wishes for others are that they get the love they want in their life. But that night, my wish for others was that they may always have a place to give them faith, the hope of inner freedom, and some peace of mind. San Francisco, you were and you are that place for me.

“Save me, San Francisco” — Train

Savanna Rain Uland is a dark fantasy author and travel writer.