What would you do?

Her and the kids had gone skiing that weekend. He was on-call at the hospital of course, and so yet again he wouldn’t be able to attend his own family vacation. Her youngest had caught a cold and so they decided to return home to sunny California a few days early to finally get away from the snow. The earliest flight out of Colorado got them in LA way past the kids’ bedtime so off to bed they went once they all arrived. He wasn’t home yet. “He’s probably at the hospital,” she thought to herself. He was head of neurosurgery after all. And in an instant, her whole life fell apart. There they were in their bedroom. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. Her mind no longer had the ability to control her actions. She wanted to lash out, to throw things, to yell, something to demonstrate the excruciating internal pain a so-called healer had inflicted upon her. But nothing came. The two of them began to fumble out of bed and put their clothes on. He was trying to say something to her, was it an explanation? It felt as though she no longer understood any words or any language. He reached out to her, and then it happened, with all of her might something inside of her, within the deepest depths of her soul, came some sort of reserve of unfounded strength. She pulled her right arm back, and swung at his face. She hit him. He stumbled and almost fell. The girl rushed to his side to aid him, apologizing, crying, displaying so many guilty emotions. She hit the girl too, and she began to bleed. Then somehow she managed the words, “Get out.” The two picked up their clothes off of the floor and wearily rushed out of the house. She knew she should call someone, anyone, but she couldn’t. Everyone thought they had the perfect life. College sweethearts, two beautiful children, the perfect house, the perfect jobs, of course they had to have the perfect marriage. Even she had thought up until about thirty seconds before that she was living in a dream. Which is exactly what it seemed to her now, nothing but a dream. She walked downstairs into their perfect living room, lay on their perfect couch, with the perfect blanket his mother knit for the children on her Australian cruise and willed herself to sleep. Because maybe, if she just rested, this wouldn’t have really happened. Maybe she was still inside her dream of the perfect life. So she lied, because it was the only choice she had in this instance, and told herself “It will all be okay in the morning. Everything will be okay.”

In the Wee Hours of the Morning

Walgreen’s is open twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. This means that if you’re an insomniac, or just don’t generally have the luxury of being able to sleep as much as you’d occasionally like, Walgreen’s is the place to be. Walgreen’s has snacks, toys, various cleaning solutions, a card section, and well its open twenty-four hours. The actual beauty of the twenty-four hour concept is only found when you go to one of these wonderful places in the wee hours of the morning, say three or four o’clock. The caveat is that you have to go with the right people (most likely fellow insomniacs) to fully enjoy the ridiculous nature of going to Walgreen’s at three or four o’clock in the morning.

So there I was at three o’clock in the morning with three of the most random people I had ever met in my entire life. We get out of the car, and one of the girls says, “Hey you guys, do you like my shirt?” I look at it, and it’s green with a panda on it. The panda has airplanes or something in its hand and its crushing them or something like that. She then continues after an awkward pause, “Do you get it? It’s panda-monium!” and then proceeds to break into laughter. The rest of us sort of laugh along with her, just because she seems so excited about it, and also probably because it was in fact a pretty ridiculous notion for a shirt.

I found out that Walgreen’s sold so many different things, by these random people pointing them out to me. The girl without the panda-monium shirt felt that I would feel comfortable by pointing out a display of candles with the face of Jesus on them. I more than was comfortable with it, I thought it was hilarious. The boy with us by the time we next met up with him happened to stumble across shoe holders (those things that keep your dress shoes all nice and formed correctly whatever the proper name may be) and gorilla glue (glue that was supposed to be so strong it could hold a gorilla, or something like that). I didn’t even know that those things were sold at Walgreen’s but apparently they are because he had every intention of buying them, and I believe did end up buying them because he felt that he needed to. I suppose this happens a lot when it’s three o’clock in the morning, you begin to think that you need things that you’ve never thought of or knew existed in your entire life.

Define This.

Random, adj. - Having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective

Ridiculous, adj. - Deserving or inspiring ridicule; absurd, preposterous, or silly.

Amazing, adj. - Surprising greatly; inspiring awe or admiration or wonder

The Letter

*Disclaimer: Everything on this blog is fiction. Please take this in to consideration while reading. Thank you. *


I can’t even count how many times I’ve tried to write this, or say this, or even just to forget it all together. My love, my everything, I’m so sorry. I know it seems as though I’ve forgotten about you and about us and everything we had, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Because my love, I love you and always have and always will. With that said, I suppose it’s obvious that there’s no way in hell I could have forgotten about you, because you are a part of me, the best part of me. It’s been a so long since I’ve kissed your lips, since you last held me in your arms like you could keep me there forever, since I’ve heard your voice, the voice that could comfort me in any situation possible, the voice that makes me laugh, makes me love, makes me complete. The voice that has the capability of calling me back from the darkest worst parts of myself. And in all that time I’ve been happy. But I’ve also been sad, and mostly I’ve been doing nothing but thinking of you. I know that I should have called because you would always answer no matter how much I hurt you, but I wasn’t ready to say what I needed to be said, or do what needed to be done. And I felt so incredibly unworthy of your love. But my beloved, I’m ready now. For some reason I kept running from you thinking that we’d both be better off pursuing our own agendas. But I was wrong, I can’t run from you, I can’t pursue my own agenda, and I can’t let go of or forget our love, because you are my agenda, you are a part of me, and I can never be whole without you. You hold the pieces of my heart that make me, me. So here I am, stubborn, prideful, incredibly selfish me. I don’t know if I can change to become the person you want me to be, or believe I can be, but I’m ready to try. I remember being jealous of you when we were kids. You never had to try to be good at anything, and I had no choice but to work my ass off just to try to be at your level. And not much has changed. I envy your ability to be kind and generous and completely selfless and to not dwell on the bad but to constantly think positively. I’ve never had your resilience to adversity, and I don’t think I ever will, but with your help I know that I can attempt to take the steps in that direction. So, please accept my apology and though I know because of the ridiculously amazing person you, you’ve forgiven me without a formal apology, please, help me take the steps to fix this. I know it’s going to take a stunning effort on my part to say the least, but I’m ready for it, if you’ll still have me. I love you.

A lot of people move to LA. There are people from Chicago, Wisconsin, Maryland, Kansas, Hawaii, the list goes on. A lot of people who move to LA tend to speak of their lives in two separate eras: "before I came to LA" and "once I moved here." As in, "Before I came to LA I drove like an old lady, once I moved here I started to drive like a douche." Not that everything has to change once you move, it's just that things have a tendency to do so. And keep in mind there's a definite difference between living in California and living in a city like LA in California. Like any other place, cities in California are just different than towns; they're bigger.
"Before I came to LA" I was a bitch. High-strung, high-maintenance, demanding. I knew what I wanted and continually, almost made it a point, to completely disregard what everyone else wanted. "Once I moved here" nothing changed, at first. Then what seemed like out of nowhere, I started to sort of become a better person. Maybe it was because I started to realize that if you constantly surround yourself with people who accept and/or encourage bad behavior, then you will accept and/or encourage bad behavior. I hate the saying, but a lot of the times it's true: you are who your friends are. But once you change the people in that equation, you have the possibility of bettering yourself and begin to learn to accept and encourage understanding, kindness, and generosity.
For a long time I was very good friends with a group of people who accepted that I was a bitch. They didn't necessarily encourage my being a bitch, but they definitely didn't do anything to help me stop being a bitch. So I didn't really know there was anything wrong with it. Now when I first moved, the people I became friends with initially, LOVED my being a bitch. It was entertaining for them, which is what I was for them: entertainment. Then I met more new people, and these people just so happened to be really nice. At first glance they just seemed like your usual run of the mill polite people. But soon I came to realize that their politeness wasn't out of any obligation, because they had no obligation to be nice to me, it was rooted somewhere deeper. It was like, they were innately kind. And this to me was the weirdest thing ever. Because personally, I've been called a lot of things in my life, but kind has never been one of them. The more I saw of this kindness I had never experienced, the more I wanted to reciprocate. The thing is though, I'm starting to see that it takes a while to learn to let go of the bitch you were for however many years. Maybe because you got used to her, or maybe because it's who you really are. But the more I experience the simple fact that it's a lot easier to be nice than it is to be mean (and I'm all for minimal effort with maximum result) the more I think (and definitely hope) that I'm making some pretty good progress.

Mm...ok

He had no idea why she would get up so early every morning. And their weekly trip to Malibu was yet another puzzle to him (she hardly even got in the water!). What he didn't know was that the most beautiful time in the world was between six and seven in the morning. The reason why no one really knew this was because not very many people happen to be awake at that time, and if they are they don't stop to appreciate it. She would get up so early to come to the beach, any beach as long as there weren't too many people (like the joggers). There was this one particular spot where she would lay her mat, sit down, and stare at the ocean. And sometime between six and seven, she never knew exactly when, the sun would make its way over the cliff and take its place in the sky looking down at the beach. The waves would so gracefully roll in and then ease their way onto the shore with their violently gentle nature. And she'd just sit there, in the quiet with her soy caramel machiatto in one hand, listening only to the sound of the ocean, warmed by the sun rising on her back. As trite as it sounds it was blissfully magical. "Nothing short of amazing," she would repeat over and over in her head. She loved it here. And even if it was her alone who loved it, and no one, not even he could share this with her, she never felt lonely when she was there surrounded by the ocean. It was all hers to greedily enjoy, and this was the best part about it she thought.

LA

Los Angeles is about cars. You could easily spend a significantly greater amount of time in your car than in your two-thousand-dollar-or-more-a-month tiny apartment on the west side. It's about traffic. This basically turns out to run your life and it's the biggest reason why you'd end up doing almost everything you possible can (i.e. business, eating, make-up, etc.) in a frikkin automobile. It's about money. There is a significant amount of people who show they have lots of it with the ridiculously beautiful cars they spend so much time in while they're in traffic, as well as a bunch of restaurants, retailers, and grocery stores who make you pay a ton of money by jacking up the price just because thy have a cool name paired with a pretty logo.
A lot of people like to make LA about the beach, the sun, the movie stars, the nightlife, and/or the big buildings. The truth about all that is, the actual closest coastline to the city of Los Angeles is disgusting and probably ridden with meningitis. The sun isn't always out, and if it was we wouldn't have the constant lovely climate that we do. Instead we'd be in the valley, also known as LA County's own Sahara Desert. The movie stars look like crap in real life, and they would appreciate it if you'd pretend they weren't movie stars at least until they're out of ear shot. The nightlife is good, but you experience it only one night a week max. Unless you're a movie star, a young-rich-unemployed-person, or a full on alcoholic. And finally the big buildings you always see on film are actually in east LA, downtown possibly the smog-iest part of town, where many business people work and then come back to the west side anyway. That's the thing though, nothing is generally ever as it seems. And while this could sound like a very cynical diatribe it's not. I love LA. It's the people, really. For instance, while everyone drives like complete douche in Beverly Hills you have to respect the fact that they're driving a beautiful maserati like a douche. And while we all bitch about the traffic every day of our lives, we don't move. Why don't we move? Because LA is amazing despite the traffic. So we deal with it because we know that at the exit after next is an awesome store, restaurant, friend, etcetera that we know of solely because of LA's amazing nature. Mostly though, while LA is about cars, what we tend to forget (because we're awesomely selfish Angelidans) is that the people in the cars are the best part. The people that sometimes go with you just so you can use the carpool lane, the foreign people with very attractive accents, the entertainment people who tend to be quite generous with their connections, the homeless people with their cool signs, the restaurant people and the delicious food they serve, and the people you find to hang out with and choose to live with. There are many douches in LA it's true. But there are also amazing people among them, and these people combined with the amazing nature of the city make everything, even traffic, worthwhile.