home is where the seratonin is...

If you will notice, I've finally updated the title of this blog to indicate that I in fact live in Oakland, and not Berkeley anymore. I know, it's about 2 years behind my actual physical move, but the current status update has a lot to do with mulling over my living situation and possible changes to it.

For the past few months I've been looking at condos and houses with a milquetoast intention to buy. And today I saw a lovely house that I could totally picture myself living in. Strolling to the local bakery and grocery shops. Visiting the local library. Taking walks in the residential streets and to the nearby park. Figuring out new routes to get to work. Signing up at the local gym. Planting a garden...(I have a lip tremble at that one.) But then also freaking out at how I could possibly cover the mortgage payments for an exorbitantly priced house, trying hard to stay in Oakland but not anywhere I might get shot. My anxiety level spiked at thoughts of possibly three-fourths of my paycheck being siphoned off each month and having no savings at all, being stuck in a large--albeit charming--space that is devoid of the furniture I can't afford.

But let me backtrack a bit. This whole house searching thing started in the spring when my mom pointed out that housing prices are plummeting and it's a great time to get into the housing market. Low interest rates. Foreclosures priced to sell. Great investment opportunities. At her avid urging I went to an open house and met a realtor and have since been on a bit of a runaway train seeing condos and houses from listings sent to me by my mom, my realtor, and some that I found on my own while combing trulia.com and redfin.com. I even made offers on 2 condos, but at prices that I was quickly relieved were too low to be accepted.

I've learned a great deal about Bay Area real estate, though to be honest not as much as if my heart were really into to buying a place. I've maintained a search out of a weird sense of obligation to my parents to be fiscally-minded and accepting of their offered generosity--because for real there ain't no way I could independently afford any kind of downpayment on anything. My parents really want to invest money in me by helping me to get a place and I had to struggle with being able to accept that gift and not resent or degrudge it as an prod or a chain. After finally grappling with that, today's seeing a house that I could actually potentially live in made me freak out again and feel rushed to act. Because I'm not ready to buy a house. Or a condo.

And talking it over with my mom, while she went what price we should offer and launched into giving me more listings to look at, I finally was able to articulate how stressful and painful this whole process was and how in a hurry I was to put in offers just so that I could stop looking for more houses. And this time my mom heard the desperation, or maybe just peevishness, in my voice and realized that I was not enjoying this housing search and was doing it out of some misplaced sense of filial duty. And she released me. Said, you're not ready--it's ok.

I was surprised. I was gearing up for a verbal melee with hurt feelings and blame and a culminating burst of sobs to get myself out of this particular spiral of parental expectation, but my mom was cool about it. Which reminds me of a recent revelation about how Asian parents feed off their kids' insecurity. If I can't project confidence and manage up, my parents will give explicit instructions and expectations and manage down believing that they need to guide me out of my uncertainty. I mean, I knew when this whole thing started that I didn't want to buy a condo or house. I was paralyzed just by the thought of moving out of my drafty, tiny studio apartment (for what? where? ahh!). If I could have conveyed that uncertainty with certainty to my mom, I realize that I could have saved myself months of grief. It's hard for me too to learn that my parents aren't going to push me to the edge of a cliff just because they want to. If they can understand what I want, they won't feel so compelled to guess that I need to want what they want. What a crazy thought. We don't have to torture ourselves or each other just for the hell of it.

Maybe I'll browse craigslist and see if there are any nice one bedroom apartments around. If I feel like it.