The Hardest Goodbyes
Leaving Los Angeles, finally but not forever.
Apologies for going radio silent last week. I said when I started this newsletter that I would post as regularly as I could, which has resulted in a somewhat weekly post. Last week, however, I was finishing my acting class and making big decisions, my mind was elsewhere.
Last Friday was the last day of my third method acting intensive, and it really has me confronting feelings around ultimacy. This was my last acting class that I can take for a while, and I probably won’t see a lot of these people that I’ve come to love, for at least the next year. This is because I have finally bit the bullet, and decided to move back to New York.
Everything is happening so fast. I only came to this decision last Sunday, as the result of a magic mushroom trip on a ranch in Colorado, that’s a story for later in this week’s post. The reason I’m moving is because my cat has a UTI, seriously. I guess that was really just the straw that broke the camels back, but my cat has a stress induced urinary tract infection, for the second time in his life, caused by my frequent traveling, often leaving him in the care of near strangers. I am a bad cat mom, but no longer!
You see, two times a year at least, I have to travel for fashion week, often for a month or longer at a time. Why don’t I just bring my cat? Well, often I’m couch surfing through fashion cities (more so recently being stuck in New York for forever), and putting Clementine on a plane, and changing his habitat for various weeks at a time, upsets him too. All of this, on top of also having to find places to stay that allow pets, versus crashing with a friend. Soon, we will have a home of our own back east! No more leaving Clementine for so long, ever again. Problem solved.
Deciding to kiss my current life goodbye, and start anew back in New York, all while under Mercury’s retrograde, has come without ease. I think I’ve cried every day since last Sunday. Aside from Clementine’s urinary troubles, the decision is also coming from a place of not wanting my career to feel over. I wrote of moving to Los Angeles being career suicide for fashion models, and I was right. I want to work around makers: designers, creative directors, stylists, hair stylists, makeup artists… and the ones I want to work with are all based in fashion cities, which LA is not quite one of. Do you know how many European fashion clients want to fly a model in from Los Angeles? If you guessed none, you’re correct! Especially when you have girls like Alex and Colin already in New York, and the Whitley twins in Paris.
The Hollywood dream is for actors, musicians, and is slowly opening up to visual artists. It is not, however, for fashion models. Unless you’re only in it for the money, and you dream of Brazilian butt lifts and e-commerce bookings with SheIn, don’t move to Hollywood to become a model. My almost four years here had me beginning to accept the idea of retiring from the only career I’ve ever had, at the ripe age of 25, and I look 15! All because I could work two days a month and skate by financially, mainly living off of television commercials I shot over a year ago.
Every day here, I wake up and question my purpose. Too many goals, with too much freedom and too little guidance, have driven me to feel directionless and frustrated. The only place I’ve found solace has been in acting class. Of course, the only other thing that brings me joy is developing myself toward another completely unstable career! Yippee!
Luckily, my acting classes are taught in New York as well, by a teacher I studied with in May of this year. He isn’t Meghan McGarry, and it will be a whole new community of very different actors, but I’m glad my studies of this work won’t end with my move. They’ll just be put on pause while I recoup my moving costs! So i’m moving for my career, my cat, and because I can have it all, in the pursuit of more than one dream at a time.
I do need to clarify that I don’t hate LA, I actually love it! Otherwise, I wouldn’t have stayed here for so the better part of four years, nor would I feel so emotional about leaving. My opinion is that California is the most beautiful state in America. I love being able to cry in my car and I despise having to cry on the subway! Nowhere but California can I hike in the mountains, drive down to the beach, be cultured in the city, then go out to dinner in some metropolitan restaurant with chic, city slicker friends all in one day. In New York, I take the F train to Coney Island, or two buses to Fort Tilden beach. My hike is carrying suitcases or groceries home, and up the steps of my walk-up. God, it’s so hard to be an icon of the LGBTQIA+ Coastal Elite.
I will miss the California beauty when I’m in New York. But more than that, I will miss my parents. I’ve grown so much closer to them these past couple years, but it’s only been one year that they’ve lived in the same state as me again, and here I go leaving. It’s the best feeling in the world to love, and be loved by your parent. I feel so lucky that I have two, and they’re together, and we share more love than I can even put into words. I adore being able to call them and say “I miss you!” only to hop into my car to drive up for the weekend, having this ability is what I will probably miss most. I don’t mind the hours long journey, as the views on the drive look like Windows screen savers from the early 2000’s. I put on old playlists and let my mind digest, it’s my time to think. I guess I’ll have that while looking at the back of seat 23C, raw-dogging my flights to Central California for the next year.
I don’t know how long I'll stay in New York. The idea is easiest to swallow when I tell myself it’s only a year. “Ella’s big year abroad back in New York City!” Things are so much easier to handle when they’re seen as temporary, at least for me. I’ll go to New York for the year, work as hard as I possibly can, save as much money as I possibly can, and reassess this situation twelve months from now. Each day, I am trying my best to live in the present, and take on each obstacle one at a time as they come at me.
The first obstacle was just making the decision to move. The forever pull between New York and Los Angeles has plagued me for the better part of three years. It wasn’t until things came to a head this past Sunday, tripping on magic mushrooms at a ranch in Durango, Colorado, that I felt capable of deciding between the two. Here’s a tip for my one-hundred readers: don’t take magic mushrooms on a family vacation. They will have you confronting thoughts and feelings you’ve withheld from yourself for years, and having this happen to you whilst surrounded by distant family members can be really, very scary!
Some backstory: my cousin whom I hadn’t seen since I was a junior in high school, has had a very successful past couple of years, and often flies his parents (my aunt and uncle) out from California to Colorado on his private jet subscription service (think Uber for PJs). This time around, I was the lucky family member who got to tag along for the adventure, and my dad joined as well. It was our first time ever flying non-commercial and I would have to say that although at times kind of scary, it was the highlight of my trip.
Most of our time in Colorado was spent with my cousin’s son who is nine. Imagine what it must be like to be 9, with no siblings, extremely cultured and well traveled, while also somewhat sheltered by parents who travel only by way of private jet, and you live in the Mountains in Colorado. That’s my little cousin. He’s quite fabulous, and I’m a little jealous of him. I think he’s obsessed with me though, which I love, because he wanted to spend every minute of every day together. This was completely fine by me, until my dad and I decided to take the magic mushrooms my cousin gave us, thinking we would have a day to ourselves.
My father and I don’t trip on psychedelics together often, in fact, we never had before last Sunday. However, there’s always a first time for everything. I was ready to delve into nature and feel one with the earth, and experience a little solitude to organize my ideas. However, about fifteen minutes after eating the infused chocolate bar, my aunt informed us that my uncle would be taking the boys and I to a ranch for the day to pick up meat they had bought: me, my uncle, my dad and my little cousin. We were supposed to take him with us, and keep him entertained. I quickly informed my aunt of what my dad and I had done and she responded “oh, too bad that’s not my problem.”
So now, we were set to babysit for the day, high on mushrooms. The car ride to the ranch was quiet. My dad and I sat in the backseat and exchanged glances as the mushrooms started to kick in. By the time we were at the ranch, all I wanted was to be alone. Pacing around in the dirt waiting for the butcher, I got a string of texts from my roommate. My cat had peed and pooped outside his litter box, and was vomiting around the apartment. Tripping, I started to panic. My roommate hates me, I have to get home, I’m a horrible parent, I need to move. The last one hit extra hard. I needed to move. I started to cry thinking about it. I needed to move but do I even want to stay in LA?
Before this mess, I was already planning a big lifestyle change, to find a home base in New York, but keep my LA apartment, and be bicoastal. But as everything came to a head under the affects of the shrooms, it became clear to me that I had to decide. I’ve been living beyond my means in California, how do I expect to stay afloat with two residences and the travel costs going back and forth? Knowing most of my time away from home was for work, spent in New York, it felt abundantly clear that I should base myself there, at least for a year.
Within days, I was applying to apartments in Brooklyn that friends had toured in person, and taking zoom interviews with prospective landlords. My parents were informed of my big news, and they were heavy-hearted, but supportive. Slowly, I’ve started telling my friends and neighbors. I think the best response I’ve gotten came from my friend Morgan who said she and her dachshund Seymour will now have to visit New York more. Thank you for your positivity, Morgan.
So now, I’m in California prepping for yet another cross-country move. I’m planning on doing a smaller, preliminary move with suitcases during fashion week, as the apartment’s been secured and I have to go to New York in about a week for work. Then, I’ll come back to LA and “do my big one” in terms of getting everything out of this apartment, and getting myself, my cat, and my things all over to NYC.
My initial move to Los Angeles was actually supposed to be temporary also, so I’m eager to see how this will all play out. That being said, California has become home to me and my family over the last four years. This place has shaped my womanhood and adulthood, and I will most certainly be coming back. I picture myself settling down and starting a family of my own here. New York is for right now, it’s for me in my twenties. It’s for becoming a mess, and cleaning yourself back up again. California is forever.