i've made a huge mistake

better outside than inside

      I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life.  Taking the 520 bridge instead of I-90.  Wearing only a sweater and not a coat.  Charging everything to my credit card instead of ordering another debit card, and hundreds of other similar mistakes made as a child all of which could easily be fixed without causing any major implications.  As I got older the mistakes I made became more serious and carried much more weight.

We rolled into Hollywood in our 17 foot U-Haul at approximately 4:30 pm, taking the Gower street exit off the 101 freeway, turning right onto Franklin Avenue and another right onto Tamarind Avenue.  Then there we were, this cream colored dirty stucco building with pink railings on the balconies.  From the street I could see into our apartment on the third floor and the sight was not promising.  I could just make out people moving around, and a second later a crash and the sound of glass breaking.  Jaime and I turned and looked at each other our eyes saying, “I hope that’s not our apartment.”  I convinced myself that it’s wasn’t our apartment, it was another apartment.  The reality was that I knew that that breath shortening sound of shattering glass came directly from our apartment and the look that Jaime and I exchanged was actually saying “what have we got ourselves into?”

We walked up to the secure front door entrance which was wide open and made our way up the three flights of stairs to our unit.  One word you might use to describe this building was... dilapidated or you might have described it as a crack house.  The craigslist listing chose to use, “Art deco” and “the kind of place Quentin Tarantino might have lived” (I still don’t know what that means.)  The open air courtyard of the building contained a long rectangular planter box with six dead plants, and a 15X15 foot dirt patch.  On the wall of the first floor landing you could find the word “FUCK” written on the wall in what looked like feces.

When we got up to the third floor and walked through the open door my immediate reaction was to panic.  In fact over and over in my head I kept saying “Oh shit this was a huge mistake, oh shit this was a huge mistake, oh shit this was a huge mistake.”  To start with there were about a dozen people in the apartment busily trying to finish it despite the fact that it was supposed to be completed fifteen days before.  They were putting up light fixtures (the first one came crashing down minutes earlier), mopping the floors and there was a plumber working like mad to get the shower finished which as it turns out wouldn’t be ready for another day.  

What got me most panicked was that I realized in the month that we’d been in Seattle preparing I begun to imagine the apartment quite differently.  In my mind I put windows where there were no windows, extended the length of walls and most of all completely overestimated the square footage of the apartment.  It could not have totaled more than 500 square feet but I was imagining something more like 700 and standing in the middle of the living room/dining room/kitchen all I could think about was the 17 foot U-Haul outside bursting at the seems.

I’ve tried thinking of an appropriate analogy to properly explain why this felt like such an utter disaster however I’m not sure that there is another feeling like this, so let me tell you exactly how it felt.  We were 24 year old kids without jobs and limited funds, only two friends who were out of town at the moment and no family to lean on.  The apartment was almost half the size I had imagined and I had enough furniture and boxes in the truck to make this apartment unlivable.  The only thing that kept me from running down the stairs and getting in the truck and driving home was that when I looked at Jaime she didn’t seem nearly as afraid as I was... she was but she wasn’t showing it.

After the walkthrough where we pointed out the unfinished kitchen counter tops, the sliding door which didn’t lock, the cracked windows and the obviously rushed paint job where they painted right over everything, including a mosquito hawk on the wall in the kitchen.  Jaime and I had nothing left to do but pull the U-Haul around back and unload what now felt like 17 feet of garbage.  This was easier said than done as the truck could barely squeeze through the driveway and into the rear parking lot.  I’m a terrible driver so I left this up to Jaime to do and as it turns out I’m also terrible at directing drivers because turning the corner into the parking lot she took out an overhanging corner of the building which rained concrete and stucco down on top of the truck.

We began unloading the U-Haul and it was only fitting that our apartment was furthest from the parking lot so everything had to be carried all the way across the courtyard then up three flights of stairs.  By 7:00 we were less than a third of a way through and were about to die, in my mind the mantra of “I’ve made a huge mistake” was not helping me get the furniture up the stairs.  With every step I was becoming more and more convinced that living in LA was going to be horrible. 

As if he could feel my hopelessness our next door neighbor appeared and offered his assistance, I don’t think he spoke much english and he said almost nothing to us the entire time he help us move.  I was embarrassed at how much junk we had and constructed all of these thoughts that must have been running through his head as he looked at these two stupid kids with way to much stuff.  By 10:00 my legs and my embarrassment couldn’t take it anymore and we thanked him for his help and told him that we would finish the last bit in the morning.  

Without eating dinner we flopped the mattress onto the floor of the bedroom and lay there.  I felt like I had been in a brawl where everyone else had clubs and knives and I had only fists, every inch of my body ached, I felt swollen.  I was the definition of exhausted and yet I couldn’t go to sleep because my mind was running on overdrive.

I wanted to get rid of that U-haul, I wanted to get this apartment unpacked, I wanted to have a job.  At that moment all I could imagine was how hard and awful LA was going to be.  What I couldn’t imagine was all the great times we would have there, all the friends we would make, all the places we would visit, all the things we would do.  It was in that apartment that we would decide to get married and that we would get our first dog.  We would adopt a second cat and then have to put that cat to sleep then adopt another.  We would become adults in this apartment and eventually have to leave it under threat of eviction.   That was all a long ways down the road and finally I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning we would unload the last boxes from the truck and I would finally be rid of that 17 foot albatross.  By Thursday we would have the apartment unpacked and everything in its place and that negative voice in my head which kept telling me that I’d made a huge mistake would be silenced.  Sure there would be times when I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of Los Angeles and sure it was going to be tough but those would be mixed with all the truly wonderful experiences we would have. 

If nothing else we were just beginning this fucking adventure.

the end of LA LA land

On Halloween of 2007 I was awake at 5:30 am loading my girlfriend, myself and a wailing cat into the cab of a seventeen foot U-haul bound for Los Angeles, just like the millions of naive 24 year olds before me.  On Halloween 2010 I was again awake at 5:30 am a 10 foot U-haul parked in the driveway of my apartment stuffed with boxes a few pieces of furniture and random treasures like a Millenium Falcon, a stuffed Pink Panther and the head of a bull Pinata from my 27th birthday party.  I my wife, my two cats and my dog loaded up bound for Seattle.

The trip is 1,100 miles and takes around 21 hours depending if I or my wife is driving.  When we were moving to LA it seemed like 11,000 miles and 41 hours,  I spent the whole time bouncing in my chair my hands tightly gripping the steering wheel trying to control this 17 foot behemoth behind me I couldn’t wait for this incredible unknown before me, I would have driven straight through to LA if I could have.  A new apartment, a new city I’d spent less than seventy-two hours in, no job, no family and everything was an exciting mystery.

Now moving back to Seattle things could hardly have been less similar, the trip seemed like a handful of hours and felt like we were just driving to Santa Barbara.  I was full of reservations and I spent the entire drive looking back at where I spent exactly three years of my life where I spent the bulk of my non college  adult life.  It was where I learned to live without family and all the ways in which they can be there to protect you.  It was in LA where I learned how to make new friends from scratch and make them my family away from my family.

 
I’m a nostalgic person and as we left Los Feliz (definitely the coolest place in Los Angeles) and drove through Glendale and Burbank and Valencia our truck pointed due north on I-5 a course we would not deviate from until we reached a crossroads in the Kent Valley and take the 405 for the last 10 miles of our trek home.  I found it surprisingly easy to forget things like the shitty overpriced food, the insane drivers, the completely narcissistic culture and smog.  Instead I lamented the loss of my neighborhood, the sun, my friends and the thought that just around the next corner could be something completely new and surprising.

  Seattle is still full of unknowns but they are less thrilling and honestly a little less unknown.  Seattle is home and is full of friends and family and despite having no jobs it was safe and quaint.  

I lived in Seattle for 26 years before I packed up and left it for three and a new beginning in Los Angeles, now I am moving back to Seattle for a new beginning again.  There were plans and there were goals I’m finding that rarely I follow either.