, 11 min read
Goodbye California
Nice. Pretty good. All right. Okay.
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Said I went up like this much, but I was going. I went forwards and then backwards, and when I went backwards, my legs... Oh yeah, the skate park to ourselves. The last two years felt like an entire lifetime. California, you gave me the greatest adventure of my life so far. Foreign, dark place when I moved, and being in California showed me how magical life can be. It really was so magical.
As I edit this video, I'm actually home again, but I wanted to create this video and remember the last few months.
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Even though I was surrounded by beauty, a lot of my problems followed me to California.
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Foreign.
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Thank you. I don't like to stay in one place for very long. I feel like it's a waste of my younger years, and as it neared two years, I could feel that it was time to go. The only problem was, I had no idea where to.
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Foreign.
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I'm thirsty. I'm just getting a drink. Drop it, Cooper. Drop it.
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Yes. No, it is like my third best night of my life.
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There is no question I met amazing people, but loneliness always followed me. I spent the last few years giving my all, trying to build new friendships and connect with others, and it was exhausting and extremely triggering. And I reached a point where the only time I felt peace and safety was when I was alone.
I feel tension in my entire body. I feel my chest is super tight and my stomach is tight. I feel like I've been on like this high, this high tension for the last couple of days.
In short, there were people who wronged me very deeply in a situation that shocks me. It shocked me because I didn't think that humans were capable of being that nasty. Like, yeah, so I've been dealing with a lot of feelings of betrayal and anger. Basically, I've been a complete mess. I mean, on the inside I have. On the outside, I've remained relatively functional, but probably functional just to the amount that I need to be functional in order to stay alive.
The biggest cause of my stress right now is moving. Right now, it's June 1st, and I have to be out by June 14th, and so far, I have not found a living situation. But it's super stressful that I don't know where I'm going. It's also caused me to look, to force myself to see how mentally unhappy I am because I've been overlooking it. I've been purposely shoving down bad feelings.
And it's funny, I have this addiction, I think I've talked about it, maybe it's YouTube. Um, I watch YouTube all day, every day, and not just watch, but also listen because the last many months, and especially the last couple of weeks with this additional stress and anxiety that I wake up to every day, I watch, I need to listen and watch YouTube videos in order to numb myself from the deep feelings of unhappiness, stress, and anxiety, and loneliness. Like, literally from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep, I have YouTube videos playing. And by watching YouTube videos, I, I don't mean I sit on the couch and watch YouTube videos all day. I mean, I am always listening to them. If I go on a walk, I'm listening to them. If I go rollerblade, I'm listening to YouTube videos. If I, if I take a shower, I'm listening to YouTube videos with my earbuds, probably gonna electrocute myself. Um, anytime I'm doing anything, I'm listening to YouTube videos as a distraction from loneliness.
It's mostly loneliness, but also stress. But as I'm trying to get out, moving is usually something that makes me somewhat excited. It's something that usually makes me feel like, um, it makes me feel hopeful, usually, like there's something good around the corner and that life can be good. And usually, it feels like an adventure, and I'm excited for it. But I had, I'll call it a breakdown last night, where I was just fully realizing that I'm not excited at all. I don't feel any happy or excited or good feelings about moving. I just feel nothing but stress and anxiety and unhappiness because I have the knowledge that, as realistic or unrealistic as this is, I have this deep sense of loneliness, like utter, complete loneliness, which, it's kind of the loneliness where you can be surrounded by other people, but you know that you're alone. And it comes down to, mostly, you don't feel like people see you or understand you or see the authentic you, where you don't feel safe to be yourself.
It doesn't matter what I do. It doesn't matter where I move. It doesn't matter what decision I make in the future, what job I get. I'm going to be alone. And it's way too much to get into right now, but I lost my entire community, or left my entire community of people that had been in some of my videos in the past, in the last year. I left that community pretty much in December of 2021, so like five to six months ago. And I did that because... I wonder... I feel like enough time has passed, but it's because I chose the wrong people to try to connect with. Basically, I chose people who were so different from myself, and who I was so different from, that I was never able to be myself, ever, because I knew that if I was myself, I would be rejected. And I knew that clearly by things that these people would say. But I was with them because I wanted to try to form friendships, because obviously I'd been alone my whole life, and I was like, "This is my chance. Like, fate has thrown this in my lap." So I really tried. I tried to connect with all of them, and I finally realized that I cannot be myself around these people. So it was... I need to go into that more in detail in the future, um, and how I urge other people not to make that mistake. You need to be around people who make you feel safe to be yourself without judgment, or without total exclusion. And, um, another word for exclusion... I knew that if I was myself, my real self, and I shared my real thoughts, even if I shared the things that I share here on YouTube, I knew that I would be, ah, here's the word, excommunicated from the group. Yeah, don't hang out with a group of people for a year if you know that you don't agree with most of what they say, pretty much 99% of what they say. If you don't agree with 99% of what they think and say about other people, about the world, about everything, you shouldn't be around those people, by the way.
I don't know if you just heard that sound, but I promise I don't have somebody kidnapped in a closet. It's... I'm dog-sitting, and I put the dogs outside in this beautiful backyard, and they are just trying to claw their way back inside because they're babies. They can't handle being outside in a beautiful backyard for, like, how long has it been, 13 minutes? All poor things. Well, let's say hi to them, shall we? Um, by the way, I'm just sharing what I shared about loneliness for the same reasons that I always share: to document it, to see that I'm going to get through it.
I'm going to look back on this and see how I got through it, and I'm going to see how things got better. It's not any sort of me saying something is seriously wrong. I don't feel like I can't handle this. I'm also sharing because I know there are other people who sometimes feel invalidated, like they cannot feel lonely, like they're not allowed to feel lonely because they have some people around them. But having people around you doesn't mean you have an intimate connection with them, or an intimate relationship with them. And it doesn't mean that you're safe to be yourself. You can actually feel extremely unsafe to be yourself around somebody, and you have this deep knowledge that you will be rejected if you are yourself.
So, just to prove I haven't kidnapped anybody, I'm gonna let the dogs in, and you guys can say hi. Hi! Down! Yeah, can you not handle being outside? Oh, was that so hard? I'm so sorry you went through that. I am about to face one of my fears. I've never gone into a car wash before because that's really scary, not just the car wash, but the whole thing. So I'm about to do that. Oh my God! I just calculated that I've avoided car washes successfully for seven years, since I was 17. 1892. So I just overcame a seven-year fear. Let's do that again, but faster. Okay, even faster.
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This is my job. I make money doing this. I throw those left-handed. Huh. Great. If you have a dog that's super crazy energetic, do it on a hill. Tires amount more this way. I've conquered him. He is breathing. He's laying down. You tired?
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There were a few things I did in California that really made me proud of myself, and one of those things was finally getting in the skate park. It's something that I've wanted to do for years, but I never thought that I was capable of it. So I'm here to tell you that if you think you can't do something, you should still try, and you'll be surprised. I just started doing moving stuff, and, uh, it's, uh, it's going about this good. There's a lot to do. This is my last ride.
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I lived in the rich tourist town of Santa Barbara. It was a beautiful, beautiful city, and I was so lucky to be there.
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My necklace is like this so now they don't get tangled. I just made up this method.
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This is my dolly.
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I definitely had my ups and downs, but I came to California with a broken heart, and I'm leaving a completely different person.
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Right now kind of seems like a monumental task. I think I thought that I was gonna do this a lot faster. When it's this crazy, my mind is just like... This bag means a lot to me. It's like this gigantic duffel. It's hard to see how big it is, but it's really big. Um, and I got it when I was 19, for the first time that I ever took a trip by myself, because it's a special bag. Also, check out the hair. Decided to show you how big it is. I am inside it. Yeah.
I thought that I didn't want to take a shower because it would waste time, and this would be faster, and I just needed to wash my hair. But, uh, when you're in this position, you start to have doubts, and you start to question your intelligence, especially since this is a garbage can. But don't worry, I washed it.
It's 2:22 a.m., and I just finished, I guess, my night's work. I'm still not even finished fully, but I have been working all day, and I guess a lot of the night as well, to try to get this done because I'm leaving tomorrow, and I have a deadline. Um, obviously, I'm dead tired. I think I'm too tired to feel anything, really. But, um, this is my last night in the room, and honestly, with the room looking like this, it, it doesn't really make me want, like, it doesn't make me too sad to leave it at this point because, like, all of my roommates' stuff is gone, and all of my stuff is gone. So it's not homey anymore. It's just a big, empty room. But it feels really weird. I came here almost two years ago, and I built my side up, and I made it feel like home, and now I've torn it all down again, and I'm gonna say goodbye to this room forever. It's just such a weird feeling. But yeah, mostly tired.
I'm gonna end this. Um, so tomorrow I have to wake up early, even though it's, like, 2:30. I have to wake up early tomorrow morning and finish all of this before 10 a.m. because I have to be out by 10. Um, so it feels like nothing just happened, but something just happened, and what just happened was I just said bye. So, uh, yeah, I just said bye to the house that I'm never going to live at ever again. I've been there almost two years. I just said goodbye. I just said bye to my bedroom, my, the house that I rented, the landlords that I rented from.
I've been non-stop packing my car, and the crazy thing is, I have a lot of stuff. I have a lot of stuff. I was not expecting. So these are my older stuffed animals. They've been with me the longest, but this one, Benny, he's the only one who gets to ride shotgun with me because he, he's my adventure partner. He comes everywhere. So funny. I actually just feel so focused on what's coming, which is a 30-hour drive, that I'm not even, I'm, I don't feel sad feelings right now. Like, I actually just feel really tired, and I feel really ready to drive because I've been packing my room and packing my car. I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. last night, and I can feel, like, the tiredness in my body. Like, I can feel, like, just kind of going like that. But good time to pull it all-nighter, right? Right?
I think that's all. Like, it's, it's super bittersweet. It's sad, but also, I'm so focused on what's coming, and I'm stressed, and I just, I don't have room in my brain or body to feel sad. I mean, I do feel a little, though. I do feel some sadness, but also it's surreal saying goodbye because you haven't left yet, you know? You haven't left yet, so why should you be sad? You don't even know what's coming. Like, when I left the house, when I drove away from the house, it just felt like any other day when I was leaving. It doesn't feel like I'm leaving forever, but it's so weird.
Start to the drive.
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I'm going to end this with a reminder for myself: whenever you feel overwhelmed or powerless, just remember that it's totally within your control to change your entire life. You can do that.