a love letter to: the city that let me become

on soft goodbyes and the spirit of dreaming on

Dear Los Angeles,

I’ve been trying to find the words for weeks now. What do you say to a city that let you dream out loud? That held you in your loneliest moments and your loudest joys? That watched you fall in love with your life - in fragments, in rituals, in motion?

I first moved here in 2021, with nothing but big dreams and no roots or people I could call mine. I didn’t know the roads, the rhythm, or where I’d find myself after the dust settled. I just knew I had to be here.

And before I realized, you felt like home. Not all at once, but slowly - in the way sunlight dripped through palm trees on morning drives, in the unexpected laughter of new friends who became family, in the quiet days spent writing in coffee shops where no one knew my name, but I felt known anyways.

You’ve always had a devilishly strange pull on me. No matter how messy or sprawling or overwhelming you can be, I never want to be too far away. There’s a soul to this city - a raw, pulsing, electric current that says: try again, keep going, make the thing, say the thing, do the thing, trust yourself, follow the dream.

In you, I learned how to be okay alone.

Going to sushi bars alone with my Kindle in my hand.

Sitting by myself with my arms hugging my knees in a movie theatre and thinking about nothing but the cinema.

Writing for hours at a coffee shop while listening to conversations of strangers and watching the sun move across the room.

Making Baldwin Hills feel like my extended backyard I could take mid-day walks in, and feel like the mountain was mine.

You taught me that when I’m full of my own light, the right people find me. And you sent them - brilliant, wild, curious people who challenged me, supported me, surprised me. People who invited me to fringe shows in black box theaters, accompanied me on annual universal horror nights, invited me on nights out I didn’t know I needed, and let me into their homes and hearts and worlds.

When I first moved to LA in 2021, it was a year of taking leaps and trust falls, and following my heart into the unknown, trusting that it would all be okay. I would leave after a year, and kept making frequent visits back, before moving back in 2024.

And this last chapter was supposed to be all about building - planting roots, calling this familiar place now home with intention, and learning what it means to feel steady in motion.

I really thought this time, the move would be permanent. That I would stay here for good, build my whole life here. I began to go to open houses to even see if there was a starter home I could move into later this year and plant myself into the city even deeper, as I daydreamed about my own personal future with a family, community, and a white picket fence.

But, within a few months of moving to LA, the city did what it always magically did for me - asked me to look at the bigger picture, to ask myself what I really want, to trust in myself, to dream bigger, and to keep dreaming on.

And mid-last year, I started to do just that. I trusted my intuition, my desires, and my deepest dreams. I landed on really wanting to go to the right grad school in pursuit of my larger ambitions, even if it meant leaving the city. I just had to listen to my inner voice.

Fast forward to now, I’ve moved away once more - but with the spirit of the city stitched into me. While I may not live in LA right now, I know part of me never really left.

I still carry the scent and sounds of the quainter side of washington blvd, a street I could never seem to leave despite my moves in and out of the city.

I still keep my AMC pass.

I still look at the pink and purple sunsets when memory flashes of the LA skyline appear amidst it.

I still (and forever will) hold so closely the love for independent art and cinema that LA cherishes.

I still walk into cute, local coffee shops in town and take silent notes, eagerly waiting the day I build one myself in LA.

LA, thank you for being the place where I grew into my own skin. Thank you for letting me find out what it means to choose myself, even when it hurts or can be deeply uncomfortable. Thank you for giving me the sweet confidence that new places and people can feel like home if you let it. Thank you for being a city where people dare to dream, where everyone’s working on something, building something, chasing something - and it doesn’t matter if its messy: it just matters that it’s yours.

I’ll always come back to you, I never can stay away for long.

To my sweet, sweet LA friends - please know that you are always mine and to always reach out; you’re part of the home I found here. But also: soak up the sunshine, take the long way home when the light hits just right (and traffic is in your favor), explore every coffee shop the city has to offer, root for your local playhouse and go to their shows, catch the sunset when you can, and let it remind you that this city holds a kind of magic that quietly tells you - you can do everything you dream of.

And one last time, to LA - thank you for giving me so much to love, so much to miss, and so much to return to.

With all my love and a heart forever tethered to this city,

sow :)