the same time every year

another window into my experience of LA

Last month, I found myself in a community of lovely and exceptional artists, filmmakers, producers, writers, the like. Many of them live in Los Angeles, and several beckoned me to move back there and keep the ball of our new friendship rolling. But just this January I finally tore myself out of LA after 4/5 years living there. We had a pretty toxic relationship. Great highs, low lows. Now, I don’t know what to do.

Here’s something I wrote awhile ago, during the thick of it.

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It’s past my mother’s bed time in the yellow lit kitchen when the tears start to roll out of my eyes. The table is loaded with 3 sets of elbows, and the dishes from dessert remain, drying out in the open air. I am confessing my distaste for everything as my sister comes down the stairs and puts her arm around my shoulder. I confess how badly I crave family. The next day I caught my flight.

At home, my plastic grocery bags sag on the outdoor concrete staircase. The garage door automatically closes behind me, and I helplessly watch a single tomato roll out onto the step below, then onto the ground, then into a murky puddle of street water. There’s not enough hands to carry all of these bags, so I do multiple trips by myself, leaving the tomato behind.

My tinder date arrives 10 minutes early, at 7:52 pm, so I barely have enough time to hastily make the bed before he enters it. I almost miss the alone time, until he leaves and I realize there is more than one definition of alone

On Friday, the downtown city lights are aglow, and they cast a purple hue onto my friend’s pleather jacket. We drink cheap rosé and eat expensive appetizers, and I feel the excited eyes of attractive strangers pass over us. Job listings on the East Coast sink deeper into my open tab lists as Los Angeles enchants the dream-filled teenager within me.