“Where else are you interviewing in California?” she asked, as if there were two places to interview in California, UCLA and not UCLA. We met after my interview at her home institution, UCLA, on a glitzy rooftop bar at a cocktail hour hosted by her home institution, UCLA.
“UC Irvine”, I said with pride. To my landlocked soul, Orange County was heaven: waves, palms, endless summer.
To her West Hollywood eyes, it was hell: “Well, good luck with that. That place is dead. You couldn’t pay me to live down there.”
In time, I would get what she meant. And in time, I would feel the same way she did. But in even more time—time is the solution to most things, right?—I would love the hell out of that place.
That time was last weekend, as I returned into the belly of the whale to officiate a best friend’s wedding.
Bad memories are quick to the trigger.
As I prepared to embark back to Orange County, for a celebration with cherished friends, I mostly recalled the darkness and hopelessness. It was a brutal four years. And my wife and I were staying with my old roommate, in my old apartment, in my old room. So, I braced myself for a descent into darkness.
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As our plane sloped down between the Santa Anas at 10PM, I identified landmarks, to my wife’s annoyance, by the streaming rivers of red and white light called the 15, the 91, and the 55. When the plane touched down at John Wayne Airport, fifteen months had passed since my graduation from psychiatry residency. My last memory, mere hours after my four-year contract ended, was of smashing my mattress on top of boxes, ratcheting it down under the tailgate of my truck, and leaving for Santa Barbara. Adios Orange County!
Now though, walking through the terminal to scoop our rental car, I turned to my wife and said, “It smells exactly the same in here.” Huh, my brain had registered the smell of John Wayne Airport, which made sense given how often I was there, traveling to see my wife. The smell was nice. Seconds later, reflexively, I scanned the baggage claim area for former patients, a rare occurrence then but always a possibility. None were present. I took a breath. As we exited the airport, I spotted the escalator where I surprised my wife as she arrived for one of our first long-distance relationship weekends. I smiled, having forgotten the moment.
No GPS necessary, I took the 405 on autopilot to the apartment. I was back home… I mean there, in minutes, passing known megaplexes, freeways, and In-And-Outs. A thick desert and concrete mustiness met my olfactory buds and unleashed a torrent of memories from my hippocampus as we unloaded our luggage, back in the apartment complex where I fought to figure out my life those last two years. Where I went to the hot tub and read self-improvement books every day. Where, looking behind the maintenance building next to our rental car, I once smoked a revelatory cigarette, when I decided I was done with medicine.
And all I felt… was home.
The weekend was wonderful. Officiating a wedding was a supreme honor, and for a best friend, the most supreme. Seeing everyone, spinning stories with my co-residents, and being back where I used to live, was awesome. It wasn’t dark, not even for a second. It was alive. What it had always been.
I tried to make sense of the paradox. How could I be there, in a place home to so much darkness, and feel so much at home?
While I was in therapy—weekly for most of residency—I would say to my therapist, “I just want to feel like myself again”. Over years, we unpacked that desire and all it meant—clinging to an idealistic past to obscure responsibility in the present—but not until last weekend, did I get the joke:
There, in Orange County, I was myself the whole time.
Every wave. Every patient. Every tear. I was always me. And now, California is very much a part of me.
On the morning of the ceremony, my wife and I sipped coffee next to Newport Bay, and I was unequivocally, 100%, there. If you don’t understand what I mean, I hope it stays that way for you. But in my case, for years, I felt fractured and lost. In that state, I found it near impossible to be present. I missed the life, before the whole medicine saga, where I knew who I was and why I was doing things. For those disoriented years, in Orange County, I dared to consider that time meaningless, until I arrived in a future without self-doubt.
But there, sipping my coffee as I watched the still early morning saltwater, I realized every single second was meaningful. Orange County was never dead. I was never dead. If anything, the place brought me back to life.
So, as I finished that damn good cup of coffee, I laughed, realizing how much I miss the place, how much I owe the place, and how much I can’t wait to come back, to stay in touch with a part of myself, through this place.
From eight years of inauthenticity, I learned 32 lessons I’ll never forget. Get the whole list today by joining my weekly newsletter, HERE.
(Photo Caption: Eating Mexican food, post-surf with the guys, somewhere between Dana Point and San Clemente in 2019, living anything but a meaningless life, despite the dark recollections.)
