Living somewhere pretty can kind of suck when you’re agoraphobic

Sometimes I hate that I live somewhere so beautiful.

Well, okay. I’m really grateful I live somewhere so beautiful. It’s great. And nice.

I can hear the ocean outside my bedroom window every night. Sometimes I fall asleep listening to the fog horn, the sound of waves crashing, and the sea lions barking like mad.

But it also drives me crazy when I feel incapable of going to the beach when it’s so close.

On the other side of my house, I look out the window and I can see rolling redwoods and mountains in the distance. The nearer skyline is dotted with palm trees. It’s nearly always sunny, always perfect weather, always beautiful.

My house is surrounded by bamboo, and there are flowers everywhere, and it’s just so damn pretty where I live.

It makes staying inside extra torturous.

I feel like if I lived somewhere ugly, in the middle of nowhere, or somewhere that didn’t have all this natural beauty (and events almost every night that I feel sad about missing out on), I wouldn’t be so hard on myself about not going out… because there wouldn’t be much to do. I mean, I’d rather not step inside a Walmart again in my life anyway, so that’s no big deal.

But I miss the tidepools, and the sunsets over the beach. I miss making sandcastles, and boogie boarding, and swimming in the freezing water. Jumping into the ocean at two in the morning. Going hiking. The smell of the redwoods. Eucalyptus trees. Thousands of butterflies gathering together every year. Bonfires on the beach. Sitting on the rocks by the lighthouse. Reading books at the harbor. Drives up the coast. Zoning out and realizing you’re in San Francisco an hour later.

Sometimes it feels like I’m mourning my old life. Sometimes it feels like it’s what I have to look forward to again someday. Sometimes it just feels stagnant and hopeless.

Anyway, I apologize for the relatively depressing post. I’ve just been feeling so frustrated lately. Every time I feel as though I’m making progress, I feel myself getting down on myself because I can’t do X, Y or Z yet. Every time I make it around a different block, or down a new street, I know that it’s bringing me closer to meeting my goals, but I still feel so far away from the life that I truly want to be living, and the places that I want to be.

Edit: I was trying to remember which Sublime song was about my town, when I remembered it was this one (also, this entire band reminds me of being in junior high):