24

Jul

California.

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”

― Miriam Adeney

Getty Center Garden

Two hours after I got off the plane in L.A., a dog bit me. It was late afternoon, and I was hungry. I dropped off my bags at my friend Jen’s apartment and went out in search of food. Minutes later, on a familiar stretch of Robertson Boulevard just a few blocks from where I used to live, a seemingly-friendly Chihuahua wagged its tail, then lunged at me as I walked past.

“Oh my god!” his owner screamed. “Did he just bite you?”

“Yes,” I answered, in disbelief. I was already light-headed from the early wake up call, the cross-country flight, and the lack of food, and as I looked first to her, and then to her smiling dog – still wagging its tail – the whole thing felt like a dream. “It didn’t hurt,” I reassured her. But as I looked down, I saw it: a gaping hole in the left leg of my favorite pair of yoga pants.

“Dammit,” I swore. “Your dog bit a hole in my pants.”

“Rocco!” she scolded him. “Bad dog!”

And then, to me: “I’m so sorry.”

On another day, I might have said, “It’s OK.” If I was less exhausted, less hungry, and if I hadn’t been standing in the hot sun, I might have chosen to take the high road. But I didn’t. Instead, I just stood there, glaring at her, waiting for her to offer to replace the pants her dog had ruined. She didn’t. She didn’t even really seem sorry, even though her mouth had formed those words. After a momentary standoff, I finally looked her in the eye, shook my head, and stomped away. And on a familiar street, in a neighborhood I used to call home, one thought began to play on a loop in my brain: You don’t live here anymore.

Palisades Park

Two weeks before I flew to L.A., I sat in a chair in my doctor’s office as she inspected the incisions from my surgery. They were healing nicely, and she was pleased. “It’s like we were never even in there,” she said.

She told me the tests came back, and my cyst was benign. Additional tests, on cells they took from inside my body, also showed no signs of cancer. I had a clean bill of health. After months of uncertainty, I had been given the best possible news: I was going to be OK.

I should have been elated. And I was. Or at least, part of me was. But in the days that followed my doctor’s visit, I felt something else: depressed. Because now that the health scare that had been holding my life in limbo for the last several months was over, I no longer had an excuse to put off the future. The future was here, and it demanded an answer to the question so poignantly expressed by my favorite poet Mary Oliver: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

The incident with the dog aside, my week in L.A. was wonderful. As I revisited favorite places and reconnected with old friends, I could almost believe I still lived there, that I had never even left. Almost. Despite the fact that some familiar restaurants and stores had closed, and new building developments were springing up everywhere, Los Angeles still felt mostly the same to me. There was the same soul-crushing traffic on the 405 freeway; the same impossibly tall palm trees; the same smog-shrouded view of the skyline as seen from the high perch of The Getty Center; the same soothing stretch of the Pacific Ocean bending north toward Malibu.

Getty Center Garden Maze

Los Angeles felt the same, and that sameness was comforting. But I felt different, in a way I couldn’t quite place. The feeling tugged at me all week, as I bounced around from lunches to dinner dates, from happy hours to beach walks. The drumbeat of You don’t live here anymore that echoed in my brain after the dog bite had faded, yet something still felt off, like a key that wouldn’t turn in a lock.

My week in L.A. culminated with an unplanned trip to Universal Studios. Jen worked on the lot, and after dinner, we stopped by her office on the way back to her apartment. Even at night, the place was a buzz of activity. I watched from the passenger seat of her convertible as crew members zipped by on golf carts, and a whole host of memories came flooding back. I remembered the first time I had been there, as a young actress working as an extra on a big movie, and how magical it all felt. Back then, the world stretched out in front of me, and anything and everything seemed possible.

We left her office and drove around the lot, cruising past darkened movie sets, pausing to snap a photo of the brownstones on New York Street. Then we headed for Laurel Canyon. As we wound up the mountain and I watched the city lights spreading out like a blanket of stars below us, a feeling I’d almost forgotten sparked within me: hope.

Driving through the hills above L.A., top down, wind in my hair, I suddenly remembered what it was like to hold dreams so tightly they made your heart swell. I remembered what it was like for a moment to take your breath away, to want to pause it forever. And I remembered what it was like to be certain, despite all evidence to the contrary, that everything was going to be OK.

New York Street, Universal Studios

I don’t live in Los Angeles any more. I left because I no longer felt the world stretching out in front of me there, no longer believed that anything and everything was possible. And I went to try to rediscover that sense of possibility in another place.

But as we drove home that night in L.A., I realized something: the place wasn’t the problem. The problem was me. I was the one who had decided that hope was too expensive, that happiness was too elusive. I was the one who had decided that believing in magic felt too vulnerable, and that the best way to protect myself was by holding my dreams at a distance.

I miss Los Angeles, but I have no regrets about leaving it. Because I don’t believe we are meant to stay in one place forever. We are meant to expand and explore and experience new things. And then, when – and if – we do return to the place that we left, we get to see ourselves anew, through the perspective that only time and distance can provide.

That was exactly what happened to me last week in California. I was reminded of who I am. I was reminded of who I want to be. And I was reminded that though hope is expensive and though happiness is elusive, they are also worth fighting for.

Until next time, friends.

Sunset over the Pacific Ocean

4 years ago Short URL 13 Comments

Change/Los Angeles/Travel

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01

Feb

The Wilderness.

There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.

Like, telling someone you love them.

Or giving your money away, all of it.

Your heart is beating, isn’t it?

You’re not in chains, are you?

There is nothing more pathetic than caution

when headlong might save a life,

even, possibly, your own.

– Mary Oliver

I made myself a promise in the taxi on the way to JFK: I wouldn’t have a drink in the airport bar – or two, or three – before my flight to L.A. I wouldn’t numb myself out to take the edge off my anxiety, or soothe my fear of turbulence, or quiet the jumble of thoughts swirling around in my brain. Instead, I would face it all unaided, un-anaesthetized. For once.

My resolve was tested as soon as I arrived at the airport. Upon check in, I learned I’d been upgraded to first class, one of those magical unicorn type of events that never, ever happens to me. No sooner had I happily boarded the plane and settled into seat 1C, than a bubbly flight attendant sidled over and asked in a southern twang if I’d like a mimosa before takeoff. “Yes!” I wanted to shout. But instead, I just smiled and said, “I’m fine with water,” silently lamenting the waste of free champagne.

I’ve been of legal drinking age for seventeen years, and of the many, many trips I’ve taken since then, I’ve only flown sober a handful of times. I’m not sure when my fear of flying began – I have a memory of five or six-year-old me pressing my face against the window and singing “Up, up and away!” as the plane taxied down the runway – but I know it became much worse after people I love started dying. In fact, one of my last sober flights – where my sister Deirdre and I transported our father’s ashes from Seattle to his funeral in Medford, Oregon on a tiny bombardier plane in a February rainstorm –was so terrifying – to me, not to my sister – that I’ve rarely flown without a numbing agent since.

But I don’t want to rely on any substance – booze, pills, what have you – to get through the things that scare me. Not only is it no way to live, it’s also not effective. At least, not for me. If anything, it makes my anxiety worse. Even with a buzz, my heart still races at the first sign of choppy air. My palms sweat. By the time we land, I’m exhausted. And the rest of the day is shot.

I booked this trip to L.A. months ago – to attend a friend’s baby shower – but January was such a stressful, all-consuming month that I gave up on trying to make plans and instead collapsed gratefully into the guest room of one of my dearest friends in her apartment by the beach. The day after I arrived, I took a long walk along the Pacific Ocean, unpacking the events of the last month. Just after the first of the year, my landlord confirmed what I already knew: I have to move. I spent January both on feverish rewrites to my play and feverishly searching for a new apartment, culminating in a reading three days before my trip, and the realization that I can’t afford New York.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with New York ever since I moved there almost a year and a half ago. But over the last couple of months, I finally feel like things have started to click. One of my plays just got into a new works festival in March, and another one is a semi-finalist for a theatre festival in the summer. I’m taking an advanced memoir writing class with a wonderful instructor, and I’m finally – after many months of trying – beginning to crack open my story. Creatively, I’ve never felt better. But I’m burning through my savings with no real long-term life plan. And as I sat on a bench in Palisades Park and watched the sunset over the Pacific Ocean, I felt in my bones that no matter how long I live in New York, I will eventually end up leaving. That gritty urban center, for all its myth and magic, will never be home.

For the moment, I’m in the wilderness. There’s no trail to follow. I’m simply taking each bend in the road as it comes, trying to trust the inner voice that tells me to take this turn or that one, and to keep forging ahead. For the last few days, my only plan has been to slow down, to breathe in the ocean, and to trust my heart. This time is a gift, one I don’t want to waste.

Next week, I’ll go back to New York, and I’ll prepare both to move into a temporary apartment and to put up the next reading of my play. I’ll put one foot in front of the other, and I’ll see how it feels. And like my flight, like these last few days, I’ll do it all unaided and un-anaesthetized. Just me, here, navigating the wilderness.

Until next time, friends.

4 years ago Short URL 13 Comments

Addiction/Change/Creativity/Los Angeles/New York/Travel

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25

May

Ocean Avenue.

The email finally came through on a Tuesday morning, six days after I started looking for it. I wasn’t sure why I continued to obsessively check my phone. I already knew what it was going to say.

Yet even though I had felt in my bones that I’d be getting a rejection letter, when that rejection finally came it still landed like a gut punch. It still felt like an indictment, still made me feel like a failure, still caused me to send text messages to friends asking, “What am I even doing here?”

Of course, I knew the answer. I knew it the week before, on Mother’s Day, when I sat at the bar of a breezy, open-air restaurant overlooking Santa Monica’s Ocean Avenue with two of my best girlfriends and cried into my craft cocktail. “I’ve tried everything I can think of,” I moaned. “But New York just doesn’t fit.”

But as much as I missed my friends, as much as – after nearly nine months away – L.A. still felt like home, I knew if I moved back now it would just mean that, once again, I was running. I hadn’t given New York enough time. I hadn’t given it the opportunity to change me in the ways I hoped it would.

I moved east with the goal of producing a play I wrote. I’d produced plenty of theatre in L.A., but I knew it would be harder in New York, and more expensive. I also knew I didn’t have the same network of people to call upon and ask for help. But still, I’d battle tested the script over the course of two L.A. productions and three New York readings, continuing to rewrite and refine and fix along the way. It was in great shape. I’d put together what I knew was an impressive submission package complete with glowing reviews from Hollywood. So, when I turned in my application for the New York Fringe Festival, I was sure I was going to get in.

But then something funny happened. A week after the application deadline, I stared a memoir class. I signed up for it partly to help me develop a regular writing practice and provide discipline in the form of homework and deadlines. But if I’m honest, the real reason I signed up was because I couldn’t get fiction writing – not playwriting, not anything – to hold my interest. And after a few weeks of class, a few weeks of writing exercises that pushed me to dig deep into stories from my life, memoir felt like the only thing I wanted to write. Even though it was painful. Even though it opened up a Pandora’s Box full of memories I preferred to forget. And somewhere in those first few weeks, I made the decision that it was finally time to write the book I’d been dancing around the edges of for years.

But secretly, I worried. If my play got into the fringe festival I’d have to shift gears and take on the tremendous task of producing a show. It was a prospect that thrilled me, but I also knew from experience how much work it would be. It meant the book would have to take a backseat. And because the money I’d been living on was starting to run low, it also meant that I would have to go back to work as soon as the festival was over.

I traveled back to L.A. with these conflicting feelings swirling inside of me. And as I sat down to dinner with my friend Jen on my first night in town and confided that I was afraid to step away from the fun and collaborative worlds of theatre and film to plunge into the lonely and painful process of writing a book, she just looked at me and said, matter-of-factly: “I think everything in your life for the last five years has been leading up to this moment. It’s time.”

She reiterated that sentiment two days later, on Mother’s Day, at the open-air restaurant on Ocean Avenue, saying that this thing –  the book I had been avoiding writing – was the thing keeping me stuck. It was the thing keeping me from moving on to the next phase of my life. And I cried, because I knew it was true.

It was nearly two years ago, in the summer of 2016, that I visited a psychic medium and asked for her help in communicating with my mother. I was terrified. I didn’t know what to expect. I only knew I had to do something, because her death had carved a hole in me and I had spent the last few years swallowed up by guilt and grief. The medium, a young woman named Fleur, was able to give me enough of the how-on-earth-does-she-know-that type of details about my mother’s life and death, that when she told me my Mom wanted me to forgive myself, and that she sent me white butterflies as a sign to let me know she was thinking about me, I chose to believe her.

The day before I left L.A., I rose early, leaving my friend Zoe’s apartment to walk to a corner café for coffee. As I strolled along sunny Washington Place, a white butterfly alighted on a nearby hedge. It skipped over blades of grass and skimmed the edges of flowers. It sailed away, then floated back. I watched it for a minute, then asked, “Mom?” like a crazy person, as though I expected the butterfly to respond. I was greeted only with silence. I took in the bright blue sky, the lavender jacarandas in full bloom, the towering palm trees overhead, and the dancing butterfly. “Mom,” I tried again, knowing it was hopeless but unable to stop myself. “I don’t know what to do. What should I do?” But the butterfly remained silent, continuing to drift on the breeze, until finally it glided gently away, into the beautiful Southern California morning, and was gone.

And it wasn’t the butterfly, and it wasn’t my mother, it was just me, just a shaky but sure voice inside that said, simply, “You know.” Which is why, a few days later, when I got the rejection letter, even though I didn’t think it was fair, even though I didn’t think I deserved it, I knew it was, somehow, right.

As I publish this post, it’s May twenty-fifth. It’s my mother’s birthday. She would have been sixty-six. Would have been because she died nearly six years ago, in a haze of vodka and pills. In a post I authored on this blog back in 2015, I wrote, “She drank until she disappeared. And when she died, I started disappearing, too.” It was true then, and it’s true now.

I am tired of disappearing. I’m tired of feeling stuck. And I’m tired of the ache inside me that only continues to grow. I don’t feel ready to dive into my mother’s story. I’m scared of what I’ll find when I turn the microscope on her life, and on my own. But I also think that we’re never really ready to do the things in life that call upon us to be braver than we believe. We just have to do them and see what happens.

So, I’m going to spend this summer in hotel lobbies, and cafes and libraries, writing everything I know is true about my mother, and my family, and me, until I have something that feels like a book. And hopefully by the time autumn rolls around, I’ll be ready to take another shot at starting my life over. Whatever that looks like. Whatever that means.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

5 years ago Short URL 21 Comments

Career/Change/Grief/Los Angeles/New York/Things My Mother Never Did/Writing

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27

Feb

What could be.

“For what it’s worth. . . it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

Spring came early to New York. Even if it was only a brief respite from the snow that hadn’t quite finished with us yet, the February day where the sun appeared and the temperature warmed to nearly seventy degrees was glorious. In the late afternoon, I took a thirty-block detour on my way to the gym to walk through Morningside Heights. An elderly couple sitting on a park bench smiled at me and said hello. Children chased each other and laughed, unencumbered by their scarves and jackets. As I turned down 110th Street, sleeveless joggers charged past, heading for Central Park. Even the way the waning sun fell across the brownstones lining Harlem’s Manhattan Avenue felt, somehow, hopeful.

When I meet people in New York and they learn I’ve only recently moved here, it doesn’t take long for them to ask the inevitable question: why? Why would I leave a seemingly comfortable life in Los Angeles – a place with enviable weather, where I have great friends and an established network of contacts – to move across the country to a city where life is arguably more difficult? Why now? Why, with no obvious anchor in the form of a job or school or a relationship, at an age where – let’s be honest – starting over is not easy?

Whenever I’m asked this question, I invariably answer with some version of the following: I’d been feeling creatively stagnant in L.A. for some time and I needed a change. I wrote a play that I want to produce here. And I’d always wanted to try New York and figured, if not now, when? And all of these things are true. They’re just not the whole truth. The whole truth is something more difficult to pin down, something I feel embarrassed to admit.

Ever since I was very young, I had an idea about the person I was supposed to be. She’s braver than I am, more confident. She’s successful and her life is glamorous. And – perhaps the most important part – she’s happy.  Like really, really, stupidly, ridiculously happy.

When I moved to L.A. as a baby faced eighteen-year-old, all the big dreams that drove me there were wrapped up in this idea, this need to find the best version of myself. Over the years, I caught glimpses of her. I caught glimpse of what could be. But the life I longed for never fully materialized. And just after my thirty-first birthday, everything went off the rails. And I began to wonder if time had run out on my dreams.

In a way, New York felt like my last shot. If I was too afraid to respond to the siren call of the city, what would that say about me? Would it mean I wasn’t as brave or as adventurous as I wanted to be? Would it mean that my best days were already behind me?

I’ve always been an optimist. But here’s the thing about hope: it’s a currency that grows more expensive with time and with exposure to loss. After every death, after every disappointment, after every heartbreak that has rocked this rollercoaster decade of my thirties, it’s become harder to pick myself up and begin again. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s not that I don’t try. It’s just that I have learned to protect myself by not only preparing for the worst, but by expecting it.

So, when the sparkle of starting again in a new city wore off and the inevitable reality of adjusting to life in New York set in, I got down on myself. I succumbed to melancholy and depression. I stopped believing that good things were going to happen for me.

But here’s the other thing about hope: it’s persistent. Our dreams don’t die easily. And sometimes, all it takes is one small shift in perspective to set the world right again.

I suppose it’s ironic that my shift in perspective was brought about by the flu. Forced to slow down, stay home, and stay in bed, I had a lot of time to think. And I thought about all the friends from back home who had been sending me love via emails and texts and calls, telling me they were proud of me and they believed in me. I thought about the new friends I’d made in New York, who had been so generous, so warm and welcoming, so willing to help me. And I felt both grateful for everything I had been given and ashamed of myself for taking it for granted. And I resolved to try harder. And I reminded myself that the only time you ever really fail is when you quit trying.

Until next time, friends.

5 years ago Short URL 22 Comments

Career/Change/Creativity/Grief/Los Angeles/New York

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04

Oct

Burning the boats.

Dear friends,

This essay was originally published on the blog Bottle + Heels, but, as I thought it might have interest to readers of Extra Dry Martini, I’m re-sharing it below. Tomorrow, I’ll travel by train through the Hudson River Valley and the Adirondack Mountains to Montreal. It’s a long journey, but I look forward to watching the changing fall colors from outside my window, and some quiet time to write. I’ll report back upon my return.

Until next time,

Sarah

It was blazing hot on the late August day when I left Los Angeles. It didn’t help that – rather than pack them – I had worn my favorite knee-high leather boots, and was transporting three heavy suitcases. High in the hills above L.A., I made the left turn off Sepulveda Boulevard, rounded the corner, and pulled my silver Prius into the driveway of my friend Vim’s parents’ house. I called a Lyft bound for LAX, unloaded my bags, backed my car onto the street and parked it alongside the curb, then sealed both sets of my car keys into an envelope and slipped it inside the white mailbox at the end of the driveway.

Two days later, in the tiny western Washington town of Allyn, from the living room of the beach-front home that used to belong to my grandparents, I called my insurance company to inform them that I would no longer be needing my policy. And what should have been a mundane conversation quickly evolved into something more. Before I knew it, I was pouring out my life story to Donna from Texas, the customer service agent on the other end of the line. Was I sure that I wouldn’t be needing a new policy? Yes, I was sure. I wasn’t getting a new car. I no longer needed one, because I was moving to New York. No, I didn’t need renter’s insurance, at least, not yet, because I didn’t yet know where I was going to live. Was I moving for a job? No, I didn’t have one of those, either. I was planning to produce a play that I wrote, but beyond that, I had no idea what I was going to do. I had simply decided to go, and that was that.

There’s a famous story about Hernán Cortés’ 1519 conquest of Mexico. Vastly outnumbered and facing seemingly insurmountable odds – every previous attempt to colonize the Yucatan Peninsula in the last 600 years had failed – Cortés gave his men an order: “Burn the boats.” Destroying their ships meant that if they faced defeat, they would have no exit strategy, no way to retreat and save their lives. There were only two options: win or die. Guess what? They won.

Today, the phrase “burn the boats” has come to represent a decision from which there is no going back. It means taking a bold, decisive action. It means that “Plan B” is no longer an option.

I am a meticulous planner and “burning the boats,” is far from comfortable for me. It’s scary to cut ties with the past and take a leap of faith into an uncertain future. But it’s liberating, too. For the last few months, as I’ve sold, given away or thrown out most of my belongings, I have felt lighter, as though I have been shedding old skin, and paring down to my essential elements.

More than once these last few years, I have experienced the feeling of the rug being pulled out from under me. I had job security until the company I worked at for eleven years was sold. I had parents until one terminal cancer diagnosis and one earth-shattering Sunday morning phone call.

And what I have learned through those experiences is this: nothing is guaranteed. And nothing – not the good stuff or the bad – lasts forever. Life is a constant swirl of change, and if we don’t adapt and change with it, we’ll get left behind. It would have felt safe and comfortable to stay in L.A., in my rent-controlled apartment, with my wonderful neighbors, and loving community of long-time friends. But that safety was an illusion, and my comfort came at the price of personal and creative growth.

I was scared to move to New York, and daunted at the prospect of reestablishing myself in a new city. But what I feared more than anything was regret. I didn’t want to spend my life on the sidelines, talking about the things I was going to do but never doing them.

A few days after the phone call to my insurance company, I received another call: I had a place to live. The dream apartment a friend put me up for had come through, and my new landlord was expecting me in mid-September.

And so, from the stretch of rocky beach where I had spent every childhood summer, and where I had steadily, deliberately, burned each and every last one of my metaphorical boats, I purchased a one-way plane ticket.

And I didn’t look back.

6 years ago Short URL 3 Comments

Change/Grief/Los Angeles/New York/The Beach

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24

Aug

Los Angeles.

I’m so tired, but I can’t sleep

Standing on the edge of something much too deep

It’s funny how we feel so much but cannot say a word

We are screaming inside but can’t be heard

 And I will remember you

Will you remember me?

Don’t let your life pass you by

Weep not for the memories.

 

On an early morning in the summer of 1999, a yellow school bus pulled into the parking lot of Capital High School in Olympia, Washington. I sat near the back, resting my head against the seat, softly singing the lyrics to a bittersweet Sarah McLachlan song. My head was light – the result of a sleepless night spent in Seattle, celebrating the Class of ‘99 and our newly-earned diplomas – but my heart was heavy. Graduation meant that in less than two months, I’d be leaving home to attend college in Los Angeles, a city I’d visited only once and where I knew no one. The thought of chasing my Hollywood dreams thrilled me, but I was scared too, possessed of the vague but certain knowledge that soon, everything in my life was going to change.

I waited until it was safe. As soon as I was sure that the solar eclipse that had been making its way eastward across the United States had passed over Los Angeles, I got into my car. As I merged on to that familiar stretch of the 405 freeway, I thought about that eighteen-year-old girl, half a life away, who was only just beginning her story. How could she have known how it would all unfold?

My mother watched from the third-floor window of the Radisson Hotel as – sirens blaring, strobe lights pulsating – fire trucks charged down Figueroa Street. Turning to me, face drawn with concern, fear in her aquamarine eyes, she asked earnestly:

“Sar, are you sure you want to go to school here?”

I was sure. From the minute I set foot onto USC’s University Park Campus I knew that I belonged there. Its proximity to the infamous “South Central” neighborhood of Los Angeles, the seemingly never ending parade of emergency vehicles exiting the nearby fire station, the metal bars encasing every apartment and store window. . . none of those things deterred me. In fact, they only strengthened my resolve. A girl who split her childhood between Anchorage, Alaska and small towns in the Pacific Northwest should have been a fish out of water in such a gritty, urban place. But I wasn’t. I was home.

Nearly eighteen years later, that exact same feeling settled in my chest, but this time, in a different place. Walking along Sixth Avenue in New York’s West Village, my eyes found the Freedom Tower, a beacon of steel blue standing strong and stoic in the distance, and something that can best be described as hope swelled within me. Home, cried a familiar voice, sure and steady. I listened.

I checked in to the Surf and Sand Hotel just after two p.m., changed into a bikini, and headed straight for the beach. Later, sandy and sleepy, I sat beneath a large white umbrella, stared out at the Pacific, and wrote. After an early dinner of cheap tacos and expensive wine, I headed back to the beach and waded into the ocean just in time to watch a blazing sun sink below the horizon, spreading coral and tangerine across a tranquil sky. Once it was dark, I opened up two old notebooks that I’d brought along for the journey and re-read their contents. I barely recognized the person who had written them, and so, I carefully shredded their pages and deposited them into a hotel garbage can.

As I crawled beneath white sheets, a feeling of calm settled over me. What a difference from the last time I came here, I thought. It had been December of 2015, a few days after my thirty-fifth birthday, a few weeks after my grandfather died and I had returned to L.A. from a month-long stay in tiny Allyn, Washington to oversee his hospice care, only to find that the company I had worked at for eleven years had been sold, and I had a decision to make: relocate to Seattle and take a job with the new company, or stay in L.A. and face an uncertain future. I chose to stay in L.A. I chose to trust the steady, sure voice that told me I would be OK. I have never regretted that decision.

Eighteen years after moving to Los Angeles and making it my home, it is impossible to describe how it feels to leave it. When I arrived here in the late summer of 1999, I was a girl on the edge of becoming a woman. A girl who thought she knew so much, but who had no idea how innocent she truly was. I had never been in love. I had never traveled to the Eastern United States to sink my toes into an Atlantic beach, let alone crossed that vast ocean to visit (and live in) the continent on the other side. I didn’t know that terrorists could fly airplanes into tall buildings. I didn’t know what it would feel like to hold the hand of someone I loved as they died.

What would I tell that girl now, all these years later, as I prepare to once again begin my life anew? I would tell her a great many things, but mostly I would tell her that she is allowed to make her own choices. She is allowed to let two conflicting emotions reside in her body at the same time. She is allowed to love a place and leave it, and she is allowed to love people and leave them, too. She is allowed to be both brave and afraid, allowed to be both as fragile as a paper doll and the owner of the fiercest heart imaginable. She is allowed to write her own story, without knowing how it’s going to end.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I never could have imagined how much this city would change me, how much it would shape me, how much it would open up my life. Somewhere among the boulevards and the beaches, among the wannabes and the celebrities, I found myself. I made lifelong friends. And I grew up.

Moving here was the right thing. I knew it, and I did it. And now, eighteen years later – as hard as it may be – I also know that it is the right thing to leave.

Until next time, friends.

6 years ago Short URL 21 Comments

Change/Los Angeles/Memoir/New York/Olympia

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03

Aug

Decisions.

You have a right to experiment with your life.

You will make mistakes.

And they are right too.

– Anaïs Nin

It’s a Wednesday afternoon in Burbank, California, and I’m lying flat on my back on a massage table. But I’m not getting a massage. Instead, I’m doing something I’ve never done before, a theme for me lately. I’m seeing an intuitive healer. I’m not sure what to expect, only that I’ve been feeling stuck and directionless, and that the healer – a woman named Alicia – was recommended by a close friend. And so, I go.

Alicia begins by using a pendulum device to scan my chakras. As she suspends it over my body, it spins clockwise, emitting a soft hum. When she gets to the area above my heart, the pendulum’s spin slows down. Above my head, it stops altogether, and then begins to spin backwards.

“You’re feeling indecisive,” she says.

“Yes,” I admit.

“Doubting yourself?”

“Yes.”

When I get up from the table and check my phone, I’m stunned to discover that nearly two hours have passed. Despite our pre-session consultation, during which Alicia advised me that I could feel any number of things during the healing (sadness, pain, anger – to name a few), I remained calm and relaxed throughout. As she placed her hands on my ankles, my shoulders, the crease in my elbow, the crown of my head – anywhere that needed healing – she asked me questions, described images she saw, and we talked. That was it. I didn’t cry, not once. When I left her house, I felt tired, but also, at peace.

A few days later, at a creative writing workshop with WriteGirl, a mentoring organization I volunteer for, I spent several hours working with two teenage girls whom I’d never met before. They were both beginning the college application process and were both feeling overwhelmed by it all. As we talked about schools, AP classes, personal essays and the pressure to choose a major, I heard myself giving them advice I wish I’d received when I was seventeen:

“If you choose a college and you don’t like it, you can always transfer.

If you pick a major that’s not right for you, you can always change it.

I know it feels like the decisions you make now will determine the rest of your life,

but I promise you, they won’t.

You can always change your mind. About everything.”

In my life, I’ve spent a whole lot of time talking about all the big things I’m going to do, and only a little bit of time doing them. The “talk” is safe, because a plan that hasn’t been put into action yet hasn’t had the chance to fail. The decision is a different thing altogether. The decision is scary. The decision means that you stop thinking, stop weighing your options. It means you go for it, and you don’t look back.

I talked about going to New York for a long time before I decided to do it. And now that I’ve decided, I feel a bit like a snowball rolling down a hill, rapidly gathering speed. I gave up my apartment and all my furniture. I’m paring down my belongings, getting rid of clothes and books and personal effects I used to cherish. I’m preparing to sell my car, and several pieces of my mother’s jewelry. And even though I don’t leave for three more weeks, this weekend I’m hosting a going away party at which I’ll see many of my L.A. friends for the last time. At least, for a while.

Thinking about those teenage girls, their futures uncertain, their whole lives stretched out before them like a promise, I found myself wondering: how many evolutions do we get in a life? And I think the answer is: as many as we chose. We can always change. We can always grow. But we must be willing to say no to the old way of doing things, and yes to the uncertain and the unknown. We must be willing to be vulnerable. To screw up. To learn. And to begin again.

Until next time, friends.

6 years ago Short URL 36 Comments

Change/Los Angeles/Well-Being

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15

Jul

Loose ends.

“be easy.

take your time.

you are coming

home.

to yourself.”

– Nayyirah Waheed

I just started rehearsing a new play. Well, a play, and a monologue, two short pieces I’m directing this summer as part of a larger show. But the play, a one-act called Closing Time at Graceland, is the reason I’m still in L.A. Because when I started writing it (or rather, when it started writing me), something about the story stuck in my bones. Without realizing it, I wrote a longing-tinged love letter to my past. To opportunities missed. To the road not taken. To the dreamy hopefulness of youth, and the realization – that only comes with age – that hope is expensive.

I watched countless auditioning actors perform the play’s bittersweet climax and never once failed to feel a lump rise in my throat. I’m sure my emotional state had something to do with the timing: we held auditions in the weeks before and after I packed up my Cashio apartment; weeks I spent going through old photos and mementos, journal entries and play scripts, saying goodbye to my neighbors.

These last few weeks I have been engaged in a persistent tug of war between holding on and letting go. I’ve been reaching out to friends and making plans, checking items off my “things to do before I leave L.A.” bucket list, sorting through boxes of stuff in my summer sublet, and continuing to work on paring down my belongings to the bare minimum.

I have six weeks left. I feel the need to tie up all the loose ends, to see all the people I want to see, do all the things I want to do. I know that’s impossible. I’m still a person who craves closure, even though I’m not sure I believe it exists. As a writer, I prefer an open ending, probably because I’ve learned that few things in life ever truly resolve.

It’s the calm before the storm; these last sleepy, hot July days represent a lull in the calendar. Time in which to work behind the scenes and get my life in order before the chaos of August descends – the play, the parties, the fast push to the big departure date – signaling the end of an era.

I should be working harder than I am, but I feel heavy, unmotivated, and exhausted, prone to short bursts of energy followed by long afternoons where it’s tough to find a reason to leave the apartment. Friends ask how the New York plans are going, and instead, I steer the conversation toward the play I’m working on, my upcoming storytelling show, the new David Hockney exhibit at The Getty. Because this moment – this one that I’m currently living – is the one I’m preoccupied with.

Do I feel guilty about the fact that I don’t have more boxes checked with regard to the future? Yes. Does it make me uneasy when people ask me where I’m going to live in New York and how I’m going to pay my bills and I still don’t know? Yes, and yes. But here’s the truth: I wouldn’t be taking this leap if I didn’t have faith that somehow, some way, it will all work out. Perhaps for the first time ever, I trust myself. I trust the decision I’ve made. And I trust in my intuition that everything will come together when I need it to.

For a recovering (meticulous) planner, this type of faith in the unknown marks real progress. I’m scared as hell, but I’m proud of myself, too. So, for now, I’m going to enjoy where I am. I’m going to enjoy the last few weeks of this beautiful, sweltering Southern California summer. And I’m to going to continue to tie up those loose ends, wherever I can.

Until next time, friends.

 

6 years ago Short URL 5 Comments

Change/Los Angeles/New York/Theatre/Well-Being

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03

Jul

Independence Day.

“Nobody knows anything. We’ll take this leap, and we’ll see. We’ll jump, and we’ll see. That’s life.”

– Joe Versus the Volcano

On my last night on Cashio Street, after all the boxes had been packed, the remaining contents of my living room divided up into items to donate and items to keep, I sat perched on the ledge of my patio, just outside my front door, my back pressed up against the hard stucco wall, legs folded into my chest, staring out into the clear night sky.

The air was still warm, and a quarter moon hung just above my neighbor’s red-tiled roof. It was June 29th – five days before Independence Day – but the sound of fireworks had already begun to echo throughout the neighborhood. Boom! That one distant, then another, a few minutes later, closer this time. Excited voices, talking fast, carried throughout the night. The sounds of the impending holiday weekend. The sounds of summer.

I had more to do, but too exhausted to move from my spot on the ledge, I sat, drinking champagne from a pink ceramic coffee mug, taking it all in. I’d been back from New York for just over a week, and in that time my neighbors and I had hosted a yard sale, I’d held two casting sessions for my new play, and I’d gone through, packed up, thrown out, and donated most of the contents of the last eighteen years of my L.A. life.

It was the last part that had contributed the most to my fatigue. When I’d moved into this one bedroom bungalow on Cashio Street just over three years ago, I was in dire straits. The move had happened quickly, urgently, with little thought other than to go as fast as I could. I’d shoved papers and photos and notebooks into clear plastic bins and pushed them underneath my bed, out of sight, out of mind. I didn’t have the emotional fortitude to sort through mementos of the life I used to have, or the person I used to be.

A lot has changed in three years. Almost without noticing, I went from a person whose spine had been compressed by guilt, grief, shame, fear, anger and regret, to someone who had learned, little by little, to set down the weight of all the things she’d been carrying. I learned it through therapy, through writing, through the kindness and love of friends and family, through travel, through opening myself up to new experiences. But mostly, I learned it the only way a person can learn to heal: through the passage of time.

Leafing through my old notebooks, among all the bits of character dialogue, the story ideas, the pages of memoir, the musings for this blog, I found some quotes I’d copied down from the movie Joe Versus the Volcano. That quirky, offbeat romantic comedy has long been one of my favorites, but in recent years, the fable about a man who only learns to live when he thinks he’s going to die has taken on fresh significance. I wouldn’t dare be so dramatic as to claim that I’d been on the verge of death, but in recent months, I do feel as though something within me that I thought I’d lost has come back to life. It’s something resembling believing in hope again, something resembling a belief that for the first time in a very long time, good things are coming my way.

As I sat on the patio ledge on my last night on Cashio Street, looking down on the warm squares of red tile beneath my feet, looking out at the lone palm tree stretching up into the clear night sky, I knew that as sad as I was to leave this place, I was ready. And the reason I was ready was because the time I had spent there had given me everything I needed: time to grieve, to rebuild, to find the courage to become the person I had always wanted to be. And with the sound of fireworks echoing in the distance, I whispered just two words, a sort of prayer.

Thank you.

Until next time, friends.

6 years ago Short URL 13 Comments

Change/Grief/Los Angeles/Well-Being

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22

Jun

Rain.

“And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

– Haruki Murakami

I was getting my nails done when the rain started falling. The Weather Channel and the app on my iPhone had been threatening for days that a storm was coming, but the warnings had thus far been inaccurate, and so I stopped believing in the forecast. But suddenly there it was, only a few hours before the staged reading of my play War Stories, the reading that I’d been preparing for all week, the reading that was the main reason for my trip.

By the time I left the salon, wearing only sandals, a tank top, and cotton shorts (owing to the hot, humid weather), the rain was coming down in angry, torrential sheets. As I headed out the door onto Broadway, my friend Rachel gave me my first New York rain advice: “Stay away from the curb.”

In truth, I’d been feeling angst-ridden all day, well before the rain arrived. Though my week in New York had been mostly wonderful, there had been difficult moments too, moments that made me question whether I’d made the right decision to move there.

And now, trudging along Broadway, head down, rain pummeling my bare skin and seeping into my sandals, text messages started coming through my phone. Well wishes from dear friends in L.A. that tugged at my heartstrings. The fear and doubt crept in. “What am I doing?” I thought. “I’ve made a mistake. I want to go home.”

Of course, it wasn’t a mistake. The rain stopped. The skies cleared, leaving behind pockets of fog that wrapped themselves around skyscrapers and leant an air of magic and mystery to their ascent into the heavens.

And the reading I was so worried about? It was great. Better than great. Friends showed up. The actors who read the script were wonderful. And the post-read audience Q & A was practically painless, free from the incisive East Coast critiques I’d been fearing. It turns out that people in New York – or at least these people in New York – liked War Stories. They liked it more than I thought they would.

Later that evening, sitting down to a tapas dinner in an elegant, delicately-lit restaurant in the West Village, I asked the friends who were gathered there to go around the table and explain how they knew me, as a way of introducing themselves to each other. And as they did, I realized that while I don’t know a lot of people in New York, the people I do know are pretty spectacular. And I’m damn lucky.

I am lucky in a lot of ways. I’ve had a big life. I’ve lived everywhere from L.A. to London, Anchorage, Alaska to enchanting small towns in the Pacific Northwest. And I’ve traveled to many, many more beautiful places. And now, I’m preparing to pack up my life and move to the most exciting, maddening, terrifying, exhilarating city I can imagine. And when my friend Maeve, an opera singer who I once performed with in our high school choir in Olympia, WA, announced, about me, to the table: “You’re ready for New York, and New York is ready for you,” I knew that she was right.

I know that nothing in life is permanent. Things work, and then they fall apart. The parts of my past that are wonderful and are over are chapters of my history that I still own, just like I own all the bad and tragic parts too. Nothing is black and white. It’s all bittersweet. And it’s all beautiful. Because it’s all life.

Last week, I was reminded not to worry so much about where I’m going, but instead, to lean into this moment and give it everything I have. I was reminded to breathe and to trust that there are forces bigger than I am at work that will support me as long as I continue to believe in myself. And I was reminded that though rain is an inevitable part of life, the sun always pushes through the gloom eventually, making everything lovely again.

Until next time, friends.

6 years ago Short URL 16 Comments

Career/Change/Los Angeles/New York/Performing Arts/Writing

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