I didn’t come to Southern California to find love. I came because I was tired.
Tired of working too many hours with a chronic illness. Tired of my side gig running ultramarathons. Tired of dating men in New York who looked great on paper but left me feeling even more invisible than I had as a child, when my mother called me “garbage” for having a congenital cataract that left me legally blind in one eye.
At 45, I was a doctor with acquired autoimmune disorder, a long trail of self-sabotage and no idea how to be loved. Intimacy terrified me. My body could endure 50 miles of running — but a dinner date? That felt like a risk I couldn’t survive…