I come from a suburb of Seattle and I can tell you that as a person who never really went into Seattle and stayed in comfy confines of the suburb, I never even had to think about parking. Whether you are going to a bar, or a friends house, or HOME, I never had to think about parking. It wasn't anywhere in my consciousness and why would it be? You go somewhere, you park there. That's it. Theres no consideration about parking and it was lovely but I took it for granted because now I live in LA and when you're going somewhere the first thing you have to think about is traffic and the 2nd thing you have to think about is parking.
What you're actually doing when you get to your destination is like the 8th or 9th thing that you consider when you live in LA. This is why people go nuts when they live in LA.
After I moved to LA I was having trouble sleeping and I would stay up for 2-3 hours wide awake and my heart beating and I didn't know why, my mind was just racing and I thought maybe this is it. Maybe this is what the days leading up to a heart attack are like? And so i kept on like that for a few months until I finally had to go see a doctor. Not for my racing heart mind you, but for something entirely different that had to be looked at immediately. If it was just chest pains, I would have probably just let it pass or died, and not gone to see the doctor, because I guess that's just how I view my life I suppose. I would rather have a racing heart beat, and chest pains, then actually have to call a doctors office, make an appointment, fucking go there... it's all too much. But when I had a painful hangnail on my thumb, I had to bite the bullet and go see the doctor.
So while I'm there, and I figure "fuck I might as well make the most of this" I told him about my inabilty to sleep. Now, the first thing I think about when I say this is "This fucking guy is going to think I just want a pot card." This is california man and I already can tell that everyone is going to the doctor complaining about stress, anxiety, insomnia, just to get a pot card and legally buy pot. And they're fucking it up for the rest of us, because i cant see any doctor taking me seriously when i say "man, i need help relaxing" when I'm a 28 year old white male. They just won't buy it.
Luckily, I was wrong and he did take me seriously, probably just by looking at me and seeing i probably would have chest pains, and he asked me "did you move ot LA in the last 6 months to a year?" and I'm like "Holy shit, how did you know that?" and he says, "well its very common for people who just move here, to freak out and have panic attacks because of how stressful the city is." and I'm like "Holy shit, are you serious?"
This is what LA does to people. Everyone talks about the traffic and the smog, but the thing that kills you is all the fucking people and expectations and hipsters and it's all just a mad fucking dash to be better than the person next to you, even if you're not trying to do that, you don't realize that you're trying to do that. Even if you came here to be a physicist and not an actor, you just take form of a Los Angelean without knowing it. All of a sudden you're judging yourself against the person next to you because self-awareness is thicker in the air than the smog.
The fact that most people who live in LA are transplants just adds to the fact that most of us are aware of a better life, yet we choose to continue living here. We know that we could find that happy medium in another city, not a place to rural and yet not a place like LA.
The doctor gave me some medication to relax and sure enough I slept like a baby and then when the medication ran out I didn't refill it, I just started sleeping better. But then as time goes on and I want to do more with my time in LA, the stress has returned. Except now instead of my heart racing, I feel like there isn't anything going on in my chest. Like I've just become a zombie and this is what it's like to be the walking dead, just going through the motions while doctors put a stethoscope up to my chest and look at my strangely like in a movie like "I can't find the heartbeat"
Yeah, that's because I have accepted the fact that I live here and the body realized that the heart was no longer necessary.
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