When I first moved to Los Angeles, everyone told me to give it “at least two years.” They said that’s how long it would take to find out whether I could live there. But to like it, let alone love it? Who knows! Everything was beautiful and nothing felt real. As a spinning Rachel Sennott put it in a bizarrely compelling 2020 video that’s essentially a succinct thesis statement for the dissertation that is her 2025 HBO show: “Come on! It’s L.A.! Haha! What ?! It’s L.A.!” Basically: the girls who get it, get it. The girls who don’t, don’t.

I did, until I didn’t. Still, leaving proved a much more painful breakup than I’d ever expected because I really did learn to love so much about L.A. The food! The arts! The biodiversity! The vibrancy! L.A. can rule! But seeing some of its most insular

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