everyone wants to know

this was how i got to work in los angeles

Everyone wants to know, they ask with such incredulity that I might have just told them that I ride a dinosaur to work.  “Why would you move from California to Seattle?”  There are so many answers that I choose one.  “We’re from Seattle.”  This only confuses them further because then they want to know, “You mean you lived in Seattle before, then you moved to California, then decided to move back here?”  I get what they’re saying, to them it just doesn’t make sense that having lived in Seattle, then California that I would choose to move back.

Sometimes I take it a step further.  “We lived in Los Angeles.”  I will say, and those who have spent a significant amount of time there understand everyone else does not.  At this point I usually stop because they will either be people who don’t understand why anyone would leave Los Angeles or can’t understand and nothing that I can say will change their mind.

It’s been six months since the move and every time I show my ID’s or change an address we have to answer this question.  Every time I answer it I mentally list all the reasons why we left.

Reasons for leaving;

-traffic

-self centered people

-distance from home

-career changes

-constant sunny weather

-smog

-loneliness

-expensive... everything

I am surprised that by the time I get to this part of the list I stop thinking about all the things that drove me crazy and start thinking about all the things I loved and miss.  I begin to get confused, why did I leave Los Angeles?

I’ve mentioned in the blog before how when we were in LA I longed for Seattle and took joy in the things that connected me to this wonderful city.  My Seattle Mariners license plate was a badge of honor that I displayed with pride.  I simply wanted to be reminded of the city I left at twenty four, for the lonely, smoggy, self-centered urban war zone of Los Angeles.

Now in Seattle I take an equal amount of pride in my California license plate, my Intelligentsia coffee mug embossed with the bear flag, and I watch television shows and listen to music that remind me of the places I spent my mid twenties.

Am I destined to long to be living somewhere other than where I currently am?  Or can I not as the Ram Dass professes Be Here Now?  I remember back to May of 2010, Jaime and I were finally going on our honeymoon to Maui.  Because airline tickets were cheaper from Seattle to Maui than from LA, we decided to drive home and spend an extra week then fly to Maui from there.

In all our previous trips out of LA, just before we left I began to identify on a communal level with everything around me.  As much as I tried to reject the city I had slipped right into her consciousness without realizing it.  To my utter disbelief I began to miss the city.  When we would return I was stunned to find that I felt like I had returned home.  It wasn’t my real home, but I began to feel more comfortable in Los Angeles than Seattle.

In departing for our honeymoon I didn’t feel any of that, I wanted to get out of LA county as fast as possible, leave nothing but a trail of dust settling behind me.  In Maui, like so many before me, I didn’t want to leave.  Yes I wanted to stay there because it was such a freeing place with immeasurable beauty and life, but also because I knew that once we left that island we would have to return to LA.  Over and over I imagined leaving everything we owned there and never going back, making a new life anywhere else.

On our return trip home our car got stuck in a freak snow storm and we spent the night in a hotel at Mt. Shasta City.  I had been planning on driving straight through but this snowstorm halted all that, in the hotel room I felt relieved to not have to return to LA for one more night.  I no longer felt like I belonged there, it wasn’t welcoming.  I hated my job, Jaime hated her job, our best friends had moved to Brooklyn while we were away and our other friends would be leaving in the next year as well.  Things felt empty.

Not long after we returned I concluded that I was ready to leave Los Angeles.  I didn’t need to pack up immediately (our lease wasn’t up until November).  In my heart I knew that when Jaime finally came to me and suggested that we should move home, I would not disagree.  I didn’t have to wait long, by June Jaime was no longer interested in becoming a Hollywood actor and in August we began talking about moving.  By the end of August we had a location and date; Seattle, October 31st.

I suppose I don’t really have an answer for those who ask why I would leave LA.  I could tell them that it’s not really the paradise that it seems so many imagine.  I could tell them the horror stories about what it is like to fall on hard times in a foreign place where the city is virtually made up of only rich or poor.

On the other hand it has many redeeming qualities.  Six months later I miss the consistent warm weather, the beautiful Summer evenings, walking with Jaime and our dog Olive in Griffith park, I miss Los Feliz and Silverlake, I miss the feeling of being in the middle of all the hustle of Hollywood, I miss all the little surprises that a city like LA has waiting around every corner.  

What it really comes down to however is the fact that I don’t believe that you should live in a city when you don’t want to be there.  We are free creatures who have the choice to live and be wherever we want, there may be factors that draw you to specific places but the choice is still yours.  I remind myself constantly that what is possessing me is not genuine love for LA but rather a nostalgic memory of the best times I had there and the feeling of being somewhere other than where I am.  I believe I will return many times in my life and I will be able to visit all the places I love and I won’t be hampered by the reality of living there.  In the end I would rather be miserable in Seattle than miserable in Los Angeles.