Coming up this September, I’ll be celebrating my 7th year of living Los Angeles. Our relationship has not been an easy one. Of course, we did start things under awkward circumstances.

I headed out here shortly after graduating from college, mere months after my dad’s death, still not completely sure what exactly I was hoping to find across the country from my family. Purely coincidentally, I signed the lease to my first apartment on September 11, 2002. Good times.

This wobbly start notwithstanding, I dove headfirst into figuring out how to go about attaining that television writing career that seemed so incredibly out of reach. Two years, I believe was the amount of time I estimated I would need to decide if this path was worth pursuing.

It was around that time that my now ex-boyfriend and I broke up. We had moved out here together and in hindsight, I was tagging along more than actively deciding that Los Angeles was the place where I needed to be.

But it’s a testament to my resolve that I had by that point decided that yes, I was going to have a go at this rather than take our split as a good excuse to move back home and in with my mother who still halfway jokingly reminds me that she “could always renovate the house to add on a guest home for, oh I don’t know, anyone who might ever need to come live with me.” Me, her only unmarried daughter who doesn’t own a home.

Yes, I did opt to remain in Los Angeles but I found myself behaving like a noncommittal boyfriend who was sticking around until something better came along. Sure, we could enjoy each other’s company as long as things stayed light and nobody pressed me about any long-term plans. To be fair, L.A. doesn’t exactly make it easy. High prices, traffic and the constant circulation of people moving to and from the city often gave me the impression that living here, I would never be any more than an ant carrying a giant leaf on my shoulders from cubicle to cubicle. My fickle mistress was beautiful but demanding, keeping me away from the family I loved, who was living so far away.

Not so many weeks ago, in fact, I was feeling so disconnected and homesick that my daydream of returning back to Georgia to pursue a more modest, but less soul-sucking existence pervaded my every thought. My nieces and nephew were growing older every day and even though I was returning back every Christmas (and at least one other time a year, usually), there were milestones passing me by that seemed to pile up next to me like bricks in a wall. I was miserable.

Very recently, however, the tide has turned. Certain specific pressures have been alleviated with clever solutions. (Yes, I’m being vague on purpose.) My life has regained the rhythm it once had two years ago, after a series of disruptive events, and it dawned on me that much of this pressure was something I had placed on myself. Instead of setting healthy boundaries, I was allowing myself to exist in a dysfunctional relationship with Los Angeles. With my dream job dangling above my head, I was hypnotized into believing that I couldn’t say no. But then wonder of all wonders, I did start saying no. With every “no,” I shook myself free of the fear that was ruling my life and making me resent the very place had once represented hope for me.

When I started to think about what I would be leaving behind in the event of an exodus to Georgia, I began to imagine for the first time what it would feel like to be homesick for Los Angeles. Not so much the city itself, but the life I have here.

The other night, I sat on the couch in the livingroom of my friend Dan, with our friend Meredith as we watched Melrose Place on DVD, eating the pizza we had ordered spur of the moment. I told Meredith I was planning my first vacation in almost six years. “Do you know when the last time was I took a vacation? When we all went to Hawaii? That was six years ago.” Meredith laughed and shook her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe how long we’ve been friends now,” she mused.

“We” who went to Hawaii consisted of four relatively new friends of mine, Ilana, Meredith, Lisa B. and myself. Since then, Ilana has moved into Lisa B.’s apartment, and then it was bequeathed to me, where I sit as I type this. Lisa has moved back to NYC and Meredith is living with her boyfriend to whom she is now engaged. Sitting on the couch while someone was pushed into the pool on the TV screen while wearing a wedding dress, it dawned on me that I had a history here now. Even though the items contained in my one-bedroom apartment were few, up and leaving would be a lot more difficult than I had fantasized.

That would make this the part of the story where I got down on one knee for this city of mine, since, as you may have noticed, I’ve decided that I’m clearly the man in this relationship. But, true to my role, I have decided that perhaps the fact that we’re practically almost common-law at this point and that I’ve all but explicitly promised not to leave in the middle of the night without leaving a note should be enough.

(Just to be clear, that is a fake Emmy I’m holding. For the time being.)