the city has been ripped out of me like a gnarly tooth
Yeah. So I traded in my speechless swoon over the weekend for the speechless hell I am in now. I am not one of those people who likes to be fueled by drama and discord. No, seriously. I lose my ability to express when I am all gummed up and stressed out. So I have been largely quiet. I don’t like reporting negative shit–it’s not comfortable for me at all. Especially since I have been out of here for long enough that my negativity is nothing but a hollow memory from when I lived here before. For a shortened version of these events: it involved a jerk manager from Denver who refused to give me my money back for a purchase, a TSA agent with her ignorance about why I wouldn’t go through the XRay machine while my earrings were somehow magically swiped from the bin as she violated me, to a crazy experience arriving causing me to have to endure 2 hours of tears when I was just waiting to leave the airport. Insane? Yes. Certainly not the wonderful moment of recognition I imagined, where these cities would wrap their arms around me pleading for my return. I did get a video of my reunion with my dog, which is actually super adorable. But, nuh-uh. Not living here ever again. A visit is something, and it will be memorable, if not for the fact that there is a hurricane rolling through Sunday. Oh, there will be photographs, but jesus christ. I have ensured this memorability too since me and my three best friends, Kristen, Fabricio and Lisa have some plans which should prove interesting (wink wink).
Yes, I am enjoying my friends, the people who make this even worth it. Of course I am not going to complain exactly about being able to see my friends and my former home really at all. But the energy here is off. It’s not what I have grown accustomed to feeling. There is also that heady realization that it’s not the romantic dream you are all perceive it to be. NY is good if you are rich or are lucky, two things I tend to fall short with. No, NY is probably great if you are rich or lucky. I made it here for a dozen years, and I had many magical moments and my life for a time was of course pretty magical. I spent all of my twenties in NY, pretty much, so it was a great place to form tastes, opinions and experience life. It was the place I moved to where I found my voice, my personality largely formed due to my experiences here. If it weren’t for the stress of always trying to achieve, to find your way to the top, I might never have left. Ok, so that’s a lie. They always said if you stay here is it 5 years, you never leave. I always told everyone, “watch me–one day, I’ll be gone.”
And oh, man, is NY stressful. You can feel the buzz of the temperament here. And it is largely stressed and ill-at-ease. It is frantic, it is quick. There is no ability to savor the experience, as your environments and scenes change with such frequency that you are never able to fully absorb your space or the people around you. Conversations change pace and flow quickly, everyone is always moving, and so you are always moving too. It is hurried and you better be fast, you better be quick–from those who wait on you to those who you wait on, everything moves quickly as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
I had no idea I would feel like this–I assumed all of my familiarity and twisted romantic visions of NY would be enough to keep me interested in being here, maybe even imagine moving back even for a minute. You know, how the city is a twisting moving mass of heartbeats and body heat? That the center of the world sometimes feels like it is here, with the entirety of the world’s cultures pretty well represented in the swarms of consumerism and people walking its streets. New York is like a shiny crystal on a chandelier, refracting and reflecting pretty–art and culture and beauty, history, all around it. It has a pulse that is palpable, and the frenzy, and though I am glad I did it to ensure I had a personality capable of sustaining me pretty much anywhere, and an understanding of struggle and working hard that most people don’t get an opportunity to really understand, nor forced to endure.
Granted I am clearly the queen of vacation these days, but there were literal years my time was not my own, but for 4 hours of sleep a night. Then I was working full time and bartending part time–40 hours corporate and maybe 3 nights of 9-4 am. When I was in school I worked full time and went full time the last year I bailed. 3 classes met twice a week, 1 class met three times a week. I worked in between, clocking my 40 hours in the spaces between days.
Now I live in peace and serenity and you can feel it off of me, people have remarked. Apparently you can even see it in my face. I had this line that was starting to etch itself deep in between my eyes, and though there are slim hints of it you can see sometimes depending on my stress level, it is largely smoothed out and calm. My friends were commenting on it, given they said my face had a glow to it they had not seen before.
Those of you who told me that I would be disgusted by the amount of alcohol I could drink while at sea level, um, yeah. About that: so the first night what was it, two, three margaritas, one bottle of wine shared with Lisa, beer, two more bottles of wine shared with Lisa. Awesome. haha. Then the second night, which was last night, I had a glass of wine here, 8 more glasses at my friends’ home…and then two more beers with Kristen. Oh man, that man can cook–Swedish meatballs in a cream sauce with mushrooms and tarragon over rice…I know, I cut out meat largely, but if I keep eating how I have been eating, I am going to gain 5 pounds on the food alone.
The news is freaking all of us out with its blaring about Hurricane fucking Irene…I am going to be pissed to have this happen while I am here, really. With the earthquake that happened the other day, this is not going to bode well for the foundations that have already been shaken. Yes, the earthquake was felt in the building I am in, but the house we were hanging out in that day did not tremble at all. When E reported the building was shaking in a text message preceded by a bunch of omg’s, well, I thought it was just a hallucination given by the most anxiety prone person I know–crying wolf, I thought.
See, stress?!?
My little romantic adventure in New York is going to be a wet one, the complete opposite of my sun-filled life in Denver. Being in Denver feels like being in the kingdom at the top of Jack’s beanstalk, all romantic and cloud filled, a mile closer to the sun. Those mountains purple-silhouetted across the sky add to that magic little life, too…can’t you tell?
Get me out of here!!!
