The only thing holding me back from becoming an actor is Los Angeles; I hate that city.
On holiday this year I traveled back home to San Diego to see my parents and uncle as is usual. I love San Diego, my birthplace, and every time I go back it has changed; cities are like the people that make them up. Not only has it changed but each time I go back I feel more disconnected to what San Diego was to me. The landscape has changed drastically as has the feel and energy of it all. My memories of what San Diego was are old and stale, for what I remember is an entirely different picture of what currently exists.
The people I knew there have all left and moved on. The places I used to hang out have been changed out for new businesses according to the time and place. The city has continued its own life forward while I have been away in Phoenix and I have grown in my life in Phoenix, being reborn from the ashes of my old self. I’ve noticed this evolving change every time I would go back to visit but it really hit me this time. The last vestiges of memories and nostalgia are simply that, with no concrete structures or monuments to contain them. They live entirely in my own mind now; new generations will not be able to share in them.
San Diego has changed and I have changed. I knew it would never be home again but for the first time there was no recognition of home. If I were to move back it would be as new to me as say moving to New York. The mix of feelings was hard to stomach but at the same time I felt free. I will forever hold memories to a time and place that no longer exists, and can never be resurrected. It’s as beautiful as it is tragic.
For Christmas we drove up to LA to visit my Sister. Los Angeles, the city that I cursed on every drive to and from college. The town I hated and despised and swore I would never ever live in. I imagine God laughing at my childish ridicule knowing full well what was in store for me. For, potentially, this time next year will be when I move to the city of Angels. A fact that has been a brick to my head for the beginning of this year.
My time here in Phoenix is drawing to an end and as with all things that begin to leave us I grasp on desperately. It will be time though. I know it will be time, because with every visit I’ve made to LA this past year it has grown harder and harder to leave. This last visit for the holidays was the hardest. For the first time in my life I felt that I was actually leaving my home of LA, and I haven’t even moved there yet. So strange that a place can grow on one; a complete reversal to my youthful angst.
There is still much work to be done in this last year, or year and a half, in Phoenix and for that I am thankful. I am not ready to leave as of yet, there is still so much I wish to conquer here. Still, the time is drawing near and another milestone in this journey of life must draw to an end to have another milestone begin. It is not the time for reflection as of now but a reassurance to work as hard as I can in this time left—that will pass as quickly as the wind doth go by.