LALATOWN LIFE

I decided to forgive myself.

What does that even mean?

Did I do something terribly wrong?

Well… not exactly.

I decided to forgive myself for all the times I didn’t say,

“This is too hard for me.”

I forgive the version of me who believed that if I just kept going, kept sacrificing, kept trying a little harder, someday someone would notice.

Someday my turn would come.

And I forgive myself for looking at how everything eventually turned out and thinking,

Maybe I was the stupid one.

Nope.

We are retiring that department.

Last weekend, I went out for THREE DAYS.

Friday. Saturday. Sunday.

Wow.

For some people, this is called “having a weekend.”

For me, this is basically Coachella.

Despite what I might look like from the outside, I am actually a serious homebody.

Very dorky.

How dorky?

I love my safe little boundaries.

I love my home-cooked food.

I love sitting at home drawing for hours without anybody asking me where I am.

Perfect evening.

Maybe that’s why building a life here—pushing myself into a different culture, a different language, and a world that never completely felt like mine—was harder than I ever admitted.

So I kept pushing myself.

A little more.

Just a little more.

And when something happened that made every cell in my body say,

Oh, absolutely NOT,

I still didn’t say,

“No. This is where I stop.”

Instead, I called it patience.

Consideration.

Being a good person.

Maybe some of that came from the old-fashioned Korean way I was raised.

Endure.

Be considerate.

Don’t make things difficult.

Be good.

I genuinely thought that was what being a good and ethical person meant.

So I forgive that version of myself.

She was trying very hard.

She was also, occasionally, an idiot.

I forgive her anyway.

On Saturday, I had not one but TWO social plans.

Two.

In one day.

Again: for some people, normal Saturday.

For me, international tour.

I even did some of it spontaneously.

And surprisingly?

Not bad.

A little exhausting.

There were definitely moments when my brain whispered,

Excuse me, shouldn’t we be home drawing something?

But I survived.

Then yesterday, I had lunch with friends in a neighborhood where I lived for about ten months almost 30 years ago.

Nothing like 30 years ago.

It felt like I had landed somewhere completely new.

I kept looking around thinking,

Wow. I love this place.

We had coffee.

Vanilla lattes.

Pizza.

Hummus.

And OH MY GOD.

Apparently hummus is delicious.

I did not know this.

Apparently pizza can also be ridiculously delicious.

Another discovery at age fifty-something.

Better late than never.

For the last 30 years, pizza was usually ordered according to the preferences of the person I lived with.

And I have one question.

How does a $23 pizza become a $40 pizza?

Easy.

Add this.

Add that.

Add this too.

And that.

And maybe that thing over there.

Keep going until the pizza itself can no longer be located.

There were times we walked out after tip having spent almost $50 on one pizza.

I thought that giant pile of everything was simply what pizza was.

Then my Korean friends ordered something almost suspiciously simple.

Basil.

Cheese.

That was basically it.

I took a bite.

WAIT.

Pizza tastes like this?

Then the hummus.

WAIT AGAIN.

Hummus tastes like THIS?

Where have you people been hiding these foods?

And there was something even better than the food.

Four people sitting around a table fighting over the last bite.

“You eat it.”

“No, YOU eat it.”

“Seriously. Eat it.”

Korean friendship eventually becomes mild food-related intimidation.

We had a beautiful red beet salad too.

The neighborhood was lovely.

We drank vanilla lattes and talked and talked.

And it was HOT.

So hot that I genuinely thought I might melt into the asphalt and become part of the neighborhood permanently.

By the time I got home, I wasn’t exactly full.

I wasn’t hungry either.

I was just… good.

There were four of us at that table.

And suddenly I remembered years ago, when my family would visit from Korea and we would all go out to restaurants together.

Family is strange that way.

When everyone is sitting around the table, you don’t always realize how precious that ordinary little table is.

Now my family is scattered across the world.

My sister is in Korea.

My nephew is in New Zealand.

And I am here in America.

Yesterday, I missed them terribly.

Not the dramatic movie kind of missing.

The quiet kind.

The kind that suddenly sits down next to you while you’re eating pizza.

And I decided to forgive myself for something else.

For spending all these years in a lonely environment and still not saying,

“I’m lonely.”

I forgive myself for that too.

I think I have to.

Otherwise, how am I supposed to move forward?

Today, I’m back to drawing.

I’ve been turning my illustrations into textile patterns, circling back to something I originally studied years ago.

The patterns go to Spoonflower.

They go to Etsy.

The little drawings inside the patterns become individual objects.

The objects become PNGs.

The PNGs become something else.

One drawing wanders into another project.

One tiny idea grows another tiny idea.

Somehow, without really planning it, I think I’ve built my own little creative ecosystem.

Which is funny.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing with my life too.

Taking the pieces.

Moving them around.

Making a new pattern.

And I also forgive the anxious little homebody inside me who went out and socialized for THREE WHOLE DAYS and is now wondering whether she needs a week of recovery.

She likes her house.

She likes her home-cooked food.

She likes drawing.

She apparently likes simple pizza.

She definitely likes hummus.

And vanilla lattes.

And sitting around a table threatening her friends until somebody eats the last bite.

Not a bad life, actually.

So.

Here we are.

A little older.

A little weirder.

A little wiser.

And considerably better informed about hummus.

Welcome to my self-forgiven life.

Welcome to LALATOWN.