I grew up in early 2000s Los Angeles, which is to say I grew up believing it was the center of the universe.
Not metaphorically — literally. Everything sparkly seemed to happen there: movies, fame, ambition, reinvention. Even failure felt cinematic.
For over a decade, I assumed this was the place where people moved to “make it.” I left at 15 for boarding school, then college, but LA always felt like the center of gravity. I moved back at 22 to pursue a creative life.
I didn’t leave again until I was 34. This time, though, my perspective had completely shifted, and I felt like I was out of the city for good.
I wasn’t exactly thriving in LA, but I felt like I couldn’t leave
To be frank, I was a well-disguised wreck when I lived in Los Angeles.
My mental health was at an all-time low, and in LA, it feels like there’s little time or room for depression. We’re all too busy optimizing — our bodies, our careers, our crystal collections.
My life had slowly compressed around financial, professional, and emotional survival. Between the traffic, the (perceived) competition, and the lack of affordability, it just became normal to feel stretched thin, slightly behind, and vaguely anxious all the time.
I thought that was the cost of wanting something grander for yourself.
Beyond that, I stayed in the city because of the myth that if you want a writing career, you must be here or in NYC. Proximity equals possibility, and if you’re not in either place, you’re somehow less serious.
There’s probably some truth to this, given all the opportunities in this field in both cities. However, I started to wonder what would happen if it wasn’t in LA and my creativity didn’t have to orbit film and TV.
What if there was an entirely different version of this job I hadn’t even considered because I’d been stuck inside the same bubble, mistaking it for the whole world?
Career aside, fear was keeping me in LA.
There’s a popular phrase, “wherever you go, there you are,” and for a long time, I treated it like a warning. Like, sure, you can leave, but you’ll just be the same person in a different ZIP code.
I thought, what if I uproot my entire life and find out I’m still the same person? Still anxious, still stuck, still vaguely dissatisfied, just… elsewhere. A new skyline, same internal monologue. A different apartment, same girl lying in bed scrolling.
It was easier, in a way, to stay and tell myself the problem was external and that LA was hard, that my industry was brutal, that the cost of living was suffocating. All of which were true.
However, staying meant I didn’t have to test the more uncomfortable theory: that maybe the problem wasn’t just the city.
Eventually, my finances and an internal shift pushed me to move to Portland
I finally felt pushed to leave Los Angeles at 34. I realized living here wasn’t just expensive for me; it had become absurd, to the point that every outing or social event felt like a math problem.
The city itself felt different, too. After the pandemic, the fires, and multiple industry strikes that left the entertainment business decentralized, LA didn’t feel like the place I had loved. I realized I wasn’t staying for what it was — I was staying for what it had been.
After a string of genuinely wild events in my life that occurred back-to-back and culminated in my having to quickly leave my apartment, it felt like the universe was making itself very clear: something had to change.
I started to think a move might act as a kind of defibrillator. Not a fix, exactly, but a shock to the system. So in 2025, I left for Portland, Oregon.
My family had relocated there during the pandemic, so while I finished writing my first novel, I figured, why not? I could spend some time focusing on other parts of my life: being an aunt, getting into nature, joining a polycule.
Almost immediately, something shifted. It wasn’t grand; there’s no movie montage — just a subtle but steady expansion of my life.
I walked more and noticed flowers, foliage, and moss. Though I wouldn’t go so far as to say I enjoy the rain, it felt nice to live in a neighborhood that gets weekly baths. There’s something clarifying about seasons, about change you can’t control.
I finished my novel. I worked on my mental health. My days felt fuller in a quieter way: less about managing traffic and breathing smog, more about actually living. And even when I rotted in bed, at least I was doing so in a room half the rent.
Moving away from Los Angeles helped me realize I didn’t need it after all
I didn’t move to Portland and suddenly become a different person. I still wake up with the same brain, the same tendencies, the same capacity to spiral, avoid, and overthink.
Leaving LA didn’t fix me; it just gave me more room. Literally, my square footage doubled — but I also had space to think without the constant low-grade panic of how much everything costs.
I had room to write without feeling like I should be doing something more “important” and to have a day that isn’t entirely dictated by road rage, networking, or proximity to ambition. I finally had room to be a person outside of the version of myself I had been performing for over a decade.
Los Angeles isn’t the center of the universe. It’s just a city. A compelling one, a complicated one, but not the only place a big life can happen.
And now that I know that, I don’t think I could go back.
Read the full article here
