Underwater

I want to tell you this in case you need to hear it someday. In case one day, like me, you wake up and realize that the trees outside your window are kind of crummy, and that you'll never reach the moon. In case one day, you decide that you might need some help. In case no one believes you when you ask for it. In case you have to save yourself. 

Here's a thing that you may or may not know about me: I've had a super-fun illness called depression my whole entire life. I've had an even radder one called anxiety almost just as long. And you might not know that, because I'm really fucking funny. Because I'm really fucking smart. Because I write cool stories on the Internet, and because I have lots of friends, and because I have this one really great sparkle shirt that is covered in sequins and roses that I bought at the Fairfax Flea. You might not know that I'm depressed, because I don't look like someone who has depression. I just don't. I have a nice smile, and these big Tim Burton eyes, and I always wear fun dresses and round sunglasses and red lipstick, and I laugh. A lot. 

But I am. So, I do my best to deal with it. There are lots of days when I don't feel like getting out of bed, so I don't. There are even more days when I don't feel like getting out of bed, but I get out of bed anyways, because there's a bottle of whiskey across the room that I can't reach if I stay under the covers. There are days when nothing at all is good, and I hate everything, especially flowers and people on the sidewalk and going to work and eating food that doesn't come out of the frozen food aisle at the supermarket. There are mornings when I throw up while I'm brushing my teeth, because my stomach can't stand being sad first thing in the day. There are nights when I check myself into the hospital, because I've given myself another anxiety-induced migraine, and everything hurts and nothing is right, or good, or true. 

There are jokes that I write for my job, Facebook statuses that I post for my friends, text messages that I send to my mom, that really do make people laugh. And a lot of these jokes are pretty heavily based in sadness, but I write them anyway, because I read one time that Carrie Fisher said, "If my life wasn't funny, it would just be true, and that would be unacceptable." I clung tight to that mentality when I was younger, and vowed that I would never let all the bad things in my life just be "true." I wouldn't let all the loneliness I felt as a kid be real. I wouldn't let my broken heart dictate the rest of my year. I wouldn't let anything be normal, so I made everything funny instead. 

Pick a joke, any joke that I've written. The funniest ones were probably written mid-panic attack, mid-breakdown, mid-terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day. Like, when my therapist cancelled our appointment after the nurse finished taking my blood pressure and I had been sitting in the waiting room for forty-five minutes. Or when my boyfriend broke up with me and threw my laptop and my brand-new dress and my house key out the front door of his apartment. Or when I got fired from my dream job and had to pack up my desk with the whole office staring at me. (Luckily, one of the other assistants caught me before the elevator doors closed and handed me a paper cup full of bourbon for the cab ride home.) 

I'm really only funny because I'm so sad all the time, which, I've come to discover, isn't very unique. Take a look at any comedian, writer, performer. There are the obvious: Rob Delaney, Patton Oswalt, Sarah Silverman. And then there are the ones that we never saw coming, like Robin Williams and Chris Farley and Stephen Fry. 

But if we're going to avoid what happened to Robin Williams and other funny, likable, talented people, we have to start talking about this stuff, openly, and without judgement. Because here's something that the Internet doesn't tell you about coming clean to your loved ones about depression: sometimes, nobody will believe you. 

I've thumbed through all the magazine articles, and I've read all the YA novels. I've sat at my desk at work and scrolled through listicles, and I've read entire books about what it's like to come out and say that you have depression. They all say the same thing: people might not understand at first, people might stigmatize your illness, marginalize you, and judge you, and people might treat you like you're fragile, like you're damaged, like there's something wrong with you. But, after you've told someone, it should get easier, right? Once you confess your darkest secret, there will be someone there to help you. Your friends will listen to you. Your parents will love and support you. Your significant other will sit with you on the couch while you scroll through endless therapist recommendations on your insurance company's website. Once you tell everyone that you're depressed, you can begin the healing process. So it's worth the dirty looks. It's worth the Scarlet Letter, it's worth the judgement uncalled for. It's worth being labeled with a mental illness for the rest of your life, because hey, at least you'll start feeling better soon. 

What they don't tell you, is that you might tell your parents, or your best friend, or the love of your life that you're depressed, and they might not believe you. They might stare back at you with blank faces, or they might bust up laughing. They might say the words, "Well, what do you want me to do about it?" They might not care. They might not even listen. 

I know, because that happened to me. Because after months of punishing my liver and thinking up creative ways to die, I finally got brave enough to tell someone that I was sad. And the outcome wasn't at all what I expected. My mother told me to grow up. My step-dad told me that sometimes, he worries about the fact that he's going to be dead in twenty years, but that he just tries not to think about it too much. My then-boyfriend told me that there was nothing that he could do to help me, and that he didn't want to try. My friends just stuttered, "But...you always seem like you have your shit together." I felt like I was being punished, because instead of doing lines of cocaine off the toilet seat in the bathroom at the Chateau Marmont every night, I was trying to make people laugh instead. Like maybe I should have been misbehaving and lashing out at people so that someone would believe me. 

I asked my mom to help me find a therapist, and she sighed and told me to Google it. I asked my then-boyfriend to come with me to a support group, but he was busy playing video games with his friends. I asked my girlfriends to come over and spend time with me, but they got sick of my moping around. I asked the moon, the Milky Way, and the ghost of Kurt Cobain to send someone, anyone, to help me, because I thought I couldn't possibly get better on my own, but everything in my life stayed the same. I went to the doctor and got a bunch of blood tests and EKGs and MRIs, because I was frantically hoping that a lab technician or an X-ray monitor would be able to prove that there was something really wrong with me. 

And then one day, I was so low that I couldn't even see straight. It felt like my whole brain was submerged underwater, or trapped inside one of those Frankenstein jars from a Mel Brooks movie. It felt like my whole stomach was full of butterflies, but the bad kind, like when a bear is chasing you and you don't know where to run. I felt sick and weak and stupid, and I realized that I was dying. I was dying, and no one was coming to save me. You know that scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban where he's standing at the side of the Great Lake, convinced that his dad is going to show up and cast a Patronus to scare the Dementors away, but Hermione gently takes his arm and says, "Listen Harry, nobody is coming"? It felt like that, and I realized that I could keep asking and begging and pleading for help, but nobody was going to rescue me. If I wanted to keep living, it was high time I rescued myself. 

It is nearly impossible to care about anything when you're depressed. This is why countless professionals urge people with mental illnesses to confide in someone else, because surely somene around you will care about you enough to slap some sense into you. They don't tell you what to do when it's just you, alone in your apartment, with no one to turn to. Sure, there's the Suicide Hotline, but I wasn't TRYING to kill myself, it was just happening on its own. I didn't have a razor to my wrist or a gun to my temple. I just had all these terrible little voices in my head that all sounded exactly like me that kept telling me how stupid and useless and worthless I was. I had nasty ex-boyfriends, and memories of how mean kids used to be in middle school, and a ruined career. I had nothing to look forward to, except whiskey and death. And I was fucking exhausted. 

I can't tell you what to do if you find yourself in this situation, because I probably didn't do the right thing. There were probably resources that I could have used that I didn't, meditation exercises that I could have exhausted, yoga classes that I could have taken, gluten-free diets I could have tried. But after almost a year of struggling to stay alive when I felt completely trapped by my own brain, I decided that I had to take action. I could either live, or I could die, and it was completely up to me. That's the thing about depression; most people who have it don't actually want to die. 

And I was one of those people. I didn't want to die. I wanted to publish a book, adopt a French Bulldog, climb Mt. Whitney. I wanted to make people laugh and learn how to surf and see the Rolling Stones in concert before they retired again. I wanted to maybe fall in love, and maybe be a mom, and maybe get famous one day. Granted, my scumbag brain couldn't actually feel that I wanted to do these things, but I knew that they were somewhere in there, tucked away and hiding for someday when I could feel things again. 

So, I hopped on my insurance company's website, and I found a therapist that would see me for twenty-five dollars a week. I decided to only visit her twice a month, because I needed to do other things with my money, such as eat food and pay my electricity bill. But I can't even describe how much less lonely I felt when I knew that I had a standing date every-other Tuesday with a person who would listen to me and believe me. I joined a support group for people with depression, and it was exactly like Fight Club: cheaper than a movie, and they had free coffee. I forced myself to do things, like call my friends and ask them to hang out, instead of convincing myself that they hated me and didn't want to see me. I apologized a lot, to people that I had ignored and neglected and hurt while my brain was underwater. I wrote a lot of essays and stories about myself that sounded really dumb, but I saved them anyway. I started taking medication for my panic attacks instead of trying to ride through them, or drowning them in whiskey. I even started drinking like a normal human being, instead of like an alcoholic the night before rehab. It was great, because I got to experience what it was like to wake up in the morning without smelling like a mini bar for the first time in over a year. 

But those things weren't easy to do. It wasn't easy to find a good therapist, and it wasn't easy to pep-talk myself into showing up to the support group. It wasn't easy to make restitutions to the people I had hurt, and it definitely wasn't easy to ask people to grab coffee with me after I hadn't seen them in so long. All of those things were absolutely crippling, and they didn't feel good at all in the moment. In the moment, they really stressed me out. I cried a whole lot. I looked for excuses, and for other ways out of this. Every time I helped myself, it just reminded me that nobody was there for me when I needed it most, and thinking about that made me even more sad, and even more angry. I wasn't suddenly, miraculously cured just because I decided that I wanted to live. But I kept trying, because the alternative was death. I kept going, because my only other option was to fail. I had failed at a lot of things in my life up to this point, and I didn't want to lose again. I wasn't brave for pushing through; I was terrified. 

And then one day, I woke up and realized that I had gotten three really solid nights of sleep. That I hadn't felt that familiar ache of dread in my stomach when I came home to my apartment alone at night. I hadn't tried to drink myself happy, or latch on to other people to make myself feel less alone. I had just been going about my week, feeling pretty okay. I wasn't bursting at the seams with happiness, but I didn't feel like I was dying anymore, either. 

I started noticing things that I liked again, like the way the Los Angeles city planners spaced out all the palm trees on the sidewalks in Hollywood, or the way my dog smushes up her nose and smiles at me when I come home. I started enjoying reading books again, taking walks again, eating food again. I wanted to call my friends. Not because I needed to use them to make me feel less lonely, but because I actually cared about how they were doing. When my boyfriend broke up with me this time, I didn't run to the nearest bar and throw six gin and tonics down my throat. I stopped having nightly full-scale meltdowns about nothing, because I just didn't feel upset anymore. I actually felt kind of normal. And it was awesome. 

I want to tell you this, because someday, you might have to do whatever it takes save yourself. You might have to jump ship in the middle of the night, scale down the side of a mountain, cut off your own arm to survive. You might have to force yourself to eat when you're not hungry, go to sleep when you're not tired, care about yourself when you don't. You might ask someone you love and trust to help you, and they might tell you no. You might have to fight even when you don't feel like it, get out of bed and put pants on when you think that you can't. 

You might have to do these things someday, and I just want you to know that you're not alone. That it isn't easy, but being alive is a lot better than dying. That you might think you can't, but you can. That maybe nobody out there is proud of you, but I am. That you might not do things the right way, and you might fuck up a whole lot, but you can absolutely find a way to survive your own shitty brain, your own stupid heartbeat, your own messy soul. 

I want you to know these things, because I am tired of hearing that comedians are dying and that smart, caring people are sad. I'm tired of hearing that nobody knows what they can do to help others, or what they can do to help themselves. And I'm tired of hearing that someone might not believe you, or might not like you anymore just because your wiring is different, or your thoughts don't make sense. And you should be tired of those things, too. Because we're all made out of the same cool stuff; stardust and old dinosaur bones and jokes and comic books and pizza and rose petals.

And all of that shit is definitely worth living for.

Forgetful

Falling out of love feels like a hot September sky, reading Bukowski at the bookstore down the street from his apartment, because you are twenty-four and an idiot. It feels like leaving before he wakes up because really, what would you say to him? 

"Hi, how are you, you're losing me."

Not that he would care. He'll be fine without me. Better even. It'll be a breath of fresh air when I'm gone. Like he's been living at the bottom of the ocean for ten months and suddenly, he surfaces. He probably won't even get the bends. But I will. I'll twist and scream and beg, and he won't mind. He'll tune me out like he does when I'm crying. 

"Here, baby, smoke something, you'll feel better." 

Like I'm easier to manage that way. Like no one could ever love me otherwise.

I will forget about the way he wrote me letters before he even knew me. I'll forget about that absinthe bar in Bushwick, where we were both too drunk to stand. I'll forget the way he looked at me in my Rolling Stones t-shirt and purple underwear, the way he reached for my hips without blinking, held me under the water, kissed the sand from my eyelids. I'll forget the way the moon looks in December, the way the ocean froze our pants to our calves and how hard we laughed trying to pull them off in that parking lot on Pacific Coast Highway. 

 I'll forget he ever laughed at all, ever kissed me at all, ever loved me at all, that I ever found room for myself to grow in one of the tiny compartments in his brain. I'll forget the way his handwriting looks on the front of an envelope, the way he only knew one line of that one Smashing Pumpkins song, and sang it over and over. I'll forget his stupid haircut, his chipped teeth, his grey t-shirt with holes around the collar. 

I won't forget what he said. That he'd rather be alone than be with me. That he only ever gave me 15% of his affections. That I was weak and pathetic for wanting to be with him. I wont forget the way he spat, "I don't owe you anything," like we didn't spend a year falling asleep in each others arms and getting stoned on his sofa. I won't forget that he was cruel, that he didn't care where I went as long as I left his apartment. That he didn't like my dog, and that he hated American Ultra. I won't forget the way he made the things he lied about sound so sweet. 

"I love your talking smile," he'd say. "I can be myself with you." 

So now, I do what I know how to do to take care of myself. I take a walk down Vermont Avenue, past the Rockwell and Marty & Elaine. I sit alone at a French restaurant in my new clothes and I drink champagne and soup and I forget what it's like to fuck someone who cares about me. 

Instead, I remember what it's like to survive that semi-truck that ran through me in New York last summer. How strong my bones are. How I didn't even cry. How I walked myself to the grocery store and bought a bag of frozen peas for my shoulder and some Popsicles for my bruised tongue. How invincible I am. How 83 tons of steel and rubber can smash into me and leave me whole.

Galaxy.

He says, “I know we don’t know each other, but I think I love you.”

He says, “Not love in the creepy way.”

He says, “I’m not IN love with you, I just love you, even though you’re a stranger.”

He says, “I love you.”
He says, "I'm so happy to know you." 
He says, "I think the world of your writing."

He says, “I will sit with you here on all of your bad days.”

He says, “I will sit with you here even on the days when you smoke three cigarettes.”

He says, “Talk to me.”

He says, “You’re an adult now. You don’t need to hide at the playground anymore.”

He says, “Maybe I should skip work and stay with you in New York.”

He says, “If there’s a blizzard, maybe I can be here for an extra week.”

He says, “We should live together.”

He says, “Okay, at least let me give you keys to my apartment.”

He says, “I’m so glad you moved home.”

He says, “I want you to meet my mother, my grandmother, my best friend.”

He says, “I think my dad would like you.”

He says, “Everyone tells me that I smile more when I’m with you.”

He says, “I’ve never been this comfortable with anyone.”

He says, “I want you to treat my home like it’s your own.”

He says, “I love the way you feel.”

He says, “Of course I’ll come over if you’re scared of the dark.”

But then he says, “I’m on the fence about you.”

He says, “I started resenting you two weeks ago.”

He says, “I didn’t tell you because I was trying to force myself to feel something.”

He says, “I don’t want to say I don’t love you anymore, because it makes me sad, so I won’t say it.”

He says, “I’m going to leave now, okay?”

He says, “I don’t want to be your only source of light.”

I grab his chin. I hold his face close to mine, bite the scruff along his jaw line.

I say, “You’re the worst kind of coward.”

I say, “Do you really think you’re my only source of light?”

I say, “You’re not.”

I say, “You might be the sun. But I’m the whole entire galaxy.”

Post-NY

A Love Letter to My Sick Boyfriend, In A Post-New York World

My Darling,

I have no idea how to take care of you when you’re not feeling well, especially in Los Angeles. Driving over to your place really isn’t an option, what with the 101 freeway acting as a long, traffic-jammed barrier, separating my home from yours.

If we were still in New York, you would live in Bushwick, and I would live in Manhattan. Had you fallen ill there, I would simply have to bribe the guy working at the bodega below your apartment to run you up some Advil and Gatorade and ginger ale and saltine crackers, which would undoubtedly hit the fifteen-dollar credit card minimum. He would grumble, but it would be worth it.

Or, I could hop on Seamless and order a nearby deli to bring you some matzoh ball soup. Obviously, I wouldn’t be able to order from Carnegie Deli, even though theirs is the best, because they don’t deliver below 50^th Street. Nonetheless, I would make sure it was the good kind, with no carrots, and a good ball-to-broth ratio.

But if things were really dire, I suppose I could brave the J train at rush hour, and take the 45-minute journey from my office to your building. Maybe if I transferred right at Delancey Essex, I would be able to get a seat before all of the hard-core bridge-and-tunnel-ers began their commute home. If not, I’d probably end up squished between three or five winter coats, none of which would be familiar in smell, texture, or heat. I’d manage, because I do really enjoy being with you.

Then again, that might look too desperate, too much like an act of love. After all, we’ve only been dating for three months. Hopping on either the brown or the orange lines after 7 p.m. is the kind of romance reserved for at least a ten-month commitment. Come to think of it, I might miss the yoga class I normally take in the Flatiron District, and for what? To drop off some orange juice and vitamins, only to contract whatever disease you currently have and re-distribute your germs to everyone else on the subway that evening?

So. I won’t come to your apartment, or attempt to take care of you. Because this isn’t New York. Los Feliz doesn’t have any soup that isn’t Thai curry, which, while delicious, probably won’t make you feel any less like vomiting. Taking PCH to Santa Monica and cutting up Sunset wouldn’t do either, because I might actually see my next birthday before I arrived at your doorstep. I could try to get off somewhere before the 405, but taking side streets runs the risk of me stopping at In N Out Burger for the third time today, and my Pilates instructor would be furious.

I really hope you feel better. Please know that I love you very much, and were we not in Los Angeles, I would be a much better girlfriend.

Love always.

Bored.

Boredom is a different kind of depression. It almost makes me miss the wild nights I spent getting loaded on the Lower East Side. At least back then I was trying. I used to wake up with a sore throat in the bathtub and thank whatever god I believed in that I didn’t die or lose my wallet. Now, I mostly just watch re-runs of old sitcoms and bake gluten-free muffins. I go to the gym. I clean my bedroom and take trips to the outlet mall with my mother. I sleep all day, even when the weather is nice and the beach is only ten minutes away. I apologize a lot, for taking up space. I take up space anyway. I don’t pay my credit card bills. I don’t write. I don’t do fucking anything.

Last night, I sat on the rooftop of an apartment building in Los Angeles, palm trees like Grim Reapers guarding the edges. I wasn’t the one drinking. He was. I was thinking back to the windowsill at the bar below my apartment where I tried to die all summer. Back then, my lungs were made of the La Brea Tar Pits. I didn’t eat for three whole weeks. I wore these same blue shorts that I’m wearing now, because I didn’t care about anything, except drinking whiskey.

He grabbed the bottle of wine, took three deep swigs. He fell asleep as soon as we got inside. I didn’t. I stayed awake, Googling things like:  WHEN WILL HUMANS KNOW THAT THE SUN HAS BURNED OUT? WHAT ARE SOME SIGNS THAT YOU’RE DYING?

Here’s what I learned about the sun: If the sun turned off like a light switch tonight, it would take us 8 minutes to notice. But that won’t happen. Instead, it will get too hot, slowly, over time, and the core will collapse in on itself in 7 billion years.

Here’s what I learned about dying: You will sleep all the time. You will refuse food and water. Your fingertips will be cool to the touch. You will withdraw socially, and your energy will be low. Your breathing will slow down. Your body will die from the outside in, like the sun imploding, only faster.

It took me 10 days to leave New York, but I didn’t notice I had really left for six whole weeks. I woke up one morning and realized I didn’t have anywhere to go, that I hated how hot California is in February. I stopped applying for jobs and started driving aimlessly down the 101, east on the 23, west toward PCH. A woman at Rite Aid called me a cunt. I got a kidney infection and ate popsicles on the couch for three whole days. I ate just to eat, but really, I hate the food here. All greasy avocados and huevos rancheros, some inexpensive Chinese food, a few pieces of kale.

“I think I’m dying,” I told him on the rooftop, and he put down the bottle and ran the backs of his knuckles down the side of my face.

“You’re just bored,” he told me, and I believed him.

But.

Isn’t that kind of the same thing?

Six.

The last six years have been, as the kids say, a trip.

I left California in my recently deceased grandfather’s white Ford Explorer, full of heartbreak and explosives. I picked up the fireworks in New Mexico at a little stand by the road. I got the whiskey at a drive-through liquor store in Arizona. I was just a kid. A dumb kid with too many suitcases and a brand new nose ring and Courtney Love bangs. I drove east. I didn’t think about what that meant was in store for the next half-decade.

I moved to Waco, Texas when I was 18 years old, knowing nothing about the place other than that there was a shopping center off La Salle made up of a strip club, a tattoo parlor, and a Mexican restaurant, which I quickly and affectionately nicknamed Tits, Tats, N' Tacos. By the end of it, I could have stayed in that dinky little town forever, wrapped up in the lights from the Alico building downtown and the sunrise over the Brazos. I met my best friend washing dishes at a crappy day job downtown, and we started writing. Our first drafts were covered in salsa and fueled by tequila, but still. I worked at a magazine that was helping to shape the art culture in a city full of the most talented musicians, artists, writers, poets, and creative folk I’ve ever seen. I fell in love with a boy with a double-pierced nose who loved mac and cheese and Bukowski, but hated brushing his teeth. I never slept. I stayed up all night, all day, watching X-Files and baking cupcakes and drinking tequila and dancing to Lovefool by the Cardigans all around the kitchen of Beatnix Burger Barn. I jumped over the fence at The Strokes' concert in Zilker Park in a mass riot during SXSW. I lived in my very first apartment with a roommate that I adored and her baby cat, Sheldon. That boy moved on, but I kept his old Common Grounds sweatshirt, his Han Solo pajama bottoms, the scar on my left nostril where his nose rings got tangled in mine.

I moved to Spain, and discovered that I hated tapas, but loved taking taxis to my flat in Madrid at nighttime. I studied for finals in a little boat on the lake in Retiro Park, and got stranded in El Museo del Prado because I refused to tear myself away from Hieronymus Bosh’s three-paneled painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights.  I ran away to Barcelona for the weekend, where I accidentally stole the wallet, cell phone, and jacket of a mugger on the Metro who tried to rob me. I learned how to file a police report in Spanish when my passport was stolen at the airport. “La ladróna robó mi pasaporte en el baño.” I mostly ate salt and vinegar chips, because Iberian ham is gross, and gained fifteen pounds of white wine and Spanish moonlight on a hilltop overlooking the city of Granada. For the first time in my life, I didn’t care. I was free.

I moved to London during the 2012 Olympics and the Damien Hirst exhibit at the Tate Modern. I ditched my group, and took every single excursion alone. I rode the bus to Stonehenge solo, climbed to the roof of St. Paul’s Cathedral by myself. I locked myself in my bedroom with a fever and would only emerge to eat buckets full of spicy soup from Wagamamas. I visited my cousins whenever I got lonely, or popped into a pub to drink pints with the other school kids at Victoria College. I ran away to Paris and stayed on a pig farm in Normandy, filled my belly with crepes, put a lock on the Pont des Arts in honor of my grandparents. I threw the key into the river. The next day, I found out that I got the job at Letterman.

I moved to New York with two suitcases full of shoes and shirts with embellished collars. I worked at The Late Show for a while, and made the best friends I’ve ever had in my whole life. We’d stay out until morning singing bad karaoke at Bar 9, ordering watery pitchers of eleven-dollar Yeungling, cursing tourists who walked too slowly in Times Square. I got hit by a semi-truck and survived. I did my very first book reading and survived that too. I met Stephen Chbosky after a reading at the Strand, where he invited me to send him my memoir when it’s finished. I got free tequila shots at brunch from the world’s most beautiful waitress, who said she had read everything I've ever published. I found out how Hemmingway and Fitzgerald developed egos and drinking problems on the Lower East Side. I watched the sun set over Brooklyn on my best friend’s rooftop. I walked a skateboarding goat down Broadway on a hot pink leash. I took a Polaroid with Danny Bowien on my 24^th birthday. I joined the Greenpoint Writers Group and found out that hey, maybe I could do this writing thing for real. I was lucky enough to be loved by a chef and an actor, before they both broke my heart, one at Boulton and Watt on Avenue A, one outside of my apartment, exactly one year apart.  I fell into a depression and I drank myself to death, but the best part was when I rescued myself at the end of it. I danced on top of a table at Whiskey Town, signing all the words to every 90’s jam I knew with every single person in the city who loved me. I ate dollar slice for a year when I couldn’t afford anything else. I tanned in Sheep Meadow on the Fourth of July, and I got through Hurricane Sandy with nothing but a box of Lucky Charms and a bottle of rum. I scared off a crack addict with a bayonet in my first apartment in Bushwick. I ate pizza. I ate so much fucking pizza. 

How lucky am I, really, to have collected so many beautiful pieces of artwork to hang all over my walls? How lucky am I, to have fallen in love with dudes who made me laugh and cooked me food and changed me, for the better now, I hope. How lucky am I, to have made friends with the world’s best comedians, greatest artists, and most talented creators. How lucky am I, to have gathered enough stories to keep me writing for a lifetime.

I’m on my way back to Los Angeles now. I’m nervous, because I haven’t seen her in a long time. But I think everything is going to be just fine. I think I’m going to listen to the Rolling Stones and drive down Sunset Boulevard, past the Roxy and the Whiskey where I grew up seeing shows. I’m going to go rollerblading on the beach in Venice, and I’m going to run straight into the waves at free Zuma. I’m going to go to every Laker game, to every Best Coast show, to every candlelight vigil for Bradley Nowell down in Long Beach. I’m going to eat Yang Chow and Cheebo’s like they’re going out of style. I’m going to be in love with a guy that kissed me in an alleyway behind a donut store when we were sixteen, and turned out to be a pretty cool adult. I’m going to take my dog Jasmine for walks in the Santa Monica Mountains. I’m going to be with all of the friends who have stuck with me my whole life, no matter how far away I’ve lived.

There’s a song that I love, and it goes like this:

“So, nurse me like a mother / Raise me strong just like my father / Let me wander off, discover who I am. / I’ll have learned the deepest lessons, gathered up the finest blessings / Return to California once again. / I’ll come home to California once again.