As I unpacked my third suitcase in our new house in West Hollywood, a sharp pain shot through my chest. I felt dizzy and out of breath before lying down on our mattress, which was still covered in plastic.
“What's wrong?” -David asked.
An hour later, on a stretcher in the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai, I waited to be admitted overnight. What a great start to our new life: Back in Los Angeles after seven years in New York City, David slept alone in our apartment while I had to stay close to the paddles and the operating room in case what had just happened was a heart attack.
I was 33 years old and practiced yoga and exercised almost daily. A few months earlier, my doctor in New York noticed that I had high blood pressure and was feeling horrible, so clearly something was up. Blocked artery? No, the evidence revealed; Physically he was fine. What happened was a panic attack.
“Your health will be better in Los Angeles,” David had promised before returning to Los Angeles.
Now I was not pleased that he was wrong.
After growing up in Temple City (hardly Los Angeles), I took a high school trip to the Big Apple and knew It was where I needed to be.
Exactly five years later, it was time to escape California after a miserable breakup of a three-year relationship with a guy I completely hid from my family. I was desperate and depressed, I had lost 15 pounds from not eating much and my diet consisted mainly of cigarettes and red wine. At Archstone, my Studio City apartment, I took ecstasy alone on a Wednesday. You have to look good when you're in your room, alone, rolling, and that's why I decided it was time to start over in New York.
On the other side of the country, I thought it was normal to go out with a new guy every three nights. Which I guess, for a gay man who had spent the first 27 years of his life denying his sexuality to a family he feared wouldn't understand him, it was. My self-esteem was at rock bottom, although from the outside you wouldn't have noticed it.
After a triple-digit number of connections on Grindr, I met David, a guy who lived on the same corner of Manhattan as me. We did what people do on Grindr and hooked up a couple of times.
But one morning we met on Ninth Avenue. I came away from our brief chat feeling encouraged by how smiling and polite he was in the light of day and while we were sober. That night we had our first date and the rest is history. But I hid what I assumed wouldn't be well received.
“Let's go back to Los Angeles,” he said after four years of living together in New York.
“I'm really not ready,” I said. I loved living in New York and never expected to leave. He understood, but he wanted to return to “the coast.” I knew that in a healthy relationship it couldn't be exactly what I wanted. Finally, we packed up and moved into an apartment on North Flores Street in West Hollywood.
And now he was in the hospital.
After having to cancel the welcome home party our friends in Los Angeles had planned for us and being released from the Cedars, my life fell apart. But being the one who held it all together, I held it together better than most, at least in the presence of others.
I'm fine, I told myself, but I was worried that my heart was broken and that there was some medical problem. To cure him, he would need to accept truths he didn't want.
Growing up was devastatingly difficult for me. Being gay and misunderstood, with unacknowledged pain stored inside, was literally eating me alive. Being back in Los Angeles meant being close to my past. I told my mom I was gay before I left for New York. She said she still loved and accepted me, but to this day, the struggle has never been discussed or acknowledged. I knew I was a disappointment to my family.
I went to Westwood what seemed like 70 times, and after visiting a group of UCLA specialists, I found myself in the office of a neurosurgeon who looked at me and said, “You don't belong here. What you're suffering from is just plain old anxiety, and you're going to have to work with your therapist on this.”
“I have been,” I said, “and it's not helping.” But before she finished, he was already out the door.
Before long, the panic attacks got so bad that he could barely drive. David drove me, under the palm trees and the bright sun, as much as his schedule allowed, and when he couldn't, I made the most of it, carrying my laptop with me during the hour-long walk to yoga teacher training at Equinox in the South Bay, using that extra time in the back of an Uber to write.
For most of my adult life I had been in therapy, but it was in couples therapy with David that I felt supported enough to admit, first to myself, that I had been terrified of being completely myself. I was afraid he would leave me if he saw the real me. Secretly, I had been holding a lifetime of pain bottled up inside out of fear; I didn't want to risk losing him by being too emotional or having too many feelings.
Three months after that therapy session, the pandemic hit, and with us being together 100% of the time for the next year, I let him fully in. He did not apply; instead, he proposed.
It's been eight years since that neurologist and six since I was able to fully drive again. And here in Los Angeles, in a city characterized by its distance, I have built, with David, a united family that supports me and fully understands me.
I now feel “at home” in our Spanish-style house in Hancock Park, the one we bought because we wanted to start a family of our own, only after Los Angeles allowed me to heal and live in peace, and now, free of anxiety.
If David hadn't dragged me back, I wouldn't have learned what I did about myself, my origin story, and my life that is so beautiful and so true to me.
And we certainly wouldn't be bringing our baby daughter, Lucy, named after Lucille Ball (who's more Hollywood?), home in mid-July via surrogacy.
The author is a writer and advisor who helps established business owners build lives that feel as good as they look. He lives in Hancock Park. He is on Instagram: @iammattgerlach.
Los Angeles Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the Los Angeles area, and we want to hear your true story. We paid $400 for a published essay. Email [email protected]. You can find shipping guidelines. here. You can find previous columns. here.
