It's My Anniversary

Happy Anniversary

Today is my 3 year anniversary of moving back to New York.

I could tell you it has always been beautiful but why lie.

When I moved back here after college in Los Angeles I had no career path. I thought I could become a model and with that pipe dream, begin to finance a quality of life I really had no grasp of.

And I remember this fear taking over my body when I did finally decide to move back to New York. I couldn’t fathom leaving Los Angeles where I had finally learned to drive the back streets after reading some random Eve Babitz chapter and the slightly rude hipster barista at Maru coffee knew my matcha order by heart.

So it was with heavy emotions that I packed up my black Rav-4 to ship it across the country and begin a new chapter.

And if that chapter were apart of My Book of Life it would read bleakly. And I have to be honest about that.

Because what I felt when I moved back to New York those 3 years ago, and shacked in my parents home in the bed where I was never intimate all the 18 years I slept there, was a certain quality of weight and darkness that I had really never known before.

Have you ever read Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking? My mind felt like that. If this happens, then I will be free. If I move back, I will find joy. If I am beautiful there, in that city of buildings, I will know what comes next.

It did not feel beautiful. I did not feel beautiful. I had no idea what came next. My brain began to betray me and sink into my chest like a stone. I sometimes could not move from bed.

I had never felt depression, at least not as thick, like it before. I remember asking my friend Elizabeth to tell me that it would one day not feel like that. I remember asking her this very matter of factly. Like you would a doctor. Tell it to me straight. Just plain and simple. Tell me it wont always feel this way.

To the side of my bed I had hung up several parting letters from LA friends. Colorful, on ornate stationery, they overlooked my room and remained there until the day I finally found an apartment in the city.

Tacked onto the board too was a letter from all my coworkers at the Brazilian restaurant; small notes of support and Good Lucks scribbled on a brown paper to go bag. In the deepest of my emotional cave I remember looking at these letters like they were a lie.

And how foolish these people, my friends, were to believe in me; someone so weak.

Since my body has kept a score, I can recall all of these hard parts to you now 3 years later. But in doing so, it is like running my hands along the surface of a wave. It is familiar, exhilarating, and certainly a bit scary.

Because it is daunting to remember a version of myself that was once so hurt.

And even the memory of that woman can haunt me. It certainly sent me into a spiral this week. I felt the familiar hurts. I remembered the loneliness. I woke up one morning with heaviness and desired nothing.

Because the worst part of my sadness is that it can keep me there. And it is amnesia. Sadness forgets my joy. Like Paper covers Rock. Sadness consumes what came before.

And it blinds me.

In my amnesia I turned on the Parent Trap for escape. Nick Parker woos Elizabeth James after Hallie and Annie reunite them. He presents Elizabeth with a bottle of wine, a vintage she does not recognize. The bottle, dusty and sturdy, is from their wedding Nick says. He continues, “I now own every bottle ever made.” And as they sip from it, that eternal nectar, she feels the emotion everywhere and the liquid moves through her. She begins to tear. Their faces get close. They search each other faces to kiss. She withdraws and he says to her “You don’t always have to be so brave, you know?”

And me to myself, the same. You don’t always have be so brave, you know.

And I suppose, through writing this, I am showing myself that.

That I do not always have to be so brave.

That during the first winter I moved here I should have just asked my parents for grocery money. But my pride was too swollen. That I did not need to tolerate the snow that flooded beneath my windows on the first January frost because there are housing laws against that. That I could have mouthed the words “help” to anyone who loved me and they would have heard my battle cry. That I needed a bed frame more than anything and will you please let your mother help you pay for one Allegra because sleeping on the floor is messing up your back. That working the front door of the restaurant will tear you down because people are Hungry and Angry not with you but you will feel it anyway.

That regret is not something I carry but the memories are. That they swirl within me like the poised leg of a prima ballerina, when you wind up a music box and stare from your bedside.

I did not always have to be so brave.

I think back to my three years here and my heart swells. And no shit. Because without memory what is life? And I am a woman so rich with memory. And grateful, sure, for every last one.

So I cannot tell you that it has all been beautiful. But it certainly has all been mine. Being a woman with history is rich. I am the wealthiest person alive.

I let my mom get me the bed frame. Spring came and the snow melted in my apartment. I met 2 beautiful neighbors who became my good friends. The landlord down the street gave me good advice about my roach problem.

I went back to Los Angeles and danced with my friends at the Gay club on my birthday. We celebrated with a vanilla cake with lavender sprigs. I modeled for some companies. I showed my Grandmother a magazine I was in.

I went swimming again. I bought tulips. I nailed a painting to my wall with the sole of my boot. I smoked on my fire escape. I hired a TaskRabbit to hang shelves.

I sold my clothes on my street. I joined a soccer team. I found a pub with crayons and 0% beer. I discovered a garden. I know where the Jasmine bush near the pharmacy is. I can tell you the names of the girls behind the counter at CO Bigelow.

I buy flowers sometimes from Michael. I purchase chocolate chip cookies from Casey. I get a blowout from Dolores. I visit Ilisa for special lingerie.

I built a world for myself that I never knew I could. I did all of this despite my fear. I healed myself and I do not know how. I worked to be less brave. I let people in. I wrote to you all. I called my mother. I learned to cry. I asked for help. I sat in silence. I did all of this and I will do it again. For this life is my own, and it is perfect in the sense that it is mine.

And if it were a Snow Globe I would shake it, only to keep my curious wide eyed face pressed to its glass, and watch the glitter rain down.

You Don’t Always Have to Be So Brave, You Know.