I’ll start with a caveat: I don’t pretend to know this city more than you do. I’m a visitor, a temporary fly in, here to assess whether this city will be my home for a while. Turns out, I’m leaving before I can give the city a chance.

For three years, I had the romantic notion of moving to San Francisco to work in a Silicon Valley startup and perhaps, in time, start my own.

For three years, it was always San Francisco because it was the ideal place for me; a hotbed of startup activity, innovation and tech. All of my favourite things combined. There was an established industry here, things were happening, there was venture capital and a thriving entrepreneurial community. You know what? There still is, and this is only growing.

Which is part of the problem.

Over the years, I tracked the things that were happening. Rising rents, protests, people getting evicted, not being able to afford to live in the city anymore. I was aware of these problems, but I distanced myself from it somewhat; nothing was really get in the way of coming here and starting a new life.

The romance was partly built up by people who I met along the way, who knew me and the city well, and reinforced the idea that we were right for each other. I was told things like “If there was ever a girl made for a city, and a city made for a girl…it’s you and San Francisco”. Sure, I bought into that.

But I’m not sure why now.

Three years later, and I’m in the city I’m meant to fall in love with. But if you think of a city as a person, and your gut instinct as telling of their character, San Francisco is making me feel pretty uncomfortable right now.

It doesn’t really matter how long I’ve known it, what matters is how it makes me feel.

And right now I want to ask: Who even are you San Francisco?

No, but really, what are you all about?

Because, I’m not quite sure I understand who you are. But San Francisco, do you know either?

Everyday is emotionally conflicting as I witness the beauty and ugliness in concurrent motion.

Like a bi-polar affliction, the city brings me high and low again as I struggle to find that happy medium.

Every time I escape into a visual treat of pretty buildings, charming streets, and fancy coffee shops, I step out into the darkness which marks San Francisco’s true character; street bodies without homes. The haunting ghosts that pass you on one side, while suits walks on the other. The ghosts that nobody sees anymore.

Like everyone else, I step over the body lying on the steps of the station, not quite sure if it’s alive or dead. And apparently, that’s okay.

Because what has become more shocking than the jaw dropping confronting reminder of homelessness everyday in this city, is the fact that people don’t even see it. It has become so normal, that I start to worry what normal actually means to anyone, anymore.

And so the city appears to be competing on two sides of the same coin to be the sunny side up.

You’re either homeless or you’re in tech. The disparity and conflict between ambition and poverty, power and hopelessness, pretentiousness and desperation, so much everything and so much…nothing, is all too great to be able to really connect on a human level at all with this place. There is no one core identity. No one attitude. No consistency. I couldn’t tell you what this city is about if you asked me, I just don’t get it.

Walking around the city daily, I feel less inspired to take pictures of the things that I like, because instagramming the pretty coffee in a ceramic cup is deliberately leaving out the things that I don’t like, like the man lying outside the cafe with his head in a blanket.

It is impossible to see the beauty without feeling the heartbreak. And for that I don’t want to be a part of this city.

A city that ignores their homeless. Because I don’t ever want to get used to the fact homelessness exists.

I came here with expectations this city was advanced, progressive, somewhat leading our future. And it is, but I’m not sure in the right ways now. The order of things here is not quite right, immature even, selfish. The idea of working in tech now makes me feel like I’m contributing to part of the problem and now seems unappealing.

So I decided I don’t want a part of it. I’ll come here again, I’ll appreciate the beauty. I’ll admire the friendliness of the people, and the ambition of the talented folk that make this city what it is.

But I’m off looking elsewhere, somewhere I can relate to or understand, somewhere with soul, that I can call home. Maybe one day when the time is right, it will work out. But right now you’re just not for me.

Goodbye, San Francisco.