Run Away
Eleven months ago, I left my home in LA in a quiet unraveling that had gone on long enough that the only loving thing left to do was step away. I was too Topanga to be a Venice Bitch and too Venice to be a lady of the canyon, so I ran. I ran away to the place I could always call home. LA had started to feel loud in a way that went beyond traffic and ambition. It grew louder and louder inside my mind. Grief distorted the city. Places that once felt electric began to feel overwhelming. Corners and street signs I used to romanticize started holding memories that felt too heavy to hang onto. I didn’t feel mysterious or magnetic anymore.
So I drove home, a place that didn’t demand reinvention. There’s a particular humility in admitting you can’t muscle your way through something. In realizing that strength doesn’t always look like staying. Sometimes it looks like allowing yourself to be held. The early months back in San Diego were quiet in a way that unnerved me. No late-night canyon drives. No curated dinners. No carefully constructed versions of myself. Just endless time surrounded by my family and my nervous system gradually remembering what safety feels like.
I mistook that stillness for failure at first. I thought leaving meant I had lost something: momentum, proximity, relevance. But distance gave me clarity that proximity never could. I didn’t leave because I wasn’t capable. I left because I was overwhelmed by too much: too much loss, too much noise, too much of myself stretched thin trying to keep it together.
A year later, I don’t feel like the girl who ran, I feel like the girl who listened. San Diego hasn’t dulled me. If anything, it restored me. I feel sturdier in my creativity now. Less desperate to be perceived. More interested in being well. I’m not trying to be the cool Venice chick or the elusive canyon muse. I’m just trying to be whole.
When I visit LA now, I can feel the affection without the ache. I can drive through Topanga with Lana playing and appreciate the mythology of it all without needing to insert myself into the story. I didn’t abandon a version of myself there. I retrieved one here. One year later, home doesn’t feel like retreat. It feels like recovery.
