los angeles, you devil. i am leaving you.

well. i have been in la now for three days, it feels like the days have just blown by, everything just kind of fell into place and was normal. i thought that there would be some awkwardness with hanging out with people that i havent seen for a very long time, but i was wrong.

it felt to me like tiffany and i never skipped a beat. aside from catching up on some things from the past 7 years it was kind of like we never fell out of communication. its strange how that works.

she was a huge part of me becoming a real person. we met (online) when i was 17 or 18, i dont know if she encouraged me to to come see her in new york or if i took it upon myself, but i went to visit her and at that moment started a new life for myself.

reinvention number 1, grow out of where you came from. for me it took stealing my parents car and ditching town without telling anyone, driving to new york and arriving on tiffanys doorstep like a lost puppy and asking if i can stay there.

call it southern hospitality, or maybe she was just crazy, but she let me stay there and eventually i just moved in and got a job and eventually called my parents told them where i was and that i wasnt coming back...sorry about the car.

that initial jolt, that acceptance and harboring was like a springboard. and here we are now, old (er), and things still work great.

this morning i went hiking with annie. i went to high school with annie, my first high school, and i had a crush on her then. the was a short alternative/goth looking girl that unsuspectingly hung around with the more preppy popular girls. i never felt i had a chance, but from the thoughts i had and the way she dressed, to me we were a match.

the only time that we actually talked to each other was in europe. it was some high school trip that my parents sent me on probably because i was depressed and not assimilating well to being a teenager. i was the only boy from our school, traveling with 15 girls. let the awkwardness ensue.

i wont get into that trip, partially because i dont remember much of it (you could drink in europe at 15). but annie and i chatted some during that trip, and apparently had good conversations for 15 year olds. if only we could take it back in the day.

but we came back and she moved to alabama, i changed schools, and i never saw her again until facebook, until la, until this morning. she came and picked me up at tiffanys house and we went to griffith park to go hiking. griffith park is where things like the batcave and the hollywood sign are.

we hiked up to the hollywood sign, in the heat and smog, chatting all the while. which is something that is usually hard for me, banter. but it went rather smoothly, explaining about where i have been the last 15 years, and hearing about her history, then we are at the top and coming back down.

it all seemed to move rather fast, we spent maybe 3 hours together. that probably doubled the one on one time we have had in our lives, but again we are both old (er) now. more mature.

so this leg of the journey, if i can use the term again, my springboard weeks, have been fruitful. hopefully i have gained enough confidence from tiffany and annie and bradley that the people in my past actually liked me and i dont have to worry about trying to impress them now. people will just be happy to see and hear from me and i should take advantage of that.

hopefully i will.

and now i am wrapping it all up. tomorrow morning everyone will leave. so, san diego: watch out...i guess.