I tried, really I tried to pull away from you, Los Angeles… Just like at 15 when I would scream at my parents from a place deep and raw “I HATE YOU! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ME!” before storming away and slamming the door. (The evidence is still there, if you look carefully around the door frame to my childhood — you can see those eggshell cracks, a history of my ANGST! My HEART! My SELF!
It was like that, now, Los Angeles. The way I left four years ago, embarrassed and abrupt — “It’s just an experiment, really. It’ll only be a year…” but then things changed and I changed and there I was on the other side of the world in the middle of that change, head over heels with the chaos and my choice to be there, in a country where we can create the story…
And then that fierce need to wear my identity like steel armor to block my heart from the motherland, from you, Los Angeles.
(“I HATE YOU! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ME!”)
(Look carefully around that decision to become Israeli, and you can see the eggshell cracks again.)
But I’m here again, Los Angeles… Just as I came back to my parents again, a little shredded around the edges, with a mouth reshaped by words I could never take back, but still me — only different. Harder in some places, softer in others. But still the me that I became when I broke away.
And I think that’s why it’s taken me so long to come back to you — because just as I needed to break away from my parents in order to become who I became, I needed to break away from you to be who I’m becoming… This work in progress.
