outdoor actress

What's it called when you move to a new part of town and spend an hour getting ready just to go to the local restaurant by yourself? FantasyGliding? Extreme Performance Mode? New Neighborhood Galavant Pro?

Or would you call it Carrie Bradshaw wanna be behavior?

I intended to come here and be discovered, either by an opportunity or a man (a part of me always prefers the chances of meeting a man to meeting my destiny - but that's a whole separate conversation we'll have to put a pin in for later). Instead, I'm watching people walk back and forth in front of me, hardly the focal point of anyone's bemusement. When will I realize that attention seeking really doesn't age well? And when will I realize that the only way to start actually caring about myself is by being alone.

Maybe I came here to finally have a think. Where I could slow down and catalogue everything that has happened since the start of the pandemic. Years have gone buy and I still -- wait -- what the fuck am I even talking about, I'm crossfaded at a restaurant i've never been to ordering drinks just to feel like I exist too. It's not that deep. But it is. And I was right before, a lot has changed.

I think it boils down to the fact that I'm finally in a new season. Operative word being NEW. But finally - something else. The power of something else. It's almost better than something new, especially when you're really desperate.

When you surround yourself with the same four walls for five years, things get more than burry. They get conditioned. You walk into the bathroom with eyes closed and before you know it, the same thing is happening all over your entire life. Awake but painfully Asleep. Then you start to forget when things really happened, and who you even are. But entering Something Else introduces you to a whole new lens on life. Puns are cool, get over it.

Changing where I live naturally comes with changing who I am. After all, the suburbs in LA are more character defining than the trauma we all endured as children. Moving means I get to be someone entirely different again. Thank God.

Maybe I can finally change in a big away. Move away from my old self just as much physically as mentally. Maybe this time I won't be one of those people who fantasizes about being seen by everyone else. I don't want to be an audience member to my own life anymore. I don't want to leave the house just to perform for other people. No one wants to wait for the main character to make a fucking decision- and that's all I ever do. All I do is wonder about the future, but maybe moving here means I can finally live in the present. If I could just stop wondering how things were going to happen, maybe they finally would. If I could just stop escaping where I am because I feel more comfortable in my self-pity. Maybe then I could actually know myself.

So here I am, somewhere else entirely. A little drunk, a little high, $70 poorer, finally auditing so I know what to bring with me, and what to leave behind.