I want my life to begin... all I have to do is let the right one in.

Everything is topsy-turvy and it's wonderful.

I have relocated out to Los Angeles, where I have a beautiful little apartment a block from Hollywood Boulevard. The walls are covered in bats and the wrought-iron lamp has Edison bulbs that throw shadows against the big French windows overgrown with ivy tendrils and the fiery orange-red of autumn leaves, and one of my best friends lives across the hall. There is delicious two-dollar sushi around the corner and a delicious little Thai place where an Asian man does Elvis karaoke one night a week in the dining room, and I like to walk and see the pink stars on the sidewalk under my shoes. If I turn at the end of my street and look up I can see the vast sprawl of the Hollywood sign on the hills. The city sparkles like stripper-glitter and I will never, ever be tired of it.

My work is incredible; I am the personal assistant to a successful director, and I love going in to our office because it's a big warehouse overflowing with monsters and dead bodies and fake blood. I sit in a dark little office curled up in black leather chairs, typing furiously until the wee hours of the night, listening to ominous movie scores on the office intercom and finding inspiration everywhere I look. I am writing again. People don't realize what I lost in my mother's death, not the least of which was myself. I used to write hundreds of stories a month when I was young, but in the past year and a half nothing I'm proud of has left these fingers. And yet sitting in that office, creative energy felt like static in the air and I wrote furiously until my wrists ached and my eyes burned. The sun was lightening the smoggy sky behind the palm trees before I lay down in bed that night, my heart singing with renewal. I felt like whatever wall I'd been butting my head against, my new boss had taken a sledgehammer to it and those fissures were spreading.

My boyfriend is beautiful, an artist whose palm feels right against mine when we walk down the street and who knows how to kiss me to make me laugh and shiver and clutch him like a buoy. He's the kind of boy you want to wake up in the middle of the night just to ask him his favorite song, and I always wake up first and trace the lines of his strong shoulders and smooth back until he stirs awake simply because I want to see his eyes in the morning sun, which puts gold in the hazel-green of them. He is protective and smart and lovely; his hands touch me with the same consideration he shows his sketchpads, my artist-boy who fills the blank pages with aliens and creatures and wolves and dinosaurs.  I don't remember ever feeling this dizzy-drunk on someone before, a magnet for kisses, someone who fits against my side like this. Walking with him, talking about hopes and fears and dreams, holding his hand in a haunted house, sleeping curled against him like a kitten... all of it feels so right that it should scare me but doesn't.

I feel like I am exactly where I need to be. I miss my Texas friends and family, of course. I am working insane hours and my schedule is demanding to say the least. But I will never regret doing this. I feel electric. I smile so much my face hurts. I feel optimistic and positive and I am loving every moment of my life right now. I made the right choice in taking this incredible opportunity, and I am so happy that I did.

For the first time in a very long time I feel like I am living for myself, and that's an amazing feeling.