here’s a page from the free bird’s handbook
I can really be ok with the solitude, given I kind of have always done what I want, on my schedule. Well, maybe not always– but it is one of the bonuses of being an adult: choosing when you get to leave and where you ultimately go. We are never forced to take any jobs and even getting past that small concession that you might not like where you are going, you ultimately are the one setting the leave and arrive schedule. If you have children, sure, I can give you that it’s really not about you. I just don’t right now, so my concerns are much more ascribed to providing myself with the most beautiful experience I can possibly be exposed to-and besides, I would be worried if I was trying to live it for anyone else. This is an issue I tempted myself with tonight, a lovely “adult” decision, whether to buy a bottle of vodka to go with my lemonade. I did realize instead it would need to be red wine to actually benefit me at all, so I saved my cash. All free choice. Should I go to get a cocktail, take a walk, read a book? All me. Lonely, sure, I’ll give you that sometimes, but me time has always been super important.
I am also comfortable with the other valid point: I am a wandering kind of girl, in my mind at least never attached to one place for forever, eager to travel and see more of the world. Part of my dreams involve being exposed to every kind of foreign culture I am interested in; see life and the way it is lived in other parts of the world, understand what motivates them, and see the common threads throughout our existence across multiple cultures. How I stayed in one place for 12 years is something of a miracle. I got asked the other day what was New York about me. What a weird question, right? You think you’ve been somewhere a certain amount of time (a dozen years?) that it would make you smell or act a certain way, that it would just seep off of you. And I guess compared to the me that existed before, the personality I have is not one I even bother to dilute. I say what I mean, and mean what I say, and although sometimes it comes out not-so-nice, my reasons come from a place of…you got it, reason. When I moved to NY, even with a louder voice than I have now, I was shy, reserved and easily embarrassed. Now I can be kinda quiet, gregarious, obnoxious and really will say whatever I feel like, even if it ultimately embarrasses me…all in the name of the laugh, see.
I don’t care, and maybe I edit the crap out of my stuff for the fouler language, know that the “freaking” you see was its more aggressive counterpart. Never has a word been so easy to put in every form and function, as our four letter friend beginning with F, U…so yeah. I guess my NYness comes from a place of “I don’t give a fuck.” I said it, see? Oh well. I say it enough anyways.
So with that idea, I think I might rethink my goals here a slight. I’m pulling up my whole life and just leaving. When I get there it will be to stay—I am not going to be in a constant state of trying to run like I am here. I wanted to go far, and with my general indecisiveness I considered moving to many places; this is the one that just feels right. Oh New York, you will always be part of me, of course. I just need to take you with me on my terms now.
