Ah loyal readership. Last you heard of my faltering existence I was heading off, tearfully, into the sun of Los Angeles, city of douchebags and dreams. This is a tale of the lowest lows and the highest highs, followed by mediocre lows.

The first few weeks in LA were as I am sure you can imagine complete misery. I spent my nights watching all the channels of TV in my sublet. Things that made me cry: “300,” “Knocked Up,” Tila Tequila’s “Shot at Love,” and greasy men in fedoras. (By the end of the summer, the first three had lost their emotional impact. The same cannot be said for the fourth item.) Here is an excerpt from an email I sent at this time: “this city is disgusting. there is a cockroach infestation in my apt and i just saw an improv show and ha to swueeze into the last seat between two enormous chubs who used my legs as if they were cats and i was their scratching post.”

In Los Angeles, movie theaters have something called assigned seating. Which means you have to choose your seat without even knowing who would be beside you, who they are with, do they smell like Axe, and etc. I went solo to the Indiana Jones movie to check in with my man Shia and my institution Yale University. I crawled over all these peeps and was smack in the middle of a completely full row in the midst of a theater of full rows. I was so busy craning my neck and fake-texting that I didn’t notice my seat was broken. But it was broken in the kindest of ways — it lowered me slowly until it was almost vertical and I had been placed very gently on the floor.

I took this as a good omen of the compassionate nature of the city, and things began to look up. Also, I got a really good thigh workout holding myself up those 122 minutes of “Crystal Skull.”

I had this rental car which I now know was a Dodge Caliber, but at the time I thought it was an off-brand. Like the way Target makes its own paper towels. It was such a hideous and can-like car that I once spent an hour in a near empty parking lot trying to find it – I saw it, I read the Enterprise rental sign, I even ID’ed my sunglasses inside, but I just couldn’t reconcile that I would belong inside something that ugly.

These weeks will be known as the menstrual period – and will be forever remembered as a time of great, regrettable, emotional upheaval: “Why am I doing this who am I is this a meaningful pursuit.”

Luckily, the summer improved. My internship got sweet and my boss gave me a candle, I met a boy who sent me sexts like “hey babymilk” and I got to see the trailer for Babylon AD on the big screen. No spoilers!!!! Few details about the good days will be shared here, because if I am not self-effacing then my loyal readership (hey Jessie!) will diminish. These weeks were the total pwnage of what is to be referred to as Mollywood.

I snatched the red-eye into KY and lived out the remainder of my summer life in the sweet rain of the homeland, where I promptly contracted antibiotic-resistant tonsillitis and lived out the remaining remainder with hives. During the hivacious period (whew) many things happened. I started speaking entirely in the third person because I felt so alienated from my physical existence and I got hit on (“if I had teeth that pretty I would cut off my lips”) by an allergist who used my hideous rash as a startup for convo.

Ew.