One time last year on a March or April night I got into an argument with mom (Don’t remember why) and just ran from home and walked for a long time outside.
I get tired pretty easily so when I out walking I often spent some time sitting down on a nearby bench and just browsed the internet on my phone until I felt like walking again. Eventually during my walking got some texts from my mother apologizing about arguing with me and begging that I come back home.
Silly mother, I was already going home.
It was taking a while though, hours and hours of walking far distances to try to go back to my home in North Hollywood. A truly wonderful neighborhood indeed. I have so much memories there and I just love the whole aesthetic of the suburban Cu-de-Sacs and the 50 million supermarkets and convenience and liquor stores there (Not counting any of the thousands of 7-11’s). The gentrification was lame and pretty phony though.
Annie took me on a ride in her car once when I was 9-11 years old just to teach me about the concept as she drove around North Hollywood going to specific gentrified locations to rant about them. It was pretty informative.
So anyways, as I finally made it NoHo I walked all the way to the Chandler bike path by the Iliad bookstore in Cahuenga Boulevard and I walked all the way from the bike path until I found the black metal fence with a huge metal gap on it to my left which leads to the cul-de-sac where home is.
Immediately when I went through the gate I walked to the sidewalk on my right which was across from my home which was a single story triplex. When I saw it just stood where I was and did not go inside. I couldn’t. I wanted to, I really did.
But it wasn’t my house anymore. I moved to Van Nuys 2-3 months ago and walked all this way to this location for nothing of any practical value. I didn’t really care about practicality at moment though, seeing as I walked for hours and hours at night in the cold.
I just wanted my life back. I wanted to be whole again and to feel all of the emotions that humans experience. I couldn’t back then. I felt like I was dead back then. I thought if I went back to the place where I “died”, I could “come back to life” and be whole again. That’s why I came here…
My plan didn’t work. I did not become whole again and just stayed the way that I was. But I just kept staring at the triplex across the street. And then I awoke. Then, I wasn’t alive, but awake. I suddenly felt like I was looking outside of my body. It suddenly felt like that “I” wasn’t real, that my personality as seen by others is a fabrication. Just a mask.
I felt that there was no real me. I felt a deep emptiness and lack of self. I went about life just “floating” in the pool that is life, just letting the tide move me wherever it wanted me to go with me feeling hardly anything along the way.
When I “awoke”, I came to terms with these truths and understood myself better. I was now content to leave this place and go back home.
I spent some time after that just standing were I was but eventually I called my dad and told him to meet in a parking lot down the street that has a Little Caesars and a 7-11 on that same block.