🪑 don't just do something! sit there! 🪑
an ode to eighteen year old sara in manhattan
greetings, greetings to you, dear reader.
mercury has landed in retrograde in gemini today. and hoooo boooooy have the fool, the trickster, the faerie been at play. it’s been two exhausting weeks of trying to get clear on communication and boundaries and watching a long-standing friendship end and navigating the what ifs of life and loss.
i’ve been asking myself “what if” a lot these past two weeks. not as a movement towards action, as i am (in my aries moon nature) wont to do. a “what if” in standing still. what if i was in the right moment, right here? what if there was nothing else to do? what if this is divine timing? what if this is a lesson to learn? what if i stay curious? what if my fears and insecurities were nothing but protections for a former version of me? what if i let go of them a little bit more today? what if i asked for what i needed and got it? what if i asked god for what i needed and it was already in front of me?
what if i did nothing, did nothing as doing something? what if i sat here and let it all come to me? what if i stopped running, stopped chasing, and just sat?
as you get this missive, i’m in manhattan for the first time in months. i’m spending a night in manhattan for the first time in years. i’ve taken the train down from one of the ends of a metro north line all the way to grand central station. i’m watching as my peers from high school and college find a way to make life tenable in a fast paced city. i’m watching as a version of my life goes by.
i moved to new york city a month after turning the ripe age of eighteen. the quintessential coming of age story, right? i moved to new york city at the ripe age of eighteen, and it almost broke me.
i can’t love the city anymore.
i can’t love the concrete, i can’t love the two square feet of unfertile patches of dirt, surrounded by six-inch-tall iron fences. i can’t love the subway, i can’t love the smell of summer on the hudson, i can’t love the echoes of a lifeline through washington square park. i can’t love the museums, the moma whose hall in which i stare at the matisses’. i can’t love the wind tunnels of astor place, i can’t love below fourteenth street, i can’t love above fourteenth street. i can’t love the freedom. i can’t love the discomfort.
in honesty, i’m anxious to sleep in the city. i left out of a desire to see the trees and the highways again. i moved across the river and then across the river once more. i left, because my nervous system couldn’t take it. i left, because everywhere was a ticking time bomb. i left, because i didn’t feel human there. i left, because i didn’t feel human anywhere.
i flirt, every time i visit, with the idea of new york city, for five minutes. a big what if. what if i had stayed? what if i returned?
i don’t think i’d like the version of me she would have become.
i was a romantic, at eighteen. (i’m still a romantic at twenty-four). for the city that never sleeps, the world in one city, the space where i could escape, the place where anything could happen.
anything could happen. anything did happen.
i see on linkedin, as my peers from my southern private school high school launch themselves into their careers in the city. i watch promotion after promotion. i feign indifference. not because i want the life they have. i had some version of it awhile ago. not because i know better, because i sure as hell don’t. but because i’m not sure how i got here. what if it all had turned out differently?
i see on linkedin, as my peers from college live on in the city. off social media, not following their curated political lives, i feign indifference to the friday night parties in the lower east side, in crown heights, in greenpoint. still in their railroad-style apartments, their beds corridored off by a single, glass-paneled door. i feign indifference. not because i want the life they have. i had some version of it awhile ago. not because i know better, because i sure as hell don’t. but because i’m not sure how i got here. what if it all had turned out differently?
i live in the valley now. i live by three herds of cows. i live next to a field of corn. i bath my dog in well water on the weekends. i fill my truck’s tank up to its thirty-two gallons every two weeks at the gas station for four dollars and twenty five cents a gallon. i put the old armchair that won’t sell on facebook marketplace on the side of the road, a “FREE” sign tied to the back cushion by a piece of twine. i have bonfires, i drive thirty minutes to the laundromat, i watch and wait.
i’m not sure what i’ll find in this jaunt to the city. i’m not sure i want to know what i’ll find. i’m not thrilled to be back. i’m worried i’ll run into the ghosts of friendships past.
all i can do is do nothing. just sit. and wait for the world to come to me.
onward,
sara