Among my friends is a woman who moved here from Boston. Twenty-five years later, she still makes a point of putting Long Beach in her prayers. Our route to lunch often takes us along Alamitos Bay, where snow-capped peaks of purple mountains are a backdrop for the recreational waterway and its iconic red swim buoys.
Before anyone picks up a fish taco, my friend thanks God for the food and “this beautiful place we live.”
Almost daily, I drive along the coast, scanning the purple-blue of an ocean that conveys a power more vast than the green-blue waters I grew up with.
The Pacific confers a sense of limitlessness, of potential, of beauty, that pours into my consciousness. Often this mingles with the awareness that I’m just a 45-minute drive from the city’s art, drama, and hustle. That this is my world now seems surreal. There are moments when it suddenly dawns on me that I’m not just a tourist.
“I f-ing LIVE here!” I’ve said it to myself in the car a number of times, as if saying it out loud cements the reality.
California was a lot like that hot guy I thought I’d never get. My kid had kept me wed to South Florida. So when she left for college and I could split, I was certain to stake claim in the new territory when the opportunity presented itself.
I was eager to go the DMV and forfeit my Florida license so I could establish myself as a California girl, even though it meant (as it often does with hot guys) that I’d have to pay for the privilege (hello, state tax). Plus, the move came with an actual hot guy – a remarkably charming man who sold me on the idea that I had inspired him to get clean and sober after our brief fling on Catalina Island during a 2009 Christmas vacation.
Understanding nothing about addiction, I believed his pitch that we could build a new life together; he offered to support me while I pursued my studies in yoga and creativity and wrote a book about what I learned. Just months after we met, we co-signed a lease on a place in Studio City.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” I said to my friends and family as I resigned my job, sloughed off the least important of my possessions and 86’ed the home-field advantage. “If things work out, I get the guy. If they don’t, I live in California. Win-win.”
Naïveté factored heavily in my courage. I had no idea that the next year would bring me to my knees – what some call reaching bottom – as life as I knew it was stripped away. I’d given much up in exchange for my new goals, including the loss of most of my possessions, which were destroyed by a bargain mover’s leaky truck during its two-month cross-country odyssey.
What I didn’t know is that I’d give up even more.
My studies in the yoga studio were teaching me to detach from everything I’d considered “me.” They were also teaching me a kinder, gentler way.
“Ahimsa,” my teachers continually reminded me – the foundation of yoga philosophy: Non-harming.
This wasn’t a reminder not to harm others. What they meant is that I should not push myself so aggressively that I injure myself (which I did), I should not talk meanly to myself (which I did), and I should not subject myself to abuse, neither my own or others’ (which I did). The concept that I should not drive myself under the lash of my will power was as foreign to me as Sanskrit.
While I was at the yoga studio, discovering and changing the habits that constituted self-abuse, my boyfriend was sliding back into his old habits. I tried to solve the problem, I tried to control his behavior, I tried everything I could think of – even swearing off booze myself as a self-righteous example. When nothing worked, I joined him at the bar. The relationship became an increasingly destructive force in my life.
Once I was aware of the toxic in intoxication, ahimsa meant I’d move again – an hour south to the other end of the county – this time on my own, with no job and no prospects. I was no longer full of bravado and flippancy. I was exhausted, scared, adrift, and lost.
My boyfriend had shown me the progressive disease of alcoholism in its full-blown state. Now, my old favorite Florida pastimes of barhopping and partying just seemed like a dance with death. Without the validation of jobs or a relationship (also my two favorite justifiable distractions), I’d hit bottom emotionally. I was nothing short of desperate. In a moment of clarity, I realized I had to give up drinking. For good.
Friends and family were concerned, but I refused all offers of help that meant a return to Florida. I would not crawl back home defeated. I’d rather die on the streets of L.A. (obviously, with my sense of drama still intact).
I couldn’t see it at the time, but somehow as things were falling apart, they were coming together.
Once my life was completely empty, I could fill it up with new – and better – stuff. I traded nightclubs for yoga studios, self-medication for meditation, and the scene for the sea. (I’ll tell you sometime about my new sailing habit). I spent months applying for all sorts of jobs. Writing, event planning, teaching and PR gigs – you name it! – if I had experience, I applied for it. I put in the effort, opened my life to possibilities and let go of the outcome.
I was surprised when the first job offer I got was unsolicited. When the ArtsPaper editor asked me to write this column, I tried to talk him out of it. My life in L.A.? I had no good news yet to report. Plus, writing for the same paper I had written for in 2008? It didn’t seem like progress. But I had no other offer. And a hometown ally who believes in me and respects my work: that is no small thing.
So I accepted the task with gratitude.
Then, I had a couple of anxiety attacks. I was pretty sure I’d lost my edge. I had no idea what my writing would sound like now that I had let go of the biting sarcasm. And writing a letter home made me ache with homesickness that I was afraid would pull me back since I had so little to keep me here. If facing fear is the measure, taking the assignment was a bigger leap of faith than moving across the country.
It’s funny how saying “yes” to that request seemed to make more yeses follow. Three months later, I am now also teaching as an adjunct professor at two colleges. I have begun to make a network of friends here who love and support each other.
I’m not the first to be caught in L.A.’s seductive pull and risk it all in the process. I suppose whether its deemed “blind faith” or “irrational behavior” depends a whole lot on how things turn out. I’ve also found it depends on one’s view. And this is where it comes home – my new home – for me. Often the view depends on gratitude, rather than the other way around.
Can I get an “Amen”? The fish tacos are getting cold.
Marya Summers is a veteran South Florida arts and culture writer now living in Southern California. She can be reached at www.maryasummers.com.
