Dual Mistresses

Lifetimes ago, when I lived in LA, my heart was split in two.

Dual mistresses.

My heart was split between my home (Texas) and my dreams (LA). I arrived by accident, offering to help a friend move, and stayed. Every day that I woke up, I asked for the universe to convince me I deserved to be there.

When it responded, I decided to stay anyway.

Somewhere between sleeping on floors and working on movies that grossed over $100 million, between laying in the arms of an AirBnb host and being forced by Ken Marino to eat all of the pizza he bought for an executive screening at the Lionsgate Studios private theater, between a life in Van Nuys and a life in Santa Monica, I found the spot above. The literal end of the road, twenty steps west from where Wilshire meets the statue.

And there, by the Ocean Pacific, I sat down and wept.

In the book of my life, this chapter was a good one. Time was spent breaking through the shell of my understanding. On some days, I was a monster, ten times the size of my normal self. Other days, I was less impactful than a grain of sand.

I treasure both versions of myself equally.

It's seven years later. I'm standing on a stage in Century City, accepting the award for "Best Documentary" at the New Media Film Festival. I'm giving a speech in Crocs. And I'm very aware of what it took to get here - a death in the family, the death of America's civil discourse, a once-in-a-lifetime plague followed by a (hopefully) once-in-my-lifetime illness, the inevitable surgery, the recovery process, and the thing I made with the first breaths of my renewed life.

It took the death of a dream I stumbled into.

With grace and time, I allow myself to be both the lost child at the gates of the ocean, and the one on stage, accepting an award and making fun of the room for spending too much money on their clothes. Humans contain multitudes, and I'm very human.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,”

and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come,

and when one sits alone with you at your board,

remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

- Kahlil Gibran