What if we chose where to live the way we choose who to love?

What if we moved for our friends the way we move for jobs?

I’m writing this after I’ve already left.

I moved to Los Angeles seven or eight years ago. I was young. I was naive in some ways. I was sure of my skills, but starting to become less sure of who I was. Maybe I thought I could reinvent myself. Maybe I thought being American would become who my new identity. Plot twist: I didn’t. I ended up just giving my core self a small upgrade. I learned to communicate better. I picked up some useful therapy language. I started naming things my family never taught me to name. I began to face generational trauma head on.

The plan my mom and I concocted was simple: advance my career. Be the first in my family to get a master’s degree. Gain citizenship. Feel less displaced. And find love.

All of it happened. None of it happened the way I imagined.

In those years, I lived in five places across Los Angeles. Each move taught me something. Each space held a version of me I was still figuring out. I ended up in Highland Park, and for a while, it felt like the closest I’d come to getting it right. To finding what I thought I came here for. I could have been happy there forever.

This piece is about why I chose Highland Park.

I always knew deep down that I wasn’t built for living alone. I like hearing life around me. I like knowing help is near. But being in America, the idea of getting your own place— the ultimate mark of adulthood — is shoved down your throat at every turn.

So I chose Highland Park. Well, my best friend chose it. I chose proximity to her and her family. (Now my chosen family.) The food. The corner grocery instead of a Whole Foods. The pace. The politics I could see in the street.

Last year, this decision mattered more than I knew. In Arab culture, grief moves with you. On balconies. Over breakfast. In the quiet space between people who understand without asking. In America, grief sits in the body. It goes silent. It simmers. Proximity mattered. Familiar food mattered. Streets that reflected my values mattered. Friends who understood without asking mattered. A neighborhood where it was easy to be mindful of where my money went mattered.

The world fractured in ways that felt impossible to name. Since 2023, proximity to people who saw it too made everything more bearable. The politics of place weren’t abstract. I saw them in shop windows. On bumpers. On walls. The kind of politics that didn’t just live on the internet.

I tried to be mindful where I spent my money. The local spots. The shops where people knew your face. The places that kept the neighborhood alive. I know my money still fed gentrification in ways I couldn’t stop. I’m still figuring out how to do better.

Highland Park taught me what home means. Home is proximity. Home is food made with memory. Home is asking for help and knowing it will come. Home is choosing where you stand and who you stand with.

Leaving made sense. The chapter closed for now. Not forever. But the choice was right. That place shaped me. Those years shaped me. They taught me what I want to build next and who I want to build it with.