The noose looked ridiculous. Fashioned from a braided extension cord, it was likely too stiff to be an effective neck breaker anyway and I would end up strangling in a flailing, pantomimed panic. The asymmetrical loop at the end was misshapen and hanging off to the right like an elongated number six, and the bright orange color of the cord lent a circus air about the entire endeavor. Would it even hold my weight, wrapped around the cheap light fixture like it was?

It’s easy to write about it now, that I’d often thought about killing myself, thought specifically about how I might do it: drowning, overdose, asphyxiation; immolation is a personal favorite. I’ve even talked about the virtues and pitfalls of different methods with strangers on the bus.

“Why would you do such a thing?” was always a popular response. But I think that is the wrong way to look at it. I’ve always thought the better question was “Why not do such a thing?”

So ‘Why not do such a thing’ was the question I began to ask these strangers in return.

“What prevents you from doing such a thing? Do you like it here that much? Are you in love? Do people depend on you being here? Did it never occur to you? Are you afraid?”

I am not afraid.

If you knew you would come back, knew you would live again, not just believed it, but knew it, why would you not do such a thing?

But I didn’t put my neck into that noose, not out of fear but out of courtesy really, because this place, this type of desperate end would be too horrible to remember. That’s the trouble with having a perfect memory. Its benefit is that you remember everything that has ever happened to you. Its drawback is that you can never forget anything that has ever happened to you. The former imparts wisdom; the latter robs you of hope. I decided to write down this story with the certainty that I will look on it again with different eyes in a different time and remember who I'd been.

I left Minnesota three years ago because I started to remember. I left to find myself, only to find myself here, in Los Angeles. Nobody's exactly what they seem in L.A. Everyone has an ulterior motive for leading their everyday lives. No one's just a doctor, or a student, or a salesman; they’re a doctor and an art collector, a student with an audition next week, a salesman with a screenplay. In this place more than any other I've found, there is anonymity in being more than you seem. And that, more than anything else, explains why I landed here.