one more day...

in



new york can be a difficult place to describe. never has a city of so many paradoxes existed. there are moments i feel this indescribably deep love for it. and then moments and days and months where i can barely breathe here, where i want to run screaming from my own skin.

i've been hating the city of late. and so everyone asks me the same question, when was the last time you got away? when was the last time you went home? away? august to chicago. home? march. 

i'm overdue. 

all new yorkers know you must constantly flee this place in order to sustain and cultivate your love for it. 

tomorrow, if i can wake in time to make my flight, i'll wing my way toward that great state of texas. and there i'll spend near a week so that when i do return...well, the hope is i'll be a bit more palatable (for everyone, to everyone, including myself). 


what all this really means is just one more day to keep that wicked jaw in check. wish me luck. 

in






"I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of 
people and then me, on the outside. Because how do 
you meet a new person? I was stunned by this for many 
years. And then I realized, you just say, 'Hi.' 
They may ignore you. Or you may marry
them. And that possibility is worth that one word."

Augusten Burroughs

resurfacing.

in

i cried in whole foods this week. there was a woman who made me cry. she was unkind and i lost my voice. so i cried.

but it wasn't really about her.

and then again on the subway platform the next day, at one in the morning, waiting for the train. i turned into one of the green pillars, with no one around, and quietly sobbed.

few things have felt better.

last night as i climbed out of a cab at an unreasonable hour after an unreasonably long day i handed the driver the cab fare in all singles. many, many singles. and i apologized for all the ones. but he smiled, said in his culture, such a thing was good luck. i laughed, good luck for both of us then, i replied. good luck for me having unwittingly, unknowingly passed good luck onto you.

i sat down this morning to write about these last two months. about the sadness that pressed in and what i know now. and i got some stuff out about it, but not enough and there's not enough time today. never enough time anymore, it seems. though, maybe there never was?

all i can say is that today, end of this week, i'm okay.

i don't like uncertainty. and much as i attempt to explore the virtue of the unknown and life's multitudinous shades of gray, i'm mostly at a loss. i am mostly undone by the gray.

my mother asked me this go round what the catalyst was for this bout of blue (or whatever you want to call it because surely no name really ever does it justice) and i told her some things are sacred. and secret. and must remain as such. that this time, the answer to that question, was yes, in fact, known, but mine. and mine alone.

sacred. and mine.

tom granted me a gift yesterday. sitting in his office, talking about it all, he looked right at me and said, you know, i think it had to happen. just as it did. it was absolutely vital and necessary. and it couldn't have unfolded any other way. 


and there was breath in that moment. life. as i come back to myself now, that moment resonates.

today thinking on it, tom's language strikes my ear as unusual. i think mostly because, being the good therapist he is, he never really speaks in absolutes. most usually refrains from confirming or denying much of what i spout.

but he offered that up yesterday. without prompting. he handed me that absolute.

it had to happen that way.

all of life, all of my life (and i venture all of anyone's really) has to go just as it does. has to. there's comfort in that. a real comfort and release in that.

had to happen. that way.






(don't think this song in this week's parks and rec episode didn't make me cry. and lord help me, aren't april and andy just the best?).