Sometimes, our deepest loves aren't people at all -- they're the places that make us feel most like ourselves. Laura Dave tells a story about one of those places in her essay, which is read by Diane Guerrero ("Orange is the New Black").
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Modern love. The podcast is supported by Carmax.
You the freedom to shop. However, you, like you, can shop
a car on mine and on the lot, once you find the right car, you can
I, however, you want buy online
and get home delivery in select markets or buy online and entries express pickup at Carmax and and no matter how you, your your car, comes with a thirty day. Money back guarantee up to fifteen hundred miles, learn more and start shopping at Carmax dot com karma
Carbine RE reimagined
produced by the island at W B, Wbur Boston.
Oh, the from the New York Times and W B. Wb are Boston. This is modern the stories of love loss and redemption. I'm your host magnet Chakrabarti, the sometimes the thing we love most isn't a person. It could be a place that we were.
Turn to over and over again at different times.
AMS throughout our lives, Laura
Right about one of those places in her peace, GPS for my lost identity.
it's read by Diane Guerrero. You can see
in Jane, the Virgin and orange is the new black she's. Also the author of a new
book called my family divided last summer
I found out that my identity had been stolen. It was the week
and of a friend's wedding, and I was standing
inside the memorial church at Stanford University for the rehearsal, when I called my bank to make sure I could clear an important check, you may garland
anytime. The bank associate told me that this would be impossible. As my account was almost
thousand dollars overdrawn
She then asked me if I was calling from Mexico. I looked around at
in sprawling green students playing frisbee tourist snapping photograph
and told the woman that I was fairly certain. I wasn't.
Four Dave most recently called to inform us. She was in Mexico. She replied if you're, not there, then who are you my head started to hurt and it would continue to hurt, as the details emerged over the next few days
this person had acquired a debit card in my name and had used it to spend tens of thousands of dollars in going over every debit charge,
The bank associate asked me if I'd shopped at Victoria's secret, like ever, I asked
Do you know what the meat barn is? She asked? No, I said
did I want to know definitely not still.
The gravity of the situation. Hadn't really sunk in, I thought it would all be taken care of with a few phone calls. Then the first police detective I spoke with said
ready kid. Once someone gets a hold of your identity, you have to fight the good fight to get it back. This is just the beginning. Could he be right? I thought I was coming.
To the end of a period in which.
I had already fought the good fight, a period in which
I had asked and answered many questions about my identity. Following a break up the fall before I had struck
How to feel like myself again during those first few months
version of me that I'd recognized as being essentially generous and open to the world seemed to.
temporarily disappeared. At warp speed. I gone from easy going to Confrontational
when a friend called in the middle of the night. To tell me he was having trouble with his wife, I told
them to look in the mirror and begin therapy.
When another asked what I thought about her quitting a job she hated and moving too.
South America. I told her that
and I believe she was serious about being that brave. We could have that conversation historically
I was the friend others sought out for relationship advice or to discuss a complicated family problem
I prided myself on being non judge, but clearly, as I
to start over that me was closed for business.
I needed to return to my most
independent self
translated into not having much room for other people I dived into work die.
into exercise and avoided diving into relationships, romantic or otherwise. At all costs
and almost accidentally I found my
straddling two lives.
A new one. I was starting in LOS Angeles and the one I had left New York.
Day trip to Southern California in the spring turned into work opportunities which led to months of flying back and forth. This was
moving forward, wasn't only
Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was just
moving around, which isn't at all the same thing
because there was post
weekend at a coffee shop somewhere off highway? One o one on my way back to LOS Angeles in the surreal position of proving to
Skeptical strangers, on the other end of credit hotlines that I was who I said I was, but I couldn't give them an accurate address
Did I live in California or New York? I couldn't receive
facts forms they need me to fill out, because I had no access to a fax machine alone
and phone number sorry don't have one
I couldn't even tell them where I was going to be next week and
I had unwittingly organize my life so that I was far away from nearly everyone who could remind me of myself.
which of these can I help you with credit cards. Another ethics.
Call this time with a credit union revealed that not only had the new Laura emptied, my checking account. She
had also opened at least seven credit card accounts. In my name after I hung up,
a woman at the nearby table gave me a kind smile? I didn't mean to listen in, but my sister in law got her identity stolen too. She said
And it all turned out all right. I asked not really
It was a nightmare that went on for years. I got back in
my car turned on the radio is high as it would go and continue towards LOS Angeles.
Begin wondering. How could I
I have known this was all happening. What was
going to do to stop it. Just then I realized I was about to pass the turnoff
that leads to the Monterrey Peninsula and big sir. The first time I had gone to bed,
sir. I was nine years old and on a road trip with my family as we hit the expanse of highway one.
When Carmel and Big Sur that almost impossible stretch of road carved into the divide of steep mountain rock and ocean, I had the strongest visceral reaction. I'd had any place in the World
My father pulled the car over and, as my brother tells it, I started to cry because I was so happy. I tended toward melodrama as a child
but I can remember with great clarity sitting across from my father at a woodsy restaurant in big sur that evening and looking
asked him out the window at the confluence of mountains and ocean. With a feeling of amazement.
and an awareness I had never experienced before
not unlike falling in love for the first time such intense feelings can
you feel small in their grass or if it's a good love kind one you can feel the opposite bigger than you are braver, more certain of yourself,
three years ago after I had finished writing my first book, I returned
the Big sur and Sir a washed out January staring out at those cliffs the highway
As to the south, by storm damage and to the north
by fallen rock brutal enough that I didn't venture far that way either
had a black umbrella and big boots and took long walks each afternoon,
The Van ten, a wilderness soggy and completely unaccommodating humbling and the best way it was a happy
and while I had gone back there intending to start a new project, what I didn't
other than take walks.
The whole lot of nothing. Nothing had never.
filled my days so expansively, which is part of the allure of the place and ease with it
Alpha invites you in a little at a time eventually reminding you in big
in small ways of your own humanity.
And now here I was again about to miss the turn. But
time in serious need of a positive force. A detour, especially this detour was not the wisest plan. I had police reports to file paperwork that was due. Yes
The officers words echoed in my mind kid. This is just the beginning. Still I took the exit as I
West Carmel and began winding through those mountain side, curves and bridges towards Big Sur Valley. It was late
after noon and turning very Wendy. I kept the windows open anyway. My first stop was that would see restaurant on the cliffs edge, where I had eaten with my family
decades ago and where I'd also has Sunday night dinner during that rain, drenched January I walked inside and took in the
familiar mahogany bar and high rafters, and those windows offering uninterrupted views of the ocean and mountains.
the restaurant, was closed for dinner setup, but the day
integer. Let me go out to the terrace, where I
old and at a table with a mug of coffee and watch the sunset Henry Miller.
Who loved big sur and made it his home once said that
Until we lose ourselves, there is no hope of finding ourselves.
What about the other Laura walking around in Mexico spending my money and even speaking, to official
at my bank all in an appeal
lay convincing performance of me
and here I was the real me-
unable to tell in ways that
ostensibly mattered- a Atkins
it's story about who I was.
it made me wonder for a moment, if maybe she was
surely a better candidate for being me than I was, but sitting on
Terrorists, the peacefulness that envelop me when I stepped into the restaurant begin
and changing into a kind of bedrock familiarity and all at once. I felt completely like myself,
the self who had been tested or the self who was still figuring out where she was going next
but the one beneath all that the self I had become
acutely aware of my first time in big sur-
The girl who was in awe of the world around her and her place in it
Maybe this is what we get in life. A few great loves love
that return us to ourselves when we need it most.
Maybe some of those loves aren't people but places real
adopted homes that fill us up with light and energy and hope at moments,
we feel especially tired or lost.
That is the beauty of love in all its forms.
we don't know when or how it's going to save us. That's Diane Guerrero reading, Laura Dave's essay GPS for my last identity will catch up with Laura
the break
pod cast is supported by the new Showtime original documentary, Cyprus Hill Insane in the brain part of show times hip hop. Fifty celebration, Grammy nominated Group, Cyprus, Hills, unique ability to blend hip hop in ROC, had icons from all over the map, praising them as profits of illegal we'd movement, Cyprus, Hill defied the stigma of the nineties and cemented their legacy as hip hop superstars Cyprus. Hill in
in the brain premiering this for twenty. Only on Showtime,
I love spelling bee. My boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together I mean sitting next to each other playing individually and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see, but you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed in sorry. It may have happened again today. I have one friend who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words that I always get nervous that I sent it to my parents or something like that when my dad was like the first time together and I was out- I think I got it- see it J, a c k, P, o g jack. We hit the jackpot, panicked, yeah, Elrond nice, I'm same as earth's sky. The digital pulses editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee in all our games at n, one times dot, com, slash games.
Laura Dave says that the identity thieves used her information to open thirteen different credit cards that made it hard for investigators to keep up with them
and allowed them to go on a huge spending spree. These people bought over two hundred thousand dollars worth of products they bought a tunnel
stuff from Victoria's secret? They bought so much sporting equipment. So much
stereo equipment
there was a lot of food purchased and then some specific food there was lots of pizza deliveries and
There were lots.
Deliveries. This was a long
time ago, and I still remember being
In all of a five thousand dollar purchase at Marshall's, I remember thinking: how can you purchase five thousand dollars worth of?
products at Marshall's and not raise any alarms. They were never caught.
And Laura also never learned why she became their target the bill
I had been living in a New York. There were a couple of other people that had there
identity stolen in that building as well. So I thought it's someone that has access to the mailboxes. Is it someone that work
in the buildings that someone that works at the post office, but I actually think what happened was
It was two thousand and eight the internet was up and running. So there was enough technology that identity theft was running rampant, but the differ
With me was, I wasn't around to stop it.
Laura's identity theft turned into a grand larceny case. Her credit was.
those in for almost a decade, but she says she hasn't suffer.
Permanent financial damage and she was recently able to buy her first home in Santa Monica and Laura says that
even though it caused such havoc in her life. She was able to find some good in all the chaos
and I had to be the one vouch for myself. I realize
as in ad,
way. What
or to me. I don't think it's a
coincidence that,
six months later, I met my
now husband and moved to our home in LOS angeles- and I never did have
that sense of
feeling so lost again. It was a gift of faith.
That when she learned about the identity theft, she was so close to the place that made her feel most like herself.
Big sur is just truly one of the most magical places in the world. It's one of those places,
the longer you spend there. You kind of
realize that it has this quiet.
beauty that is truly healing. I have a friend who said about big Sur. It is
Kind of like
watching your soul outside of your own body. There is a piece
illness there and
sure it that
Really has never been tampered with.
There is something about places that, if we're lucky
he reminded us of all the different people we ve been at the different times. We ve been in that place and
it's nice to have an exit that you get
and as soon as you are in that town again or
walking down that path again,
you see all the versions of yourself that
Another person
even never knew
Laura has a son now, but she hasn't brought him to big, sir, yet she's,
she will someday for now. It's still a place that feels like her own.
it's so drilled into us that there's this person that's going to save
said: there's someone, that's gonna, save us
and what a nice idea that we are going,
You bring ourselves somewhere. That is good
to help us save ourselves.
Flora Dave she's
list living in Santa Monica with her husband and son. Her books include eight hundred grapes
London is the best city in America and the Divorce Party
but more after the break,
you're hiring. You know it can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. You just hope the right candidate comes along, but not when you use it for Cooter, the zip recruiters technology finds qualified candidates for you than actively invites them to apply. In fact,
five employers who posted zip recruiter, get a qualified candidates within the first day. Try it free today at zero, cruder, dot com, slash and why t that super cruder, dot, com, slash and wide tee
Ziprecruiter the smartest way to hire
I love spelling my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together I mean sitting next to each other playing individually and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see, but you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed in sorry. It may have happened again today. I have one friend who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words that I always get nervous that I sent it to my parents or something like that when my dad was like the first time together- and I was it out- I think I got it- see it J, a c k, P, o t jack. We hit the jackpot, panicked, yeah, Elrond nice, I'm same as earth's sky. The digital pulses editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee in all our games at n, one times dot, com, slash games.
Daniel Jones, editor of the modern love column for the New York Times, says that usually one of the rules of the column is that essays need to be about a person rather than a place. You know
in the best rules are made to be broken. I guess because in this case it really is a story,
about alone,
of place in this place, big, sir, or at least how a place in
forms your identity and shapes you and lets. You
know who you are. I thought Lord
that so powerfully here that it just
me over sheets are lost track of who she was so to get back in touch with of deepest part of herself.
Took a detour to where, where that part of herself
the most alive
thanks again to Diane Guerrero for reading this week's piece you can see
in Jane the Virgin and Orange is the new black book. Is my family divided? It's about her
deportation to Colombia when she was just fourteen and how she was left behind. She's also hosted the pod cast how it is next week
Kemper, who stars in unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Once I threw a playground ball at the head of a boy.
Was repeatedly dunking, my young son underwater. Before I threw the ball. I shouted at him to stop, but he continued. I was at the other end of the pool, maybe a six seconds swimming
but my five year old son was gasping and pleading and the fastest way to make. My point was to throw the ball. I played college baseball,
a pretty good on modern love is the production of the New York Times and W B you are Boston, NPR station, its produced, directed and edited by Jessica Albert
Caitlin O'Keefe John Perotti Emery Sivertson
sound design and original scoring by matters
Our intern is Louisa Judge,
here for the modern podcast was conceived by Liza Toby. I
Adler's our executive producer, Daniel Jones,
the editor of modern love for the New York Times, an adviser to the show music for the pod cast courtesy of a pm,
I'm Meghna Chakrabarti see you next week. The.
Transcript generated on 2022-04-16.