“Because no one sees you walking back into the places that caused you so much pain and overcoming the old version of you. Turning each corner feels like a haunted house. And I wonder if my old haunts are judging the person I used to be.”

Change. The one constant in life other than death. 

Just as my hair went from bleach blonde to magenta, Los Angeles continued on without me. A version of me from 2019 still walks these streets. She got off at the North Hollywood metro stop, headed to Republic of Pie to write her latest script and then ended up eating a pastry and rethinking her entire life. She’d go over to her boyfriend’s place across the street and hated that she was trapped in a cage of her own design. 

When she left LA, she was barely even skin and bones. She was a lost puppy on the side of the road, who thought she found home only to be left at a gas station in the next state over a year later. 

Then today, I walked up to Republic of Pie to sit down and write. Even though the restaurants have different names, the feel of the air was suffocating again. Right when we think we moved on, we are swept back into our emotional storms. The toxic job, the toxic relationship, the toxic version of me – it all was still leeching onto me like a parasite I couldn’t quite remove. 

How could you do that? You are not doing enough. I could still feel the ghosts pulling my heart to my feet. 

But this was the girl who moved here with no job, no apartment, and just an air mattress and dreams. She went back to school at night while working full time. She spent weekends in additional classes and writing every day. She was great at her job and moved up quickly. She was kind even when she didn’t need to be. She was doing her best with where she was at. All I want to do is shake her and hug her and tell her it is going to be alright and one day she will love herself the way I love me now. 

Now I’m 31. In your 30s, it’s hard to not feel like you’re always behind some imaginary bar you set for yourself. In this capitalist hellscape, if we don’t have results, it is considered a failure. It is always what is next? It’s never be proud of what you fucking did to get to this point. 

In April I was laid off. Our entire company’s NYC branch shut down. The job market is crashing. The entertainment industry is crashing. The economy is crashing. Every day I’m berated with catastrophic news in my pocket. Then my rent goes up. Now I am yet again moving back home with my parents as my credit card racks up medical and basic living expenses. My credit card has fraud on it, so my mom had to venmo me money so I can take an uber to my premiere. Isn’t life fabulous sometimes? 

Because no one sees you walking back into the places that caused you so much pain and overcoming the old version of you. Turning each corner feels like a haunted house. And I wonder if my old haunts are judging the person I used to be. 

I take a step back from my screen. We are on a floating rock in space and you are worried about this? 

It’s hard not to deflate, but all eyes are on you. Restock the menstruation station in the theater bathroom. Start a new company. How am I going to pay rent? Bag 100 more bracelets and condoms, wait did I remember to pack the Kiwi for the vibrator?  Did I even remember to eat? Ask me personal questions. It’s on me for writing and sharing my personal life like I’m the Operation game, allowing everyone to pick what they want. But don’t forget to smile. Don’t forget to be grateful. Take a deep breath. Remember what you would’ve done to be in this exact moment just a year ago. 

Let it go. Let go or be dragged. That is when I finally can start enjoying it all and I did. When I finally let go is when I finally could be. 

I used to live in a world of shoulds. Hard work should be rewarded. People should like my movie. I should be working on my next project already. I should be married by now. I should be dating. I should have kids. I should be doing it all. I was quite literally shoulding all over myself. Shout out to the mental health for filmmakers panel at Dances with Films for the term “shoulding all over myself.” Ironic for someone with anxiety-induced IBS I know. I was stuck in irrational beliefs, obsessing over them, pushing myself into insanity and hustle till I am in the ER with stress-induced UTIs (true story). 

And now as I type it all out in the place where it started and each word typed feels like I’m vomiting up my heart and wearing it for the world to see. I can still see myself with a bleach blonde bob, typing at each table here, sipping endless coffee, laughing to myself over a vagina joke I wrote and thinking how sad this will never be made after each rejection. Now I sit here an unrecognizable human to the one who once wrote here everyday. Isn’t that the most calming and terrifying thing you’ve ever heard. That change is going to happen no matter what you do. 

And the one thing I could control this weekend was wearing a vulva crochet tank top to our final festival screening of Lady Parts at Dances with Films and reveling in our hard work amongst friends. The audience now laughed at those very same vagina jokes I wrote at Republic of Pie in 2019. So crazy that people are laughing over a size 5 dilator joke on this pale blue dot in the vastness of space. 

And just like my life, there is no buttoned up ending here. No big moral to live by. Just awaiting what I cannot control.