It was a thirty-six hour drive

When I left the west coast four months ago, I was blindly aiming for peace, hoping that in an old, familiar place, I would find it. In my last few days, I watched my apartment break down - fragments acquired over an entire decade quickly transitioned from my treasured belongings to trash in the dumpster.

It only hurt a little.

I said goodbye to my surrogate mother, my brothers and sisters, the ones who fed me, the ones who taught me to be better, the ones who loved me so selflessly. I drove away, staring emotionlessly into taillights on the 405 South, certain that I was beginning my sequal - an even grander continuation of the previous story.

I would be thousands of miles away, but everything would be the same.

Behind me, I was leaving debt and baggage. Behind me, would remain loneliness. Behind me, in the dumpster with all my favorite things, would be anxiety and negative relationships with men and that therapist who didn't know what she was talking about.

I wouldn't really forget anything valuable back there.

But it didn't just hurt a little, and things are not the same. Because when I went back to California last week, I saw myself - I remembered who I left behind, and I saw her value.

This old, familiar place is the one I am always trying to rid myself of. There is so much darkness, there the weight of sad, hopeless people, convening in a common place.

This is not a place where people intentionally come to die; but it is a place where people come and subsequently want to die.

Thirty six hours after I left the west coast, I realized I was trading mild pain for something excruciating.

This is a place where the paradmedics carried her outside on a stretcher after her suicide attempt, the ambulance lights flooding the neighborhood while her husband stood by and did nothing. This is a place where heavy amounts of religion and spirituality are used to justify crime. This is a place they can't afford but steal from their friends and children just to have. This is a place where no one is safe, where no one is well, where no one finds peace.

This is the place I once purposely left; and now it is the place I have chosen.