This morning, Chris and I visited the Cabrillo National Monument, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean and has a really spectacular cliff walk. The cliffs have these beautiful edgings from all the erosion that has occurred over the years. The actual Cabrillo statue at the site was pretty underwhelming; we mostly came for the cliff walk/hike and the ocean scenery, which did not disappoint one bit.

As we walked around the cliffs and along the edges, I thought about how comforting it would be to live in California again, to be this close to the Pacific Ocean and see views like this every day or every weekend whenever I wanted. The smell of the ocean and the sound of waves crashing — we don’t and can’t get that in the urban jungle that is New York City. And then the idea deflated immediately when I thought about being closer to home. Being closer to home is not a comforting feeling.

And that was when I started getting vertigo and couldn’t walk along the very edge of the cliffs anymore. All I could hear was my mother in my head, yelling at me for coming to a place like this where you could easily fall over and die.