maybe this is enough

Someday you’ll live in a tiny apartment on a side road in Culver, in a city lined with palm trees and the unbearable heat of both the sky and the ambition of the people who live beneath it, and you’ll be happy.

Welcome to Los Angeles, the sign at LAX screamed when you boarded off your plane eight years ago from a city in Southeast Asia that, while populous, many have never heard of. You’re from Chicago? Oh, Jakarta. Well, welcome to Los Angeles, the stranger at the party shouts over the music in a crowded dorm room at a college that, technically speaking, was not in Los Angeles at all. Welcome to Los Angeles, you whisper-scream to yourself when you finally get your own apartment four years later, smack-dab in the middle of Downtown Los Angeles - Skid Row, to be exact (oops).

But it isn’t until seven years after you first set foot in this blistering city of dreams - forgotten, chased, attained, and lost - that you settle into your own dream; you walk into that tiny apartment off the side road in Culver, with the palm trees and the heat and the dreams you still carry - alive but redefined, and you think, welcome home.

In this home, you have many things. A fridge filled with Asian food that reminds you of your first home, one ten thousand miles away: jars of kimchi, pho noodles, leftovers of your mom’s egg drop noodle soup lovingly waiting for you - a home if not in person, then in culinary spirit. A closet full of clothes that finally feel like home too, their colors matching your instincts instead of the versions of yourself you once tried on for other people and other cities. But most of all, in this tiny, wonderful home, you have someone you love. And he’s right there, on the couch, screaming for the Patriots to win, in the adorable pajamas you bought for him in Japan, a big smile on his face.

Home wasn’t a city, and it certainly was never a dream, and sometimes it can be yourself, but at its best, it’s also another person.

And perhaps this is the truest thing I can say: what I once wanted has softened not because I settled, but because I have finally arrived. Coming home to him - to his body, his humor, his care - is not the absence of ambition, but maybe the first step toward its fulfillment.

Because the life I feared would feel small now feels vast in its steadiness. He steadies me with his hands and his eyes and his gentle instinctive thoughtfulness, the kind that makes me feel undeserving of him and yet deserving of everything the world has to offer all at the same time.

Because even on my worst days, I have someone to fold myself into, a chest whose heartbeat thuds steady against my cheek, a rhythm my heart instinctively tries to match, as if getting close enough could blur the lines between where I end and he begins.

Because when we lie in the dark with a sunset lamp washing our faces in warmth at 3 a.m. and he says something stupid that sends me spiraling into laughter, the only thought looping in my head is you’re my best friend you’re my best friend you’re my best friend. In those moments, I want to say it out loud, I want to grab his face and whisper it hot against his mouth, but those words don’t hold the love I need them to, and neither do those three little words that we say again and again, thoughtfully, thoughtlessly, in some of our best moments, and in some of our worst.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

We text it as we venture off to work in the mornings. We scream it before a but and another stupid argument. We whisper it under the stars in Mammoth, zipped warm and alive in our little tent, these words a shelter that protects us tenderly against the wind of the world. But it doesn’t feel like enough, because what I really want to say is:

You are my favorite place to call home, and sometimes I want your happiness more than I want mine, and sometimes when I curl into your chest, a small part of me wants to stay there forever, letting your heartbeat echo through me for the rest of mortal time.

They tell me that our lives will flash before our eyes before we know it. And so someday when mine does, I hope it replays our life like a highlight reel: laughing hysterically in a sleeping bag in the cold woods of Northern California, the countless sleepless nights in Venice, the ocean breeze drifting through the open crack of your window, the fights, the tears, and every version of us we once struggled to outgrow. I want all of it and more, I want all the memories that still lie ahead of us waiting to be discovered. Will you embark on this wonderful journey with me? Will you come with me into whatever this life turns out to be?

Because if it’s by your side, maybe I’m finally okay with what I once thought was an ordinary life. Maybe everything I used to want has softened under the weight of a more pressing want: to spend my days with you cooking dinners, watching movies, collecting trinkets, and lining our shelves with proof of the life we are building piece by piece. And maybe these desires are the worst of me, but I’m starting to think they might be the best.

Yes, these dreams might just be enough for this lifetime. It has been more than enough to come home to you and your love every day.

xo,

lost in los angeles

Share

If you’ve been reading along and want to support what I’m building here, buying me a coffee is a wonderful way to do it ☕️

I can be found on Instagram or on my second Substack publication, Not Actually Your Therapist.