A personal update!
So, after almost 10 years, my fiance Ryan and I have made our way home to St. Louis from Los Angeles.
Being a Midwest native, the noise and the dirt and the constant heat and sunshine took me some getting used to - especially because when we moved in, all we had was an air mattress, a laptop and a Target clearance lamp. Sitting on the floor watching Youtube for entertainment, working our way up in the animation/comics industry, collecting Ikea furniture, seems like million years ago now.
L.A. is an awesome place to spend your 20s. Ryan scrapped and saved while living on a good friend’s couch in Pasadena and found us an apartment in the SFV, which I grew to adore and make our home.
We made so many incredible memories together and with our friends. We camped, hiked, fished, in the Mojave desert, in the Sierra Nevadas, in the Kern River. We drank beer at tiki bars, at the Gold Room in Echo Park, partied at the Roosevelt Hotel, danced all night in a goth club (twice!). We sat for film festivals and series premieres at the Egyptian and Chinese theaters. We got to smell roses literally every day and enjoy a wealth of beautiful plants and flowers right outside our apartment door. We went to the weddings of our dear friends. We saw El Capitan and Yosemite Falls and Lake Tahoe. We went to the best Six Flags, spent hours sitting in traffic, walked to the corner Armenian bodega for sour cream. We went to ComicCon four times and Las Vegas twice. We ate some of the world’s most delicious food from where I feel is probably the most diverse food scene in the world.
We even did the touristy stuff like go to the Griffith Observatory and ate Beard Papa’s down on Hollywood and Highland (R.I.P.) There’s a thousand other little and big things I cherish experiencing.
I suppose we did the same thing thousands of other people do each year; move to Los Angeles for a time, usually for a job, and because of whatever circumstances, return from where they came. I can honestly say though, that we left L.A. confidently, and not with our tails between our legs. But we had to do the same thing so many others do - leave because the cost of living just isn’t feasible for our future goals. Lots of people want to live there, and of course the prices reflect that. The wealth inequality there is staggering and the price of housing will probably get worse before it ever gets better, unfortunately.
So we made the decision to make the trek ~1900 miles across the United States back to our hometown to see if we can hack it doing the grownup thing. It’s a big change in many ways but we feel excited and hopeful for our future. And hey, we still gotta get married this year! I love Los Angeles in all its quirky, diverse, filthy, delicious glory. It definitely is a city of many contrasts - a very love it or hate it kind of city, I think.
I just had to write a little love letter to say goodbye. I’ll miss so many things about L.A., but I’m so glad I got to spend some of my best years there with the one I love. No regrets.
Except leaving behind the food. I will miss the food.
