Maybe You Should Cry About It

In January of 2005, I moved a car load of my crap across the country to finish college. It was my last semester, and I was living and learning at a satellite campus in Los Angeles. In the months prior, just about everything in my life changed, as everything is always completely changing your life somehow at that age. Things were so crazy, in fact, I did just enough research to get myself and my best friend across the country, camping alone for a week.

I did no research, somehow, on the place I was to live for the next however-long. I had already planned to continue living in LA after graduation. No research.

A lot of people love bands from Los Angeles, and they learn of the city that way. Lots of people know about Hollywood just from loving movie history. Even more people than both these groups combined have visited Los Angeles and therefore have first-hand knowledge of the town. Not me. I just moved here.

I like to watch movies without knowing anything about them. I love to read books this way too. I adore surprises. I have let blind shit luck guide big decisions I've made. Nothing bad has ever resulted from this way of living.

But, let me suggest here: RESEARCH A CITY BEFORE YOU MOVE THERE. Or, if you can, visit there, more than once, maybe even a few times and determine if you like it. I'm not saying I "regret" moving here. I learned so much in LA. I have had so many wonderful experiences. While I still live here, I plan to do great things...

Shortly after I moved here, I heard a news report that a young actress had exited her vehicle on the 101 freeway and died. She exited the car going 80 miles an hour, and was hit by no less than nine cars. Her body parts could barely be identified.

I was horrified when I heard this. What could possibly make anyone do this? What a brutal way to end it. I just never wrapped my head around the story.

So this is the city where I live. I have been unemployed for a week, and I guess that isn't that long for a freelancer, but to me it has been a long fucking week. With a lot of friends out of town, I have had a great deal of time alone to ponder, digest, delve. It's so amazing that you can feel a certain way for so so very long and it takes all that time for your brain to wake up to how you feel. And you get this THOUGHT! Your heart rejoices when your brain finally gets the fucking message! And I thought: I know why that woman jumped out of her car!!

BECAUSE THIS CITY IS A STEAMING SHIT HOLE AND LIVING HERE ANOTHER SECOND MAKES ME WANT TO END IT ALL.

This place is hell. I need to leave. I don't want to greet my maker on the freeway, but I have to get the fuck out. I have to leave. I'm going to leave as soon as I have enough money, a job set up wherever I move, and hopefully my boyfriend's company. I have to fucking leave.

Nothing is real here. I don't trust anyone. I can't walk anywhere. I pay too much for gas and a gym membership, when, if I could just fucking walk I wouldn't have to do either! And that's just the beginning of my gripes with Los Angeles...

I feel like this whole time I've been devil's advocate with this shit hole. Every time somebody insults the way of life here, I argue. I point out all the great things like the weather and the West Coast and the cutting edge and the youth, etc. I have finally faced that these things do not fucking matter to me.

If the seasons don't change I will lose my brain. I want to be cold, East Coast cold, it's in my blood. My hair is blonde. What the fuck happened to me.

In the meantime, I'm going write. I won't desert you, blog. The fish are fucking dead you stupid kid, what are you, retarded? Or just raised in Los Angeles?

Good luck to me, or it'll be biting the 101 for sure.