razor sharp thunderstorms

The Day I Came to LA the thunderstorms were so ferocious our plane was grounded. Our checked baggage was returned to us after eleven hours of standing by for the opportunity to take off. We were instructed to come back the following day in hopes of the unG-dly weather subsiding. My waterlogged suitcases weighed a ton. Everything inside was drenched and funky. I spent the next eleven hours doing laundry and drying out the suitcases. Then I repacked, reboarded and took off for LA. Not once did I question whether I was being given the most blatant omen known to man – torrential downpour. Maybe LA was not the place for me but I was two months past my eighteenth birthday and G-d himself couldn’t stop me. An uneven mix of headstrong, stubborn and razor sharp made me a danger to mostly myself. But I was off and that was that.

Just a year before, at seventeen, I had found myself crying all the time – if I had a second ‘off’ or a second of quiet I broke down into unrelenting vicious tears. I was so scared I sought therapy. I told my mother, ‘I don’t want you to worry but I’m crying all the time and I don’t know why.’ My therapist needed exactly one session to sum it up, she said I’d devised the healthiest coping mechanism known to man; if I threw myself into my work, my school and every extracurricular activity known to man then I could avoid how I was feeling about my Mom’s cancer. I could go wig shopping with her and make her smile, saving my tears for a private moment. I could be strong for her, for my siblings and for myself. And when I was done pretending to be strong, usually around 2am after putting my siblings to sleep and finishing mounds of work, I would break down. I would play music loud enough to mask my sound but not loud enough to wake my innocent siblings. In a split second I would be down on the floor heaving and balling irrationally, intermittently. I would take a marker to my body and write down everything that was wrong. Fill my legs with words of pain, the unfair responsibilities I was baring, the emptiness I was feeling and the desperation of leaving. A quick, quiet bath would wash away the words and I would sleep a few short hours before beginning the cycle again.

The joy of driving your life at two hundred miles an hour is that you’re moving too fast to reflect; too fast to see the details, too fast to have a cup of tea and address your actions and your feelings. At that speed you need to concentrate on the road and give the dashboard your full undivided attention. And that’s what I did as soon as I landed in Los Angeles. It’s probably what I’d always done, but now I had more open road.

And then a moment of the unexpected hit me. My suitcase, which was drenched, dried and disheveled, had taken on a passenger. A small black notebook that wasn’t mine, that at first I believed was a customs clearance notice but upon further investigation I realized it was a stowaway. A memento from the life I had literally just broken free from. A confessional from my older sister that I almost left a mystery. She had filled its pages with words that had went unsaid between us. How she always wanted to be there for us, but coping within our family proved too much. And here I was running away to a city three thousand miles away to get away. She wanted to absolve me of any guilt I may be feeling for choosing ‘me.’ She wrote that no one may ever understand what it was like to survive our household but that I’d done it and she was proud of me. Free from the underbelly of everything endured and everything buried deep within our souls. And then I turned the page to find a slender manilla envelope, taped into the pages.

Later that night, I wondered if she hesitated giving me this most personal confessional, the check included or both. The check was signed the date I intended to depart, but you see, it wasn’t in my possessions when I first went to the airport. I took out everything piece by piece. It would have been waterlogged and ruined. This notebook and its $20,000 windfall appeared the following day. Did the rain inspire or was fear the motivator? Fear that I’d fail? Fear that I’d return home? Or was it the apology behind the confession. The action behind the words of support. A sister who was powerless to save me from a broken home and all of its turmoils but could help me begin my journey of healing and maybe even a chance to live life on my own terms for the first time.

I looked out, over the intersecting freeways and the mountainous horizon. I took in the lights and the sounds of a city larger than I’d ever experienced. I turned on the radio, breathed in the Ocean air and felt my shoulders lower for the first time. Was this the beginning of something good or something crazy? I don’t know. I’m not sure I even care. But I didn’t cry tonight and that’s a step in the right direction.