I moved back to the Bay in June. San Jose, specifically. Eleven years since I lived here, four since I lived in the Bay at all. (And when I say “the Bay,” I mean the Bay Area. If you’re not from here, welcome to the local vocabulary.)

I’ve been struggling with it.

On the surface, it looked like small things. Why doesn’t anyone dress up here? Why is there so much crime? Why are taxes and gas prices so high? Why is there this particular brand of Bay Area “wokeness” that feels completely normal here and almost silly once you leave?

Real complaints. Some legitimate. Most superficial. But none of them were the actual thing. The actual thing was that I was struggling to reconcile the version of me who left, the one who’s returning, and all the versions in between.

I even got scammed during my first week back, which felt like a very efficient way for San Jose to say, welcome home.

The version of me that left

My beginnings here were humble, long before San Jose became “the heart of Silicon Valley.” I went to a school where most of us came from immigrant, working-class families, where there was gang activity and police on campus and more than a few lockdowns. My ’93 Honda Civic was stolen out of the parking lot the first week I had it!

I never fit in. Fitting in required a kind of street credibility and smarts I didn’t have. I was sheltered, raised by strict religious parents, and naive enough to be an easy target in a world I didn’t understand. It didn’t help that I had funky hair, talked too much, and was obsessed with anime. But the harder part was that I didn’t even know who I was yet. My world was so tightly controlled that I hadn’t had the freedom to experience enough of life to figure it out. Home felt like a prison, and so did the world inside my own head. I spent those years trying to make myself smaller, trying to find some way to live inside a life that never quite felt like mine.

And I want to be absolutely clear: I never thought San Jose was beneath me. If anything, I felt like I was beneath it. I wasn’t cool enough, tough enough, or enough of whatever seemed necessary to belong. But I have so much love for the city. It gave me character and depth, taught me the meaning of community and resourcefulness, and gave me some of my closest friends, people who knew me before I had a career or a polished version of myself. They mean the world to me.

So I left with this quiet belief that if I could just become more impressive, maybe I’d finally become someone who fit.

San Francisco was where I built my career. I had nowhere near enough money to live there, but I was used to going without. I had optimism, ambition, and a willingness to outwork anyone in the room. Those years also gave me some of the most meaningful relationships of my life, ones I still have today. Eventually, that career gave me the financial stability to leave the Bay entirely, in pursuit of the endless promise of “more.”

The version in between

Mexico City, where, after years of the Bay’s constant hustle, I learned to slow down, experience loneliness, and be okay with it. Also, the architecture and art are stunning.

San Diego, where I bought my first home and got my first taste of the American Dream. Only to realize it wasn’t really my dream. Just another proof point that I was doing something right.

Los Angeles, where I learned one of my biggest lessons in love. More on that another time, maybe.

Vietnam, where I reconnected with my roots and got my citizenship. It helped me understand my identity in a way I hadn’t been able to before. And now, in another full-circle moment, I’m trying to buy my childhood home.

And last, Hong Kong. I gave that year completely to work and got the promotion I’d set out to earn. But being that far from the people I love made me wonder whether those things mattered as much as I thought they did. Also the weather was terrible. And people kept mistaking me for a domestic helper because I was southeast asian (maybe I’ll write more about the racism around that another time.)

One thing distance taught me

When you’re far enough away, you get to curate the polished version you want other people to see. No one knows you well enough to know who you were before. No one is close enough to notice the cracks.

There’s freedom in that. But there’s also loneliness.

Away from home, you can choose who you are. At home, people remember who you were. The tradeoff is that if you’re never fully known, you can never be fully seen. And to be seen is to be loved.

Distance also taught me what the Bay actually meant. For years, I thought of coming from here as something I needed to overcome. But the farther I traveled, the more I realized how much respect the Bay carries around the world. Being from here gave me a kind of credibility before I had anything else to prove. There’s an unspoken belief that if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

The irony is that I spent years trying to become impressive enough to leave, only to realize that the place I was trying to outgrow had already given me a head start. I didn’t become someone despite where I came from. I became someone partly because of it.

The version of me who’s returning

Alas, I made the decision to come home. My parents are getting older, and that’s the plain truth of it. I’d been missing too much, the kind of milestones you don’t get a second pass at. At some point, the math stopped working. Every year away bought me something I could measure and cost me something I couldn’t.

For most of my life, I thought I was running toward something: more money, more achievement, more places, more proof that I’m finally worthy belonging somewhere. But I think I was also running away from something. Maybe I wasn’t actually running from the Bay, but from the person I was when I lived here. And maybe everything I learned out there wasn’t an escape after all. Maybe it was preparation.

That’s the part that makes me think about The Alchemist. Sometimes you have to go very far away to understand what you were looking for in the first place. I needed San Francisco, Mexico City, San Diego, Los Angeles, Vietnam, Hong Kong. The journey wasn’t a mistake. Maybe I needed all that distance to become the person who could finally recognize what was waiting for me at home. Or at least that’s what I tell myself so all those years weren’t for nothing (and so I can sleep at night haha).

These days, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life becoming a more impressive version of myself. I just want to be the sweetest, softest (and hottest haha) version of myself. I want to take good care of the people I love, be present for the things I used to think were too small to matter, and let myself be known, even when being known means someone gets to see the cracks. Because I can’t think of a greater honor than getting to take good care of the people you love.

That said, I am still going to complain about the taxes. And why does no one dress up here?