I feel so lost. Part of it is lack of money. Part of it is feeling like my relationship is one sided sometimes. It’s not having a child, not having a car, and not going to school. But, then I started thinking about it, and I’ve had all of these issues, on and off throughout the last seven years of my life, so why am I so incredibly depressed about it now?
I thought on this for awhile, and I realized a trend. I’ve noticed myself latching onto anything California (specifically, Los Angeles). I hunt down livejournal friends, their communities, and people on other networking sites and throughout the web to be friends with. Yes, I do this because they are also genuinely interesting people, but I also do it because I want to live vicariously through them and their pictures. I’m always a little disappointed if they don’t have something I recognize in their pictures, and beyond elated when I do recognize something.
It goes beyond this though. When I know a movie I’m watching was filmed in Los Angeles, I am so busy scanning the background for places I know and recognize, that I don’t even remember the actual movie half the time. It’s the same with television shows. I look for books based in Los Angeles. I look up the websites. I check in on the bands I used to work with and the people I used to know, even though half of them hate me now, due to the shit that went down with my ex (I met them all through him, that’s where their loyalties lay, I can deal with that).
I guess what I’m getting at is that I miss Los Angeles (specifically Hollywood, North Hollywood, and Santa Monica) so bad that it literally physically aches. Do you know how your heart feels tight when you’ve had a fight with your significant other, or when you’ve just seen something upsetting? My heart feels like that everytime I think about Los Angeles and the fact that in all reality, I won’t be able to get back there for a very long time, if ever.
I don’t belong in Ohio for so many reasons. I don’t fit in here. I don’t like the country, the suburbs, small cities, the lack of transportation (people in Los Angeles think Metro is so bad out there? They should try COTA in Columbus.), the cold weather, the insane amounts of rain, the fact that I can’t walk out my door and find something fun going on. I’m just not happy here.
I don’t regret coming back to Ohio last summer. I hadn’t seen my family in a year and a half, my grandmother was dying (she passed on August 16th, six weeks after I moved back), I missed the first few years of Kadin’s life, I missed my mom, I missed what few friends I had out here (though, oddly enough, only one of those friends still talks to me almost a year after I moved back), but I just don’t belong here long-term.
But, this comes to the big point. What do I do now? Do I wait it out, wait until I can (finally) afford school out here, go out here, hope I can find a job out there? Where does that leave Allen and I? He won’t ever come with me (he doesn’t want to “shake and bake”, and besides, I couldn’t ask him to move even further away from his kids). Where does that leave my family? I’d rarely get to see them. Cassandra doesn’t have time to travel due to work, and my mom, I just don’t think she would be able to make it out there, to be honest (I’m very worried about her health). I know in my heart I need to get back out there. But when? And how?
When I woke up on September 12th, 2005 and told my then boyfriend “Okay, I’ll move out there. Just give me until Friday”, people thought I was nuts. Hell, even I thought I was a little crazy for that one. Leaving on that Greyhound at 4:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning with three mind erasers (great drink, btw) in my system to ease my fears was the absolute biggest risk I’ve ever taken. I hadn’t met my ex in person before, we were going to be staying with his then ex girlfriend, and it was definitely no fairytale at all.
When I got out there, we were promptly kicked out of said ex’s place (she just couldn’t handle seeing him with someone new afterall). I slept on a park bench a couple of nights. I got dressed and washed off at the sink in Ralph’s bathrooms for a few weeks. I slept in my ex’s friend’s car a few nights. I laid in the park all day and I read books. I used the internet at the library and I walked everywhere, and I want to Santa Monica and dug my toes in the sand. We lived in a one bedroom flophouse with a meth-addicted schizophrenic and all her druggie friend (and yes, I partook of said meth, but that is not a reason I want to go back, haha). We lived in shitty hotels and we went to punk shows and drank to much and I learned of my love for Vanilla Djarims. I didn’t know how I was going to eat, where I was going to be from one week to the next, or what I was going to do….and it was the most exhilerating experience of my life. I just want that feeling back. I just want to feel alive again.