True Love.

I thought, and still think, that New York is like that great love. It’s that person you meet one day when you’re young and you can’t help but think that the person across from you is the most stunning, intelligent, fun, interesting, challenging, witty, worldly, perfect person you’ve ever met in your life. It’s The One, the one you want to be with forever, but you’re just not ready. It’s like saying, look, I love you, you’re perfect for me, but there’s some stupid stuff I need to take care of first. Like having a stupid love affair with a dumb, hot chick. Los Angeles is that dumb hot chick.
~Me
April 2005
http://beyondsunset.blogpspot.com

It's amusing to me that most people think Los Angeles was the darkest time of my life. It's also amusing for me to look at all these people I have met in my life who graduated college and jumped right into the real world. I don't understand that. I hear from so many of those people that they could never do what I did, and despite the lack of professional growth, the increase of financial debt, and the hours, days, months of total loneliness I spent in Los Angeles, being there for as long as I was will probably always be regarded as the single most difficult and rewarding experiece of my life.

In just over a week I will go back.

Most people want to take their vacations to various tropical islands and exotic destinations. Sure, I'm pipe-dreaming of Paris in the springtime, but not this time. This time I want to go somewhere that feels like home, and to me California will always be part of my home. Not necessarily Los Angeles persay, but the state as a whole.

I almost doubled over in pure joy this morning as I looked at pictures of wine country and Big Sur - places that to most of the world seem fantastical and so far away but to me feel like home. I can't imagine how good it will feel to see the pacific and I will never forget my friend Dylan once saying to me and we lay on a couch in Baltimore one weekend afternoon, "It's just different... I miss the healing power of those waves." I stayed awake the other night thinking about In 'n Out burger and the seafood restaurant north of Malibu where I went one night after drinking a bottle of champagne on the beach while watching the sunset with my friend Anthony.

I think, as we grow older, we start to understand that even the most difficult times are the most special to us, and quite often it's best not to forget them. I will never write off Los Angeles, and I will certainly never write off any city north of San Luis Obispo. I don't want my vacation to be anywhere new. I want my vacation to be the best parts of a life that changed me.

I cannot wait to drive along that coast, to play with my cousins, to taste wine and sleep in a B&B. I can't wait to smell the ocean to stay up late at night with two of my very best friends, to drink vodka tonics, eat a grilled cheese animal style, and remember that without being a little lost, and stumbling along the way, and living it up with the proverbial hot chick that is Los Angeles, I would have never found my way to New York - which has always been, and will always be my one true love.