2009 will mark a decade of my living full time in the Bay Area. It was May 1999 when I left behind a charming apartment overlooking a church square in a hip Berlin neighborhood (Prenzlauerberg/Mitte), solid work, and my mother --whose only child I am, to come to California and move in with my now ex-husband.

About a year ago I started thinking about leaving. Why? I know this place: I’ve lived on 3 sides of the Bay: San Rafael, in Marin County; the Berkeley hood; and now the City- the Castro. The most beautiful spots, especially along the coast, the forests, and the nicest restaurants—I associate with my ex. It’s too expensive to sustain oneself as an artist. Solid candidates for romantic partnership seem to elude me. And there’s such a lot of world to see.

The funny thing is, I don’t have a particular destination. I’m intrigued by popular political movements in Latin America… I have a relatively easy entrée to Berlin, and thus a portal to the EU… Toronto is tempting… I know. More than one friend has said: It should not be a moving away from, it should be a decisive moving toward. I keep waiting for a sign.

The uncertainty is leaching some lifeforce. It takes constant reminders to be present, and still I drift. Anxiety, loneliness…

In my senior year of college I knew I was leaving for Europe after graduating. My parents had moved to Germany during my sophomore year and shortly thereafter we figured out that my dad had alzheimer’s. I wanted to go to Europe; I also felt I had no choice but to go and support my mother, help take care of my father. About midway through senior year, all my relationships started disintegrating. My unbelievably hot and brilliant creative polymath of a boyfriend, Robb, couldn’t imagine moving abroad. The dissolvings (with friends too) seemed mutual.

But here I am, 15 years later, with more self-awareness. I look back on that time and wonder if it was almost entirely me who was dis-engaging. To protect myself, to make the leaving more bearable.

These days, I sometimes choose to be alone on a given night even when I have a social invite. I tell myself I can’t go to another party and not meet someone I’m interested in; but instead be surrounded by nuzzly couples…but instead be breathed on by a moth drawn to my light --with whom I got no spark.

Alone, I flip through my mental rolodex and decide I don’t really feel like talking to any of my friends. I often tell myself it’s because none of them can offer the specific type of interaction I increasingly crave: the breathtaking I-can’t-get-enough-of-you romantic exchange.

The distancing phenomenon’s been compounded by the evolution of my professional life. Thrillingly, I’m a writer now. Yet it’s eaten my life for the past six months, as I’ve busted my ass to get a serious nonfiction project finished in an unheard of timeline. I put off almost every friend between December 2007 and May 2008, and now at the end of that spell I have found myself adrift.

At the Hoop Path retreat last weekend (it already seems forever ago, far more than a week), I was only half-connecting, mostly, except maybe with Beth or Satise. Unfortunate.

What to do except put myself back out (t)here. Share this. Wait for a sign. Invite intimacies. Only connect.