No Better Place (Just sometimes I forget)

It's been a bit rought here lately. I've been sick and a little sad and more than a little overhwelmed. I promise to write for real soon. I've started a lot of entries, all about the things I'm thinking about, the plans I'm making. All of which involve us staying here, digging our roots in even deeper than they are now. In the entry below I talk about how it's somehow inevitable that we someday leave this city, and now? Well, now I'm not so sure. We really have made this home and thrived. And I'm so very proud of us for that.

II can't put to words how very lucky I am. To be here, with Sam. To be living this life. So I went back and found an old, old entry that talks about that and figured I'd share. ( I know Aunt Judy and Dave haven't seen this, and well, honestly I know I owe them especially something to read. . . )


For No Better Place - 01.28.05


New York.

People keep asking me now if we're staying, Sam and I. As if becoming married will immediately propel us to the suburbs where we will be compelled to suddenly own SUVs and nourish already spoiled, overly-sized dogs.

And it's a hard question for me. I love this city, obviously, if you have read any of my previous posts. I came here looking for much more than the degree that brought me. The piece of paper was merely a catalyst. I wanted to find out who I was. I wanted to stop crushing madly on this place and have a downright affair with it. I wanted the city in all its mythical proportion to become real to me. To dirty my boots, wear out the soles of my feet, and teach me how to live on pasta and cereal. I wanted to know, in all honesty, if this place would break me. If it really was all people said it was.

And I wanted to know, if the person I always dreamed about being was inside of me. I had always dreamed of moving here. I had always talked of it. And when I made the decision, a good friend I hadn't seem in ten years looked at me with the most genuine expression on his face and said, "I always knew you'd end up there."

I wasn't sure I could do this. I wasn't sure I'd find what I'd hoped for here. I wanted to be here, be a part of it. I want to not just survive my experience, but thrive in it. I wanted to leave the big skies and sweeping winds of my home, and build a new one in a place that was foreign and like no other place I'd been.

And I did. And what's even more I've built a home here with Sam. This will always be our first home. This city. This place. This is where we searched for a new home together, where we ran blocks to get to the agent to make sure it was *this* one, the one we unpacked our separate stuff shoved tightly in my boxes and his boxes, and somehow ended up with a place that's ours. Where we shopped for furniture and shower curtains, and cleaned and cooked and celebrated our first Thanksgiving. Where we wandered unexplored streets and avenues together, where we happily got lost in the park together. Where we planned meals and chose produce out of balsa wood crates in a lot by a park weekend after weekend together.

This is where he asked me to spend the rest of my life with him, and because of this - New York City will always be "home" to me. In ways all the other places I have lived haven't become.

These, these memories, this "first" of our life together, makes New York City a whole 'nother place to me. It stopped being a place to conquer and a place to savor and explore and share.

If it's possible, I love it even more now. But I still dream of having a house with a yard, a space that is ours alone - where we don't hear sirens, or traffic, or neighbors constantly. Where we can paint the walls if we choose, or get in the car and drive to the mountains on a whim. I dream of it often, in fact.

But it doesn't have me packing my bags. It just has me thinking. And due to this thinking and dreaming, I know I probably won't be here forever. But right now, it feels right. It feels like home.

I never want to be the kind of person who leaves New York because she can't take it anymore - because she's lost the carefree and accepting sheen that makes piles of garbage on Sundays okay, that ignores the filth of the subway and the random passing commentary of the crazies. I never want to get fed up with New York. It'll be a sad day for my inner urban warrior if I do.

But I will leave someday. I'll kiss this city gently on the cheek as we say goodbye and thank it sincerely for all its offered. I will promise to visit often, and cry at the thought that I will soon be forgotten amongst it's masses. My story will be small and insignificant to all the other stories that have happened here. Much like I was amongst all the other people while I lived here. But my experience here, my story here, will always be monumental to me.

For why I came, what I found, and what I'll be lucky enough to leave with. My life, my sense of self -- the feeling there is nothing I can't conquer somehow. I'll be leaving for a new adventure then, I know it. And the beautiful part about it is that time, I won't be going alone.