Ok, so fine. There’s a little bit of truth to all this positive thinking thing.

Costa Mesa was smothering me. I had to get out. I couldn’t breathe. On the worst of days I felt like a piece of furniture being auctioned off at an extremely low price. “But don’t you all know how valuable I am!?” No one heard me. They just go on with the bidding. Some would sit with their arms crossed in the audience with a snickering grin on their face, pointing at me with whispers to their neighbor that could only be along the lines of “She is so not worth it.” Others simply toss up their signs. I suppose to them I was good enough. I look at the man who just won me for 50 cents and I think of him, “You are so not worth it.”

The world is an auction and I am a tattered, old, untuned piano.

Jesus, I guess it makes sense how with an outlook like that on the world, you can climb your way down to miserable pretty quickly. I just had to get out. So I did.

I packed my shit and I headed back to LA. I may have been invisible in LA, but at least I wasn’t being viciously exploited. Poked and prodded by the people around me. Disregarded by the people who found me unworthy and showered with attention from people who wanted to take my potential and twist it into something worth while.

I left Costa Mesa and I wasn’t forgiving of it.

But I gave it one more chance. I came out for one night. And what I found out was that this auction was something I had created in my head. It’s funny how when I stop hating myself, people stop hating me, too.

Is it a conquer? Or another bittersweet ending? When you find honesty in the last place you expected to. It wasn’t what you wanted to hear, but the novelty of finding it at all is uplifting in itself. And besides, I wasn’t afraid. And I’m still not. I think I owed at least that to myself.