Change
How very glad I am that it's been over three months since I've written anything here.
Three months. It's been much longer. The density of change that's occured over the past three months startles even me. I think it would be callow to merely tick them off on a list - but appropriate, maybe. I've taken to making lists. I had underestimated the merit of structure.
When I had my first depressive episode in my early adolescence, I used to whine that I was held down by my surroundings, that it was impossible to move on until I had liberated myself from the bondage of familiarity. My mother told me that this urge was called "pulling a geo," as in "geographic." She said it was ultimately ineffective because the impetus for change had to emerge inside out, that it was a common error to believe that by altering one's circumstances one would be able to move on. I always privately disagreed with her. The allure of anywhere else outweighed any genuine recognition of my own fallacy.
I loved feeling as though I had changed after I moved to New York. My sensory experiences were incomparably different and I believed that those differences were reflected in my own personality. But it was affected, a disingenuous manifestation of my own yearning to believe that I could become someone other than who I inherently was with thousands of miles of distance from the places that connoted my previous identity. But something changed this year. Over these past three months. Something actually changed. I spent my first year here carrying all of the baggage that was left unresolved when I violently ripped myself from my life in Portland, spilling over with unwavering faith in the ability of New York and its miraculous grit to close my wounds. I wasn't courageous enough to mend them on my own.
And I mended myself, and I didn't even know it. I left with so much angst, addicted to narcotics, resenting my mother, still as isolated as I'd ever been. I never let go. But I did. It wasn't a conscious decision. It just happened.
Mom, I forgive you. Cocaine, I don't love you anymore. Loneliness, you are a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Last night at a party in a loft in Greenpoint where I drank Prosecco from a red plastic cup and held my lover's hand as he led me into the room, a beautiful girl named Cecilia patronized me shamelessly when I told her I was a writer. She had matriculated at Wellesley with the aspiration of becoming a journalist, she said, but in the real world, it's much harder than you'd think, but good luck, stick with it and I'm sure you'll find your calling. She stretched her vowels, motioned me close so she could speak directly in my ear. I felt the familiar light of anger flicker in my gut, and then die. Her boyfriend fed me the same condescending shit. Lover watched me interact, fascinated by the dynamic. I pulled my pack of cigarettes from my back pocket and lit one.
I was the youngest person there by more than a decade. I wanted to feel extraordinarily vulnerable. I think I did, for an instant.
And then Cecilia and her boyfriend and my don't-want-to-call-him-my-boyfriend-because-I-don't-know-what-he-is all leaned in closer to me and asked me for a cigarette, all of them at once. And I gave them all cigarettes, and I lit them all up with one flick of my lighter, and I didn't have any left - so I put my lighter inside the empty pack and set it on the table, and left it there.
I think maybe we all have to leave something behind, sometimes.
Three months. It's been much longer. The density of change that's occured over the past three months startles even me. I think it would be callow to merely tick them off on a list - but appropriate, maybe. I've taken to making lists. I had underestimated the merit of structure.
When I had my first depressive episode in my early adolescence, I used to whine that I was held down by my surroundings, that it was impossible to move on until I had liberated myself from the bondage of familiarity. My mother told me that this urge was called "pulling a geo," as in "geographic." She said it was ultimately ineffective because the impetus for change had to emerge inside out, that it was a common error to believe that by altering one's circumstances one would be able to move on. I always privately disagreed with her. The allure of anywhere else outweighed any genuine recognition of my own fallacy.
I loved feeling as though I had changed after I moved to New York. My sensory experiences were incomparably different and I believed that those differences were reflected in my own personality. But it was affected, a disingenuous manifestation of my own yearning to believe that I could become someone other than who I inherently was with thousands of miles of distance from the places that connoted my previous identity. But something changed this year. Over these past three months. Something actually changed. I spent my first year here carrying all of the baggage that was left unresolved when I violently ripped myself from my life in Portland, spilling over with unwavering faith in the ability of New York and its miraculous grit to close my wounds. I wasn't courageous enough to mend them on my own.
And I mended myself, and I didn't even know it. I left with so much angst, addicted to narcotics, resenting my mother, still as isolated as I'd ever been. I never let go. But I did. It wasn't a conscious decision. It just happened.
Mom, I forgive you. Cocaine, I don't love you anymore. Loneliness, you are a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Last night at a party in a loft in Greenpoint where I drank Prosecco from a red plastic cup and held my lover's hand as he led me into the room, a beautiful girl named Cecilia patronized me shamelessly when I told her I was a writer. She had matriculated at Wellesley with the aspiration of becoming a journalist, she said, but in the real world, it's much harder than you'd think, but good luck, stick with it and I'm sure you'll find your calling. She stretched her vowels, motioned me close so she could speak directly in my ear. I felt the familiar light of anger flicker in my gut, and then die. Her boyfriend fed me the same condescending shit. Lover watched me interact, fascinated by the dynamic. I pulled my pack of cigarettes from my back pocket and lit one.
I was the youngest person there by more than a decade. I wanted to feel extraordinarily vulnerable. I think I did, for an instant.
And then Cecilia and her boyfriend and my don't-want-to-call-him-my-boyfriend-because-I-don't-know-what-he-is all leaned in closer to me and asked me for a cigarette, all of them at once. And I gave them all cigarettes, and I lit them all up with one flick of my lighter, and I didn't have any left - so I put my lighter inside the empty pack and set it on the table, and left it there.
I think maybe we all have to leave something behind, sometimes.