Hard Realizations

Coming back to Los Angeles has been amazing. I drove past my condo (we still own it so I refuse to refer to it in past tense) and couldn't fathom not going in. Just simply to smell it... it smelled so good!

I have seen my best friends and they've squeezed my knees when I express my love for them and my grief at not being able to do the very thing we're doing more often.

I have seen and smelled the Southern California air, thick with smog and texture.... I have coveted and ached and smiled and I have been very, very glad.

Basically, it's just another day of life being... life!

Anthony mentioned today that he was regretful that I had to experience discomfort in this transitional time and I said, "I am not! This is life: if it were always joyful and never made us grow we'd be spineless lumps without compassion and we'd never get any bigger, never be capable of more love..." He agreed but still wanted me to feel peace about it all.

The truth is that the peace may come tomorrow or it may come two years from now.

It took me a very long time to love Los Angeles, and quite frankly I am touched by all of the places I have given my years to:

 

I still think of New York City with yearning and lust.

I grow wistful for Westerville, Ohio.

I pine secretly for Pittsburgh. 

Last night I played at a venue I have long longed to experience not as a girl "with the band" but as a girl IN the band, and I finally got my wish.

It was delicious and amazing and inspiring in every way: I am renewed by it!!

I was compelled to give of myself in a way I don't know I've ever felt before onstage... 

Something interesting about Los Angeles: my heart palpitations began happening again almost immediately upon my return... no matter how much I may love this place we are simply not the right fit right now: the hardest realization of all is that adventure means 

change:

the very thing most of us fight.

So I let the sobs come and go.

The memories rise up in perfection and I let them be there, fully aware that it wasn't really so, that this place hurt as much as it helped, just as anything does.

Life is a delicious bittersweet soup, impossible to resist and sometimes unable to be swallowed without a wince.

What a miracle that we all get to be in this together.