Why I love Oregon?

Oregon Taught Me How to Breathe

I love going to coffee houses to work.

Not the chain ones with lines out the door. The quiet ones. The ones in Salem with old wood tables and a barista who knows I take my raspberry energy drink and no rush. I bring my laptop, my notebook, my book-in-progress. One chapter a day. That’s the rule. And somehow, the smell of espresso makes discipline feel like grace.

I love spending a beautiful day at the library or at a park just enjoying the day. No agenda. Just being. At the library I find a corner and read like I’m 17 again, flipping through Teen magazine. At the park I sit under fir trees so tall they make my worries look small. I watch kids play and remember I played with Barbies past 19. I didn’t go to dances or the prom. I chose quiet. I still do.

Coming to Oregon changed me. It enabled me to enjoy a simple life, different from California. California was hustle. California was noise. California was trying to prove I wasn’t behind, wasn’t slow, wasn’t less because I learned differently. California was the shelter. The Safeway shifts with a Master’s degree. The cocoon.

I was born in Oregon and I love this state. Moving back felt like coming home to a version of myself I hadn’t met yet — excited about the future and everything that awaits for me.

I love taking the train to different areas. The Amtrak Cascades hugs the Willamette Valley and I stare out the window and thank God. No traffic. No panic. Just fir trees, rivers, and time to think. I take the train to Portland occasionally. I take it north just because I can. Because I’m free now.

I love going to the coast. The Oregon Coast doesn’t care if you’re wearing makeup. It blows your hair sideways and tells you the truth. I stand at Cannon Beach or Depoe Bay and watch the Pacific hit the rocks and remember: I rose from the ashes. I am still here standing and breathing.

I love seeing a waterfall. Silver Falls. Multnomah Falls. Water doing what it was made to do — falling, rising as mist, falling again. That’s me. That’s discipline. That’s faith. That’s 5AM. That’s developing, not hopeless.

Enjoying Oregon means enjoying myself. Simple life, simple joys. Coffee house mornings. Library afternoons. Park evenings. Train rides. Salt air. Waterfalls.

California taught me how to fight. Oregon taught me how to breathe.

And I was born here. Maybe that’s why it feels like I was always meant to come back — to the trees, to the rain, to the quiet, to me.