Haylstorm

Why I thought I was going to die

I went home the day after finding out that we were being evicted for good and wasn't sure what I would do or where I would live when I went back to LA. I went on a mission trip, as I did every year, but this year leading up to it I felt God convicting me more than ever. I was stuck in a pattern of having a change of heart, but then always faltering back to my old ways and I was tired of it.

I started to read my Bible more and really pray more. I was starting to wonder if I was even meant to be in LA anymore and had no idea what my purpose was. While I was home I received a call of a new job offer and Leslie and I's best friend even told us that we could move into his place since he'd be gone all summer. Things seemed to look up again and I felt like I knew I was making the right choice when I went back to LA.

Leslie and I were told we could start our job when we arrived in LA but our bosses never told us when we could come in to train. Our bosses were our old neighbors and friends, which created a lot of problems because they would ask us to hang out, when all we wanted to do was work. They would ask us to come in and we would expect to finally be trained, but it would turn out they just wanted to play beer pong or drink in their office.

Nothing seemed to be working out except for the fact that we had a place to live rent free since we were at our best friends house. We were constantly waiting around for our job to let us come in and train but the apartment we were staying at was so far away from everything, and we were losing money so quickly that we couldn't uber anywhere.

Soon enough, we became complete low lives to say the least. We were constantly sitting on the couch, wasting our days watching Netflix, taking edibles, and wandering the streets at 2 am to go buy m&ms. In fact, I have no vivid memories from this summer other than the times that I kept getting too high on edibles and thought I was going to die.

But it didn't stop there, our best friend came home from London after a few months and said he was going up to Northern California to visit his family. At this point, Leslie and I knew nearly his entire town because Leslies boyfriend was there, as well as all of the friends we had made, so we decided we were going to go too.

We spent a whole month in NorCal because we didn't have any other obligations since our job never worked out.

If there's anything to know about NorCal, it's that they party. A lot.
In fact I don't think they know how to do anything else up there.

We spent a month straight drinking, going out to eat, coming home late and then repeating the cycle. It was exhausting to say the least, but it finally felt like we were doing something with our days, so we stayed until the middle of August.

When we got back to LA we still had the plan to move in with our best friend and even toured a few places. Things seemed promising and Leslie and I started looking for real jobs and planned to start working ASAP, but quickly, the plans fell through.

     Our best friend had a girlfriend who wasn't too fond of him living with us (as most girlfriends would be), but, since living with him was our only option, we didn't really sympathize with her too much since we knew we would be getting a two bedroom and he would have a completely separate space from Leslie and I. However, her opinion quickly overpowered ours, and after about a week of debate our friend decided he couldn't live with us.

     Within a few days Leslie and I had to pack everything we could, buy plane tickets home, and say our "see you laters" to each other because we didn't know how long we'd be home for but we promised each other that we'd be back.

     But the truth is, I wasn't so confident I would be going back to LA.