It’s a stereotypical Southern California day, not a single cloud blemishes the electric blue sky. Her intoxicating beauty seems to stretch infinitely in all directions. I try to capture this moment with a selfie, but the wind keeps whipping my hair and slapping me in the face. I step into the icy water and it burns my feet. I sink into the ground with each wave, the coarse sand massages and exfoliates my feet. I walk deeper and deeper into the water and leap in.
I get sucked under, flip upside down, and sometime while my knees are dragging along the bottom of the ocean, I get de-pantsed. She doesn’t ask, she just takes what she wants. I surrender my control, and she lets me up for air. I watch kids conquer with ease the same vicious sea that so effortlessly had their way with me.
I see two large fins appear and disappear into the water a few feet from me. I scream and start racing back to shore. “SHARKS!” I yell to my friend and to other swimmers.
“They’re dolphins,” she says, “Sharks don’t swim in packs.”
Everyone can tell I’m an outsider, but no one cares.
I navigate my way through the city. I walk fast, even though I have no idea where I’m going, and start cursing out the slow walkers ahead of me, in my mind of course. I get so impatient with this city. I want her to speed up, but she needs me to slow down. In New York, everyone walks like they know exactly where they’re going. In LA, they walk like drifters, destinations unknown. Their eyes gaze in all directions, soaking up her beauty.
I am chronically lost, but it’s okay. We’re all lost here.
I learn the rules of this strange and foreign land. I learn there are no rules. You don’t have to fit inside any boxes in order to be accepted here. In fact, they seem to prefer you spill out of every border. The more you stand out, the better.
It’s a place for the misfits.
The people out here are a strange breed indeed. Beautiful creatures, crafted by the hands of God and plastic surgeons. I go from a NY 9 to an LA 5. In NY, I was rarely the smartest person in the room, but often the prettiest. In LA, I am usually the smartest, but never the prettiest. I’m not saying people here are ignorant, I’m just saying they value different subject areas. Californians paid strict attention in health class, New Yorkers in history and English. Your LA friends tell you about this spiritual experience they had while meditating over some exotic superfood you’ve never heard of. Your NY friends will get into a philosophical debate with you, as you split a bottle of whiskey.
In NY, I could get away with being reserved and awkward because no one talked to me but here people are different. People ask me how my day is going, they try to pry into my private life. When strangers talk to me, my natural reaction is to pretend I don’t hear them.
It’s my first time at Griffith Observatory. I admire the statues of history’s favorite misfits: Einstein, Copernicus, Galileo. I think about how it must have felt with so much to say and no one who wants to listen, hell-bent on changing a world who’d prefer to stay the same. I look through a telescope and see Saturn’s rings and they whisper,
Anything is possible.
I’m staring down into the city, mesmerized by her twinkling lights. I hear a man’s voice utter something and snap out of my trance. The handsome young man next to me is smiling at me. I look back at him puzzled, then walk away. Was he talking to me? I turn around and extend my hand to him. “I’m Vera,” I say, then walk away again.
Griffith Observatory September 2015
After several months I learn the tongue of the natives, the slang, the social etiquette. I meet people everywhere, I get their Instagram and never see them again. We might make plans a few times but every time they bail at the last minute.
I get invited to a birthday party and the girl cancels her own party at the last minute. She tells me as I’m on my way to her house. She says it’s because she barbequed earlier today and she’s exhausted. I’m like, you’re a yoga teacher, can’t you just balance your chakras or something? Also, I’m drinking your birthday present!
I wonder why this keeps happening, so naturally, I ask Google. I only type, “Why are people flakey…” and Google asks if I mean
"Why are people flakey in Los Angeles?"
I find a ton of literature on the matter! Most of the articles blamed traffic and distance, or simply the fact that with endless options, how can you possibly choose one.
So you tell Valorie you’ll go out in Santa Monica Friday night but then Chad invites you to a show in Hollywood that same night, so you just bail on Valorite like an hour before, because Santa Monica is too far and the show will be way more fun anyways. And it’s totally socially acceptable! If you did that shit in NY, you’d have no friends.
But this is what I came here for...
I wanted to get away, be alone. Utter loneliness forces you to get better acquainted with yourself, allowing you to heal your own wounds. Perhaps the reason people seem so selfish here is that they are trying to heal, and part of healing is putting yourself first.
California has a way of giving you what you need, not necessarily what you want. I came out here to chase my dreams, but I found myself.
Like leaping into fierce waters, I learn to surrender my control. I learn to embrace her pace. I stop to soak in the scenery. I start to enjoy the present, I find my surrounding to be a safe place, a place where I belong. At last, I am home.
'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.'--Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self Reliance
