In the fall of 2019, my husband sat me down in our Hudson Valley kitchen, which overlooked our old birch. “I think I need to move back to Los Angeles,” he said.
I had just turned 50, and we’d been married for one year. I looked at him as if he’d suggested Mars.
“I know,” he said. “But I don’t think there’s enough work here.”
He had just finished directing a documentary. He wanted to return to the city where he had lived and worked in the industry for 17 years to see if he could drum up old connections for new work.
Was this a test? I remained silent while my mind reeled.
L.A. was never a place in which I imagined myself thriving. I first moved there after college to pursue acting and live with my mogul-wannabe boyfriend. We broke up within a month, and my life became a California cliche: I joined a cult-like spiritual practice with a glamorous Indian guru.
Although I found chanting and meditation to be very healing, after a year the relentless sunshine grated on my depressive nature and I moved back to my hometown of New York City, where I tried to hide my California woo-woo beneath a wardrobe of black.
When I’d return to L.A. to visit, my insecurities lined up like the palm trees on Hollywood Boulevard. After two days, I’d start eyeing my mushy backside with disdain in restaurant windows. My thick, curly hair made me temperature hot, while everyone around me was slim, tanned and sexy hot. I’d replay the time an agent told me to come back after I’d lost 15 pounds and how my troupe of college friends all got industry jobs and appeared to be thriving in the Hollywood ethos that felt so empty to me.
Moving back to L.A. as a middle-aged married woman felt like reconnecting with an ex with whom things ended badly. Had enough time passed that it could work? Or would all of our “issues” with each other return?
Back in my kitchen, my eyes fixated on the birch, its yellow-brown leaves clinging to its large, twisted frame. Its unique beauty drew me to the house that I’d bought years before my husband and I met. The pros and cons of life in our rural town flashed before me: my hard-won friends, the long, frigid winters, the affordability and the reliable rhythms of a seasonal life. I had lived most of my time here as a single person. Now I was a middle-aged part of a pair. Maybe it was time to compromise.
“OK,” I said, surprising myself. “It will be our adventure.”
We decided to give it six months. My writing and consulting work was portable, and there was something right about the idea of my husband and me creating a new life together. Although he is nine years my elder, his infectious, childlike enthusiasm about making dreams come true was rubbing off on me. We just didn’t count on the world shutting down a month after we moved in the winter of 2020.
At first, L.A. was a terrific place for the shutdown, because we could walk each day in the beautiful sunshine, which I no longer minded one bit, to a stunning view of the coast. Our weekly trips to the grocery store included a traffic-free drive up PCH to a less-crowded supermarket, the ocean sparkling on our left. As my East Coast friends complained in Zoom squares about the cold, we got to hike and take lunch breaks on the Malibu cliffs. Soon we noticed Angelenos gathering with their friends in their backyards for cookouts.
Still, it was a pandemic. Even with the daily walks, my body rebelled from so much sitting. My hips froze, and I limped around our small apartment like Al Pacino playing Richard the III. Our dog, raised in a country house, barked like a banshee at every door closing in the apartment complex, driving us and our neighbors insane. Then, my husband’s mother died alone in a nursing home on the other side of the country. Grief hung over our lives like a marine layer obscuring the view of Catalina. I entered menopause, and my new brain fog only added to the haze. Some adventure.
We found new ways to cope. We bought used bikes on Facebook Marketplace and started biking everywhere. One day, as I arrived breathless at the top of a Mar Vista crest, I saw the ocean behind me and the snow-capped mountains in the distance. The view managed to take whatever breath I had left away. Despite the doom, I felt elated.
In late summer, we drove back east to check on our family and house, which had been rented by some city folk. But we no longer fit. The Hudson Valley charm was dampened by the sensation of wading through 95-degree humid soup. The clothes and books in our old garage didn’t feel like ours anymore, and I felt a strange desire to just give them away. The light and rhythms of L.A. had seduced me.
When we returned, things started to fall into place. We got vaccines. We met in the courtyard with neighbors — the ones who didn’t hate our dog. We figured out how to sell our property back east and finance one in L.A. (for our dog). We made great friends with our new neighbors, one of whom is an actor and not in the least bit flaky. And then, at the farmers market, a friendly vendor was talking to another regular about their aches and pains.
“She’s too young to understand,” he interrupted himself to nod at me. “You’ve got years to go before you reach this point.”
I was 54. It appeared the “coastal ex” and I were indeed having a rapprochement.
These days, I notice fuchsia bursts of bougainvillea instead of my mushy backside. But L.A. has also brought disappointment, financial hardship and the necessity to face hard truths. DOGE (or the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency) slashed the budgets of organizations I work with in my consulting business. And because of COVID-19 and changes in the industry, my husband, the one gung ho about moving back, ended up being the one to struggle. He is in the midst of a brave and grueling career pivot.
It is still our adventure. In midlife, with the right partner and the self-acceptance that getting older brings, I no longer feel the city is stacked against me. We hold on to each other in this complex phase of life and in this vibrant, complex town. And when things feel hopeless, we step outside our door and watch the golden light stream through our old California elm.
The author is a writer and leadership consultant with bylines in HuffPost, Oldster, Longreads, Brevity and more. Her debut memoir, “This Incredible Longing: Finding My Self in a Near-Cult Experience,” will be published by Heliotrope Books in February.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
