“I feel even more confident than I did when I was living in Arizona where I did fit in.”
Two years ago I made the move from Arizona to Los Angeles. And in the past few years I’ve only ever felt like an outsider because everyone who actually is born and raise in LA, they know everything, they know the streets, the culture, they know the trends. Arizona is a lot more laid-back so trying to bring my laid-back personality to LA hasn’t really worked. It’s all about being trendy, juicing, and yoga classes. If you don’t do any of those things then you don’t really have a lot to talk about with other people so it has been really difficult trying to find friends and a community that I belong in, which is ironic because LA is such a large city. You would think that it would be easy to find a group or find somewhere where you fit in. So far from my experience, it hasn’t been that way.
Even though I don’t fit in it’s made me realize exactly how unique I am and that I should take pride in what makes me different instead of trying to assimilate to what everyone else does and now, even though I’m an outsider and don’t fully fit in, I feel even more confident than I did when I was living in Arizona where I did fit in.
I still have my little brown bear that I used when I was little. It is this old, about a foot big, brown bear, has a button for a nose because I lost the nose along time ago. One of its eyes are falling off but still holding on. Her name is Nini. She was my security blanket when I was little. She reminds me of where I came from and my family. One of my mom’s friend gave it to me when I was little. It reminds me of that huge support that I had from everyone within my family and with my mom’s friends who are family.