Feeling Torn

Every time I think that my decision to move home is easy, I go on a crying jag and feel like I've lost my dang mind.

I feel some comfort in knowing that both of my sisters have either gone through or are going through something similar. I remember when my older sister moved away from NYC, she had similar reasons to the ones I have for leaving L.A. High cost of living, people are insane, need to financially and emotionally recover, yada yada. My other sister is experiencing some similar emotions- saying goodbye to a chapter of her life that's been rich with good memories, venturing into unknown territory, feeling a little bit like she's taking a step backward by moving back home.

Me too.

I constantly feel like I'm torn between two different places, two ideals, two feuding gangs. The Crips are on one side and the Bloods are on the other, and I'm not wearing the right color for either one.

I know that going home is where I am supposed to go. Most of the time, I even miss home. Being homesick doesn't make me less scared though. The thing is, despite the fear and angst, I do (sometimes) get excited about going home- I get excited when I remember that hot sticky feeling at the back of my legs and in between my shoulder blades that only comes with Memphis summers. I get excited about listening to music that's full of soul, and people asking me how I'm doing not because they want to use me and run me over but because they really do care. I get excited about driving all the way out to Jerry's Sno Cones for frozen goodness that cost a dollar, and drinking coffee with my parents on the back porch.

But I also get so sad.

I get sad that I won't see my apartment manager anymore. His name is Steve. I usually go down to his office on Saturdays and shoot the bull with him about life. He's always been nice to me. I get sad when I think about not being able to drive down streets that are lined with palm trees. I get sad that Mr. Young won't be my haircut guy and I won't see the staff at Cabo Cantina anymore. I get really sad when I think about not being able to see my closest friend out here whenever I want. We've spent so many hours recording music and laughing our heads off and watching Michael Jackson videos on Youtube. I've built my own home here, and now I sort of feel like I am abandoning it. It's like watching the last episode of a classic TV series or finishing a good book. I remember when I was about 10 or so, I read "Cheaper by the Dozen," and I LOVED that book, and at the end, the dad died, and I cried and cried and cried. I haven't changed one bit.

I keep having sporadic meltdowns.

Despite this grappling feeling of wanting to stay (a little), there are signs pointing other places. I'm very into "signs." It might make me sound like some loony tune Tammy Fae Baker, but I can't help it. When I see signs, I pay attention.

I was sitting in church on Sunday and I got this sudden urge to jump up and leave. Actually, it wasn't that sudden at all. It was sort of this brooding, itching feeling, like the need to escape had been building up inside of me for years, and if I didn't get out of there in about five minutes, I'd scream.

I had read an article in The Los Angeles Times only a few days prior about some couple at my church who'd built a 40,000 square foot house in Bel Air for $68 million and they made this really big deal about how they built their pseudo-Versailles for "worship" purposes. I don't know why I got so irritated by this, because I don't even KNOW the people, and it's none of my business, but I sort of wanted to take that newspaper and wipe my butt with it, because I knew it was a crock of crap. I got sort of burned out on all of the phony baloney people at my church. The excessive wealth and Gatsby-style "worship" services and people rolling up in their Rolls Royce's for absolutely nothing. It just seemed so phony to me.

This is where I start to sound a little bit like Sylvia Plath going on and on about how everyone is dying. Bear with me.

On Sunday, it really got to me. This big fat cow in a circus tent/moo moo got up in the pulpit and started READING off prayers. If there's one thing that irritates me, it's written-down prayers. I'm not an authority on theology, but I'm pretty sure that God doesn't expect you to give a public speech when you ask Him to help you out. I also don't think he requires you to talk to like a medieval warrior. The moo moo cow lady kept going ON AND ON AND ON with her Times New Roman font "prayer," full of "thous" and "thees," and all I could think about was that $68 million dollar house and this lady praying like she was a knight.

Every time that woman gets up in the pulpit, I want to cold cock her. She's got this long stringy Mama Cass hair and she always wears plastic headbands. Have headbands EVER been in style? Anyway, she makes an announcement for some punk kid to come up on stage (a punk kid with a hyphenated name. Come on, girl. Feminism went out of style in the 80's) because he just got her PhD. So. The punk gets up there and begins to openly demasculate her husband, saying that HE only has a MASTER'S and SHE has a DOCTORATE and SHE makes him call HER "Dr. Wife." It was disgusting. I don't know what the deal was. I just couldn't take her lame jokes and watching her make fun of her husband. The whole thing was a big phony crock of crap, and I just couldn't take it.

It's weird. I never cared about hyphenated names. I actually thought for a while that maybe it was a good idea. But then I started thinking about how it's sort of a real big "F YOU" to the person you marry, and it changed my mind about it, and I decided that hyphenating was sort of lame.

I couldn't take it anymore. I just couldn't take it.

So I left.

I got in my car and drove to my old church. The whole time I was thinking that I was probably too late to catch the sermon, but I figured that making an attempt was better than going home and eating a whole carton of Chunky Monkey. So, I drove there, and I snuck in the back door like a hooker in a cathedral. I didn't recognize the guy who was preaching. He started talking about things that made a lot of sense though. He said,

"Don't become so stubborn on doing things the way YOU want to do them that God has to force you to surrender to His Will."

To a lot of people, that could probably sound totally weird, but to me, it made complete sense.

"Maybe you came out to this city because you had a voice. You had a voice and a vision to live here, and you came out here only to find that nobody heard you, and you were defeated. You got lost under all of the madness of this city, and now you're moving home, and you feel like you're moving backwards."

I started to cry.

"Abigail had to remind David that he defeated Goliath because of his FAITH. Because he had faith, God was able to empower him to do impossible things."

I sat there in the back and cried my head off.

It all made sense.

When I went to see my grandparents in April, I felt like I was clinging onto a little thread of hope so desperately, and less than two months later, I'm back on the L.A. battlefield, feeling completely empty and defeated, but also desperately wanting to cling to a dream that is clearly ending and SUPPOSED to end.

Maybe it takes having a crap job and a church full of phony rich people and no real friends and a sense of defeat to surrender.

It's like at home, I feel like people really care. People see my value. In L.A., I forget about that stuff. I always feel lost in the shuffle and alone. I only have one friend that I'm sad to leave.

A few days ago, I worked with a very well renown surgeon that I thought was going to be a big a-hole. He got in my boss' face and said, "You know, you have a really bad habit of asking me questions and answering them for me. It's incredibly rude. I'm losing a lot of money by being in your office today, and it'd be great if you would just act like a professional and stop wasting my time. So, how's it going to be? Are you going to act like a professional and let me answer questions after you ask them, or are you going to continue to be rude and waste my time?" and I sort of wanted to jump out of my chair and smack his butt like a pro athlete after a victorious win. Of course, I just sat there, smiling to myself.

Anyway, I worked with the guy all day, and right before the hard-ass surgeon left the office, he told my boss, "Give Rachel a raise. She's great. I'm serious." For the first time in forever, I remembered my value at work. He saw that I was worth something. I don't want to make my self esteem dependent on other people, but sometimes you forget that you have any value when people are always telling you how much you do wrong and never tell you what you do right.

My time here is drawing to a close, and there's a sadness and excitement in my heart that are wrestling around like there's no solid ground to stand on.

I went to the bar in Hollywood on Saturday where they filmed "Swingers." On Sunday, I watched a movie that was filmed down the street from my house. I always get a little bit excited knowing that this is "my town." But at the same time, L.A. isn't my town at all. I don't have a town at all. I kind of feel like a hermit crab who keeps packing up his house on his back and trying to find a place to call home. Maybe that doesn't exist. But I'm going to keep on looking.