Member-only story
MEMOIR
The One-Way Ticket Home
Escaping, belonging, and the city that called me home
The lights were like little diamonds blanketing the ground below.
Jason told me how beautiful flying into Los Angeles was, but I didn’t really know. Not until we began our descent did I truly understand how breathtaking it would be.
One would never realize looking down from the silo of our plane that just a week prior, the Northridge earthquake of 1994 had released its fury on the area.
The earthquake didn’t matter to me. I was escaping the cold hell of Chicago where I had isolated myself for the month prior in an ill-fated attempt to run away from life as I’d known it. Los Angeles represented possibilities to me. The future. My dreams. A life I’d always longed for.
The closer we were to landing, the harder my heart pounded and the more breathless I became. This visit to see Jason was more important than I was even acknowledging. He flew me out to see him, but this trip was a precursor of what was to come. Little did I know, this trip would be the deciding factor, the direction on the fork in the road that would change my life forever.
My family thought I was crazy to visit Los Angeles so soon after the earthquake when the city was still rife with…
