Part Two: Leaving LA and Landing Back In San Diego

Can you tell I’ve been procrastinating writing this?

Or is it just me.

Okay. Here we go.

I arrived in Los Angeles.I had made it. My dream life was about to begin. My forever city was under my feet.

The first six months were electric. I drove endlessly deliberately trying to touch every corner of the city, as if knowing every street would somehow make it mine. I didn’t want there to be a single road I couldn’t say I’d been on. I loved it that much.

I loved it so much I tried to document it.I dreamed up a coffee table book—an actual company called According to Recent Findings. I immersed myself completely: neighborhoods, histories, photographs, before-and-after shots. I read everything. I observed everything. I let the city consume me.

And I think that’s where it broke me.

Because when you look that closely at a place, eventually it looks back—or doesn’t.And this city didn’t.

No one acknowledged my presence.No one looked at me.No one cared if I existed.Nothing felt real.I didn’t feel real.

People warn you about Los Angeles. They say, “Everyone there is so fake.”I used to think they meant plastic, curated, influencer-fake.

I don’t think that’s what they meant anymore.

They’re fake in a quieter way because they don’t feel like everyday people. The city doesn’t flinch. A loose dog running down the street. A dead body on the side of the road. A naked person walking toward your car. No reaction. No pause.

Everyone is there for themselves.

You can say, That’s every big city.

Maybe.

But this one felt different. This felt like a city where no one was there to live—only to make it. Everything had an agenda. You could feel it in the air. And over time, that weight starts pressing on your chest.

Leaving the city even briefly felt like oxygen. Forty-five minutes away, families were grocery shopping. Teenagers walked in groups. Kids played at parks. Life was happening without strategy.

In Los Angeles., no one was living.

With all of this rattling around in my head, I slowly unraveled. I forgot how to speak. How to swallow food. How to breathe. I’m not being dramatic—I genuinely had to relearn all of it. Apparently, it’s called OCD. Great....

I was unraveling in a city that wouldn’t notice if I lived or died.

I needed to leave. Immediately.But I had no money. So I stayed another year—stuck.

Here’s the confusing part: even then, I was still having the best time of my life. That’s what makes it hard to explain. It really was the best of times and the worst of times, happening at once. I was mentally falling apart, and I knew it was the city.

The OCD took my voice next. Speaking terrified me. Which meant interviews terrified me. Leaving terrified me.What if I forgot how to speak mid-sentence?

Eventually, I saved enough and got out.

I landed in San Diego.

A city where normal, ordinary people existed everywhere. Where strangers noticed things. Where someone would stop for a loose dog in the road. It took about a year and a half to feel 90% healed. I will always be grateful to San Diego and if you read Part one you know that means a lot...

I remember the moment the healing settled into my body. I was sitting on the sidewalk with my French bulldog—she has a habit of collapsing mid-walk, playing dead in protest of going home , perfectly still. Before I could laugh it off, a car pulled over hard. A stranger jumped out and asked, breathless, “Are you guys okay?” after they left I started balling.

They didn’t know it, but that was the moment the story shifted.

That was the proof.

I existed again.

In memory of Sergio Rios<3 who always told me to breathe.