Did The Desert Change Me?

On Sunday morning at 6:30 a.m., I woke up alone in my car. I blinked, my contacts sticking to my eyelids — not unlike my legs sticking together from sweat. I got up, packed my car, and drove away from the desert without speaking to anyone else at my camp. At this moment, I committed the ultimate faux pas of an LA girl at Coachella — leaving a day early. Even worse — not wearing the outfit I had spent months putting together, complete with a denim patchwork skirt and cheetah-print belt.

When I got home, I cried, showered, and crawled into bed. When I woke up, I smiled at my partner beside me.

“What an incredible decision.”

A hyperbole — but at that moment, I was happy. Free. It’s a weird thing to feel content after deciding to abandon an event I looked forward to for months, but that is how it went.

I thought a lot about how to write this article. I was asked to take my “west coast perspective” and talk about attending Coachella this year. That made sense; patrons travel from around the world to attend Coachella, which hosts around 125,000 people per day. It is arguably the most culturally-relevant festival, and growing up in LA, attending was considered a right of passage. What my editors didn’t know was: my experience was a mess. I will spare most details of my 20-something friend falling-out that, in true LA fashion, happened one day into Coachella. 

The TLDR: A friend and I attended together in 2024 and had been planning this year’s trip since. At the last minute, I learned of a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity, so I left Coachella day zero and came back for day one that Friday afternoon.

Before I left, my friend promised that if she won any VIP tickets, she would of course give me her spare. When I returned? She had won, and given the ticket to someone else. She somehow managed to win again the next day — and do the same thing.

I felt betrayed. She posted constantly on TikTok (partially about me), prioritizing her other friends and social media presence — and leaving me behind. I wouldn’t expect this from any friend, let alone from the person I had planned the trip with. She was supposed to be my best friend, my safe person in the group, and in the spirit of vulnerability, I cried more that weekend than I have in months, if not years. This resulted in a very different type of festival that I have never personally experienced: a festival alone. Now, I call it a forced growth opportunity.

I love live music. I love it for the community — the moment when you realize everyone around you knows the words too and you instantly have something in common. Usually, if I go to concerts alone, I am so excited that I transform into a much more social version of myself, quickly making friends and sharing Fireball shooters in the GA queue. At Coachella, I found myself in a different situation. Perhaps I was timid after my “lifelong friendships” had suddenly collapsed (don’t call friendships in your 20s lifelong, by the way). Or perhaps the Coachella rumor mill was true, and I should only expect to meet cagey influencers trying to get the perfect photo.

Honestly, I have nothing to say about the people there — yes, there are the “Coachella types,” and there are people like me. I interacted with pretty much none of them.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the difference between alone and lonely, and even more time trying to avoid the latter. I have surrounded myself with people that are inconsiderate and selfish and ignored it because I believed it is better to be lonely in a group. I know myself, and I know that I would have spent the festival catering to these friends. I would have drank more than I wanted if it meant keeping up; I would have feigned interest in their self-obsessed social media presences; I would have been alone one way or another. 

Yes, they forced my hand. I could have let it go. Normally, I would have. If I am being honest, I tried to let it go, but it got worse. I got something else in return.

Live music is everything to me — that has nothing to do with anyone else. I owed it to myself to wipe away the tears, blot my cherry red face — not from the crying but rather the 102-degree heat — and do what I wanted. I had access to an adult playground with no obligations to anyone but myself. Coachella has everything: drinks, food, arts stations, DJ areas, rose gardens, and best of all, music. 

While the friend group left to go to a different set, I stayed in the pit to wait for my headliner: Charli XCX. The pit was almost unbearably hot. I sat on my bandana, using the sardine-packed crowd as shade. I considered leaving, to try to find my friends and choose the arguably easier path. I stayed, sitting on the ground as dried grass merged into my legs through the thin bandana I thought would protect me. I let it happen — eventually I couldn’t feel the grass, the sunscreen-sweat mixture started to feel like moisturizer, the festival-goers screaming became white noise. I looked down at the four belts and crimped shorts I wore. I really was happy with the outfit. 

When Charli came out, the crowd fixated on her. She commands an audience. With Charli’s hyperpop style and lyrics reflecting an authentically confused adulthood, I was with her. I screamed the words, safe in a crowd by myself with nobody watching me.

Perhaps misled, I had hoped my best friend would have found me for “Girl, So Confusing,” Charli and Lorde’s song about reconciling friendship, but by the first note, I knew that nobody was coming. It was just me, and that was okay.

Ten feet away from the stage, I looked up to see Lorde rising from the stage. How freeing it was to sing a song about friendship alone, but not lonely! (If you don’t count the company of Charli XCX and Lorde.) My relationship with these artists has lasted over half of my life, and they would never do me wrong. If I had abandoned the pit to find my friends, sacrificing myself for some comfort, I wouldn’t have had this experience. I would have been lonely, and I am so glad that didn’t happen.

The worst people you know probably will tell you that the desert changed their life: “I will never be the same after Chella,” and so on. I’ve been saying that too. Two months later, my life looks very different than it did.

My friends went back to Coachella Weekend Two and did not tell me, let alone invite me to join. I got the job I interviewed for. I haven’t spoken to those friends, and they have continued to isolate me from the group. I could be petty, and truthfully I have been, but I am choosing to move onward and upward, embrace change, heal myself — all of it. My life feels more full today than it has in years.

I expected to have the Coachella experience I had in the past: simply a fun time. I didn’t expect or ask for a growth opportunity, but hey, at least I can now authentically say that the desert did change my life — for the better.

Special shoutout to my friends Dom and Courtney who I got to see amid solo-Chella. Thank you for being there.