I've been crying a lot lately.
I find myself sitting on my living room couch, folding laundry between Zoom meetings, the US Open playing in the background, my aging hands in the foreground, and I burst into tears. I cry not because Zverev won or because my hands remind me of my grandmother’s, albeit a little less waxy and veiny and stained. It’s something bigger, something deeper, something I can’t quite put my finger on.
I’m on the 405 on my way to pick up my daughter from school, stuck in a traffic jam, and I start crying again. I cry on the way to work and while sitting on the warm sand of Malibu looking out to sea. I cry while doing yoga, while hiking in Temescal Canyon, while waiting in line for a $22 milkshake at Erewhon. These episodes have been haunting me for months. Little by little, they’ve invaded my mind and nervous system. I have no words: I cry.
It could be for a number of reasons. My husband and I have been arguing non-stop about emotional labor and my constant attempts to de-center it in our marriage. It's exhausting and fruitless. I don't write anymore. I have a urinary tract infection, again. But these things are too easy, too obvious. I try to get out of them. Meditation, sound baths, breathing exercises… nothing helps.
And then, all of a sudden, I get a call from my landlord: She’s selling the duplex, and we might have to move. The prospect of being forced out of rent-controlled, low-price housing in Westwood, a safe neighborhood on the Westside in a good school district, should have me losing my cool. Tears should be streaming down my face, but they’re not. I find myself feeling happier than I have in months. We might have to move. We might have to move. have to move. We can go. We will. have I'm leaving! I smile from ear to ear and start dreaming of another life somewhere else. And then it hits me. I've fallen out of love with Los Angeles.
People hate Los Angeles, so it might seem logical to you that you would fall out of love with it. It’s not a real city, it’s too spread out, there are no stations, the traffic is awful, they say smugly as they flock off to colder places. But I don’t hate Los Angeles, I love it; I always have. I’ve loved Los Angeles since I was a kid growing up in Orange County, a brown kid in a sea of white kids who felt invisible and alone. Los Angeles is my city. It’s people who look like me in the thrift stores on Melrose. It hums with energy. It’s dirt and grime pushed up against beauty and splendor. It’s real, it allows complicated things to exist side by side. It’s my dad’s family in East LA, pork rinds, an ice cream truck, and menudo after church on Sundays. It's my mother's family in Alhambra, strawberry jam on fried chicken, the Dodgers, and a Boy George poster on the back of a bedroom door. Los Angeles is everything, was everything. Once Los Angeles was my salvation, my only hope.
So what's changed? A lot.
I've been married for 10 years, I have a child, I've lost people I loved, I got fired by my literary agent, the wildfires are out of control and it's getting hotter and hotter; all things that have surely affected my love affair with this city.
My identity has changed and I feel out of place. I'm no longer a hopeful young girl dreaming of living in the City of Angels. I'm older. Wiser? Maybe. I've failed a lot. I'm not who I thought I would be. Los Angeles isn't what I thought it would be either. Can we survive these truths? I want to…
I want to fall in love again. But how?
I light a candle in front of St. Barbara, my family’s patron saint, and ask her for guidance. I place pink gemstones on my heart chakra while I sleep. I start spending time in the moonlight. I read “Nightbitch.” I drive through downtown Los Angeles at night with the windows down and the sunroof open, like I did with my aunt and uncle when I was a kid. The lights are magical; there’s something in the air.
I eat a French toast and a pickled egg that turns my fingertips purple at Philippe's and feel satiated. I take my daughter to the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Sanctuary. We feed the ducks and turtles. A swan bites her outstretched hand. She laughs and runs around the lake. I look at her and see myself as a child. I write this short text and really enjoy the process. I make chicken rice and cry because it tastes like my childhood and reminds me of my grandmother. But it's a different cry than before. It feels different. Like I'm taking something back.
I decide to make the city mine again.
I start avoiding the people, places, and things that annoy me. I go analog (for the most part). I stand firm on my boundaries. I am more present than ever. I wake up a little earlier each morning to look at my daughter’s perfect face as she sleeps next to me. I listen to the birds chirping outside my window. I kiss my husband because he buys me cheese and figs. We argue a little less, but we recover and mend faster. I start taking to the streets and avoiding the highways. I vow to find one thing about the city to be grateful for each day: the shade, In-N-Out, the free museums, the sunshine, the ocean, the friendly neighbors (thanks, Mary and Paul), the walkable neighborhoods, the public library, the reproductive freedom.
In the midst of rebuilding my gratitude, I begin to remember who I am. The city remains. It becomes my ally, giving me cool breezes, green lights, a healthy dose of vitamin D. I feel lighter, freer, and then one day, many days after I started crying, I feel hope pulsing in the back of my brain and I know I am right where I am supposed to be. I love Los Angeles and Los Angeles loves me.
So even though my joints ache and my body is entering perimenopause, even though my marriage is going through a rough patch and my creative practice seems dead, I know I’ll be okay. In the words of Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: “At least I have her love, the city, she loves me. As lonely as I am, we cry together.”
The author is a teacher and writer. She lives in Westwood with her daughter and husband.
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