The LA Years: A little heroin at 3:30 in the afternoon (or maybe just some Almond Lemon Poppyseed Cookies?)

The further away I get from LA, and the more I write about it, the more I realize that the root of my issue with LA was just the sheer mental load needed to exist there. It was too high. You could argue that the mental load of being an 18-24 year old anywhere is pretty high – you’re just learning how to be an adult and balance everything that comes with that. But having to do all that while being in LA added whole new levels of difficulty. 

Something like “mental load” is hard to pin down, so I’ll try to go through some examples. Mainly, just those breaking points that shouldn’t have been breaking points. 

On my 23rd birthday, with my siblings in that car on the way to lunch, we were rear ended on the highway. We were sitting in a standstill, and got rammed by an Uber driver who was probably not paying attention and driving pretty fast. We retooled the day and ended up at a body shop and rental car facility. I got my first rental car! That day wasn’t too bad, all things considered. I had my siblings there and there wasn’t much to do except go through the process. However, I learned a week later that my car was totaled and I’d need to get a new one. Again, this was manageable – insurance was paying for most of it, and my parents paid for the rest. But this bugged me because it was another reminder that my finances were not up to the level they needed to be to live in LA.

The real kicker came a month later though. I had just gone to Minnesota for a long weekend to celebrate a belated 21st birthday (thanks COVID!), and was landing back at LAX. Immediately as I get off the plane, I see I have a missed call telling me that my new car was delayed a week. With my rental car returned and my insurance maxed out on covering it, this meant I’d have no car in LA for a week. Something about having no car in LA gave me a truly panicked and trapped response. Which I think is valid! My car was a lifeline – if needed, I could always just get in my car and drive out of town. It was also my only way of getting from my apartment to any place I felt comfortable being out and about. I needed the freedom.

Then, I attempted to leave the airport, but somehow with me taking a domestic flight into the international terminal, I could not find the exit. I felt like I was going insane. The signs for baggage claim never led me to baggage claim. I had to backtrack across the terminal and go to a shuttle that would take me to the domestic terminal just so I could leave. The workers looked at me weird because I was the only one from my plane who had missed the memo. But they let me board, and I took a private ride in one of those accordion buses to the other terminal. Just as well that I was alone though, because I checked uber and saw that my ride home was going to cost me $99, pre-tip. That was the final straw that had me actively crying on the shuttle bus.

Objectively, these are all things I should have been able to handle. Each thing on its own was manageable. But all I was thinking was I just want to go home, and the world was making that feel so impossible – first trapped in the airport, and then hindered by a $120 charge, and then knowing that when I finally got home, I’d be stuck there for a week until I got my car. I didn’t want to burn $120 just getting home. It was a cosmic reminder, immediately upon landing in LA, that life there was 10x harder than it needed to be. There’s being 23 and a bit of a trainwreck, and then there’s being 23 in a world that is actively trying to wreck your train. (Does that analogy work?)

This was all part of the mental load of logistics. Nothing could be simple. Every task was either going to cost me more money than I had in my bank account, or was going to take an hour to get to. I already discussed the logistic nightmare of traffic, and of getting groceries. It was the logistic nightmare of everything. The level of planning I’d have to do just to do something fun. The amount of retooling I’d have to do when inevitably traffic was twice as long as planned. It felt as though no matter how prepared and capable I was, there was going to be something in my way. Like paying $60 for parking at John Mulaney… It was a fun show, but I felt I had to laugh twice as hard because I paid 30 extra dollars to be there.

So there’s the mental load of existing in a city like LA, and that was added on top of the mental load of just stretching your concept of what is okay and normal. I felt as though everyday I saw something that pushed the limits of my empathy, and made me distressed. I don’t view myself as someone who is just so sensitive and empathetic that I get upset when I see any injustice. But I am someone who is always observing the world around me, and who feels empathy for people (love thy neighbor, you know!), and I find a lot of things impossible to ignore. Everyday I saw something that would range from the absurd to the upsetting.

One day, I decided to walk to the Chinese Theater to see a movie. It was a 10 minute walk, and I was in fight-or-flight mode the entire time, given the crowds and reputation of that street. On the walk back, I saw 2 people crouching in a bush on the edge of the sidewalk, holding a spoon. My vast knowledge of the world (I’ve seen Breaking Bad) is enough to know that they were probably doing some very hard drugs. It was 3pm on a Saturday. It was broad daylight, and I was just trying to get home. I didn’t want to walk within 5 feet of someone doing heroin. These guys were just a block from my apartment.

To live in LA, I think you have to be somehow able to shake those things. I am not capable of that! Especially when they are constant. Being surrounded by 10 million people living 10 million very different lives meant that I was always being inundated with something that pushed me out of my comfort zone. Yeah, I’ll say it! I’m just a sheltered Midwestern kid – seeing a group of people doing heroin in broad daylight five minutes from my apartment was out of my comfort zone. It shouldn’t be in anyone’s comfort zone!!

But what could I even do about that? I was dealing with my own world – making sure I could pay for my apartment, thinking about my plans later and whether there would be parking, hoping that there were no unexpected financial needs that month. Thinking about going to work and whether I even had a future in my career, or whether I’d ever get a raise.

This mental load felt like it was blocking me from getting my act together and growing up. One time, I backed up my car a little too far into my parking space and my back windshield shattered. Instead of just being a headache, it sent me into a full blown spiral and I called my mom crying. I was once again stuck without a car, nobody in the whole city of 10 million people cared, and I was going to have to spend another $300 I didn’t have to spare. Instead of handling it like an adult, it was just a full spiral. And it was because I was already up to my neck in just getting by, anything additional was immediately too much.

And maybe that’s what being 18-24 is! But I just don’t think so. 18-24 are the ages when you have no dependents, total freedom, and should be able to take some punches. Every obstacle should not feel insurmountable. But LA throws punches at you every day. No wonder the only people thriving there are millionaire celebrities with personal assistants.

I did move to Minnesota pretty much right as my brain was getting done forming, but I also felt as though a load was lifted. I’ve since handled car troubles and random expenses. I make a bit more money, but not that much. The biggest difference is that I can… afford to live in this city, and the idea of not having my car for a week doesn’t fill me with dread and panic. It’d just be a reason to use my bike more often.

So today’s recipe is a bit of a stretch. But since poppyseeds can trick a drug test, having one of these cookies is the closest I’ll ever hope to get to heroin at 3:30 in the afternoon.

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