There’s a strange kind of loneliness that comes with getting everything you thought you wanted.
I moved to Los Angeles on my birthday this past September. A new city, a new job, a new chapter. Fourteen days later, I was at the Emmys wearing a tuxedo for the first time. Not long after, I was in Switzerland covering the Zurich Film Festival, photographing actors I’d spent years watching on movie screens.
From the outside, I imagine it looks like a wonderful life. And in many ways, it is.
But eventually, I come home to an empty apartment. The lights are off. Nothing has moved. No one asks about my day. Just my keys on the counter and the rest of the evening entirely mine.
I haven’t felt at home in so long that I’m not sure I remember what it feels like anymore.
Home has become more of a word than a feeling. A shape I recognize in photographs. Warm lights in the windows. People gathered around a dinner table. Someone waiting for someone else to come home.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve dreamed of having a handful of friends I could count on, or some big, glorious family that comes together during the holidays. Now, in my forties, I’m realizing there’s a version of my life I imagined having by now that I may have to let go of.
Perhaps that’s why leaving DC was so difficult.
Just as I was preparing to move, I grew closer to people I’d known for years. Movies, dinners, long conversations. Ordinary afternoons that suddenly felt extraordinary. But we were all leaving, for different cities and different chapters. Somehow, we found each other just in time to say goodbye.
I wish we’d had more time.
Thanksgiving is approaching, and I’ll probably spend most of it alone. Somewhere, families will gather around tables while I figure out what to do with a Thursday.
I’m grateful for my life. I just wish I had more people to share it with.
There’s a word I’ve been thinking about lately: Avenoir.
Coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, it describes the desire to see memories in advance. To experience life backward, knowing how everything turns out.
I think I’d like that.
I’d like to see myself six months from now. To know whether I’ve found my people, whether this apartment feels less empty, whether Los Angeles has become somewhere I belong.
Mostly, I’d like to know that I’ll be okay.
But life doesn’t work that way. So I’m trying to build something here, brick by brick. Taking photographs, writing, going to movies alone. Hoping that someday the ordinary moments will feel as meaningful as the extraordinary ones.
A friend who calls unprompted. A familiar face. Someone to see a movie with on a Tuesday.
I don’t presume that someone can change their destiny, but I will do what I can until it is revealed to me.
In a few months, the Oscars will be here. And if everything works out, I’ll be there too. Another childhood dream coming true.
I hope I remember to appreciate how far I’ve come. But more than anything, I hope that by then, this city feels a little more like home.
Maybe home won’t look like the photographs I’ve spent so long imagining. Maybe it’ll be something smaller, something I haven’t learned to recognize yet.
When the Oscars come around, I hope my future self remembers how hard I tried to build a life here, even when I felt terribly alone.
And I hope he’s okay.