The California I Was Sold

At ten years old, I knew exactly where I’d live as an adult: California. The best place EVER. Not the muted greens and quiet highways of North Carolina, where I grew up, but the Technicolor fantasy I’d absorbed through screens—cliffs gnawed by turquoise waves, redwoods piercing the clouds, tan people laughing on beaches like they’d never had a worry. I didn’t realize then that California’s tourism board had colonized my imagination. All I knew was that it looked like happiness.

Twelve years later, my parents’ eyebrows hit their hairlines when I landed a job in Southern California. “You were serious?” their looks seemed to say. Within an hour of touching down at LAX, I was shoving an In-N-Out burger into my mouth, the animal fries tasting like sweet victory. This was it: the promised land.

I worked at an outdoor science school in a speck-on-the-map town between Redlands and Big Bear—Angelus Oaks, population 300, where pine needles stuck to everything and the air smelled like vanilla sap and isolation. I was the only Black employee on a staff of 60. Maybe the only Black person in town. (Who would’ve told me?)

The dissonance hit like vertigo. I’d been raised to believe in colorblindness—“You’re just as white as you are Black,”my mother insisted—so why did I feel like a zoo exhibit? Internalized racism is an insidious beast of its own. Always demanding room rent free in your mind.

My coworkers plunged their hands into my hair like kids eating cotton candy, marveled at my “articulate” speech, and expected my comedic disposition to always be “on”. At night, I’d lie awake in my bunk, dissecting every interaction, wondering why their kindness left bruises. And the longer I questioned, the duller the light in my eyes became.

But here’s the cruel joke: California was everything I’d dreamed. We backpacked the Sierras, dove into frigid ocean waves at dawn, sang around campfires under galaxies I’d never seen in the desert dark. It was magic. And yet—and yet—I was unraveling. The more breathtaking the scenery, the louder the voice in my head hissed: You don’t belong.

I was experiencing a different reality from my peers. Their happy-go-lucky attitude was only possible for me if I became a world-class actor. With every gut-wrenching pang my body sent me, the deeper I ignored it. Until I was totally numb.

I coped how any stranded animal would: I fawned. I froze. I drank until the room spun. I gave the silent treatment to people who’d forgotten my hurt five minutes later. White supremacy doesn’t just burn crosses; it hands you the matches and calls it self-care. My nervous system, fried from constant micro-aggressions, mistook survival for weakness. Why can’t you just be happy? I’d scream at myself, watching my coworkers laugh over s’mores. You’re living the dream!

A decade later, I recognize that version of me—wide-eyed, aching, so desperate to love California that I blamed myself for its flaws—as a casualty of the stories we’re sold. The postcards never show the loneliness of being the only one like you for miles. No influencer admits that awe and alienation can coexist, that you can gasp at a sunset while counting the days until escape.

This isn’t a lament. It’s an excavation. I’m writing this on a plane back to the West Coast, tracing the fault lines between the California I was promised and the one I got. The truth is this: Joy and grief share the same heartbeat. You can love a place that doesn’t love you back. You can mourn a dream while still grateful you dreamed it.

So here’s my question: What’s the story you were sold? And where does it itch under your skin, unresolved?