Last night I was in bed in my Manhattan loft fuming  — the neighbors had lit an illegal fire, in a condemned chimney, and smoke was pouring into my apartment. For me, this type of situation is my worst fear, a reflection of my greatest sense of injustice; people being inconsiderate and breaking the rules, resulting in an affront to my personal safety.

This situation felt particularly affronting because it is on the tail of my asthma flare due to recently being caught breathing wildfire air on my last trip to SF. The smell of smoke in my apartment was a flashback to the panicking feeling I had as smoke filled the air in SF, and my breathing became labored, just a few weeks ago.

This sense of dread that I could stop breathing, fear that the situation wouldn’t be rectified, indignation at the neighbors’ blatant disregard for the rules…it triggered several contemplations, but here I’ll share just one about making SF ‘un-mine’:

The recent fires in CA have already made me really rethink any goal/fantasy to go back West when Eric and I retire. I have a respiratory disease and the fires are getting worse each year. But I noticed it hasn’t just effected my long-term fantasy; I don’t even feel like going back for work or visits in the short term either. The idea of more back and forth is exhausting, the time away from Eric, feeling unsettled in my life. This past time I was on the East Coast (right after the fires) I started thinking maybe I hadn’t given Greenwich a fair chance, maybe I could build a better life in Connecticut after all.

Laying in a smoky house, fear and anger making my focus extra sharp, I realized what has changed: SF isn’t mine anymore. When I said it in my head, my heart knew for sure it was true. And though practice has taught my mind to try and refuse my belongings and my identities before, this has to be the first time my heart really really felt it as well.

When I started poking around to see what has changed, I realized the biggest thing is my imagination that I have a certain future in SF (or Cali, or anywhere out in the West Coast fire country), that it can be my “forever home”. I just can’t reconcile the fires/air quality with a belief that I can mold both the home, and the home-shaped void in my heart, to fit each other. Without this sense of hope and permanence, my heart rejects the West Coast, I am ready to move on.

Before, I looked at the city, and my situation, with such soft eyes. Sure, I saw the needles on the streets, the cost of living, the strain of going back and forth, but these things were worth it. I also saw the city changing, the people, the places, the weather even, but it was still similar enough, familiar enough that I could literally, watch my imagination fill-in the gaps, smooth over the changes by focusing on the familiar. Now, in the wake of disillusionment, I feel the weight of the commitments I have made, my duties, that keep me bound to travel to SF, for right now, so much more strongly.

It really stuns me, I have spent so much energy and desire fixated on how to leave NY and go back to the West Coast: Seattle, Portland, Denver, Cali, pushing Eric into countless job interviews at companies in all these places, so that I could align my heart home with my full time home. So I could align my location with my identity: A West Coast Gal. But 1 new piece of information is all it took to kill this hope.

Recently I sent a whole bunch of clothing to consign and before I did I assessed the “story of impermanence that each item tells”; there was a whole category of items that I was disposing of because I got new information –down is warmer than wool, I have a nickle allergy, silk is too hard to clean, etc. It dawned on me that I am constantly getting new information and with it my needs and wants are also constantly changing. In other words, there is literally no end to my desire and there is also no possible way that I can satisfy it. I am on an endless treadmill!

My big question now is how do I get off the treadmill? As I started divorcing myself from Fire Country, new imaginary homes began to stew in my brain. Maybe CT is a forever home, maybe Vermont is the perfect place to retire.  And so the treadmill keeps rolling…

Of course, this isn’t the first time  I have unmade something as mine: Once the ugliness or untenability of something hits my heart, disillusionment sets-in. Just take my still smoke filled NY Loft for example: This thing was ‘un-mined’ almost as soon as I bought it. Like the West Coast, there was an evolution in my understanding that I didn’t control the place (too small, lot line window, noise, maintenance issues and ultimately a city I hate), I can’t shape it to my imagination. I can’t force it to bend to my will. I bought it because I thought it was one thing, a cozy new nest for Eric and I to build an exciting life, and it quickly became a massive failure and financial mistake. Now it is up for sale, us hoping to cut our losses.

Once an object strays too far from my imagination of what it is/will do/will make me, I purge it from my identity. Even if, like the NY loft, it remains with me physically, it is gone from my heart. Once my heart, my sense of self, strays too far from what I imagine an object to be, like countless fashion looks I have cycled through and left behind, I purge it from my belongings. If all it takes is a change of object or a change of heart to make something not mine, how can I believe it was ever really mine to begin with? I cling so tightly, endure so much suffering in the name of that clinging, to things I will eventually let go of –by choice or force. I suffer not even for the objects, but for some duration where I can fool myself into thinking they are mine.