Betwixt and Between

I haven't posted a new entry in a few days because I can't seem to quiet my mind enough to focus on just one topic. Lately, each day passes in a blur of: love and hate; happiness and sadness; and progress and setbacks. It seems I have possibly developed ADD as I can't seem to decide on anything. I feel as if I'm riding some roller coaster that has left its track and I have no idea where we are headed.

I both love and hate the idea of leaving New York. I both love and hate my job - for different reasons. I both miss home and yet cringe at the thought of going back there right now. I both love being single and miss being attached. I both crave adventure and miss the familiar. I both want to be more and less in everything.

I don't know if any of this makes sense. It makes no sense in my head...and all I do know is that I'm unsure of anything.

It's happening again....

It always happens so slowly that it sneaks up on me..and it's usually something that never attracted me in the beginning. But I guess that's what they say love is, right?

New York is seducing me. I don't know how these cities keep slowly stealing my heart when, each time I land in a new one, I never think there is any room to love another.



I just returned from a late night walk through the city, and it has never looked more beautiful to me than it did tonight. Seeing the New York Life building's clock tower reflected in the glass panes of an apartment building on Madison Avenue; listening to the conversations around me as I sat in Madison Square Park; and walking around the oh-so-quiet, yet quaint Gramercy Park all almost brought me to tears tonight.

The tears because I finally see the potential in this city and yet I feel as if the city never responded to my advances in quite the way I wanted it to. But that's the thing about love, you only get a say in one side of it.

I immediately called a friend and confessed these feelings to her. She told me she was startled by my admission, and I could only respond with, "No more than I."

"Torn between wanting to stay & wanting to go & worried it will be the wrong decision either way" - Story People

As some of you know, I've been struggling lately with the decision to stay in NYC or move somewhere else. I always thought when it was time to leave New York I would be able to leave without feeling the same sadness that always seems to descend when leaving someplace you've called home.

I never thought I would get attached to a city so large, so lonely, and so loud. I never thought that the restlessness of the city would seep into my being. I never thought that above all else here, the city would be the one thing that eventually ends up keeping me sane.

The thing about New York is that it's all about the small moments. I've written a bit about this in a previous post, but it seems as if every day there are small things that I discover I love about this city.

It's the way the ground shakes when the Subway goes rushing underneath you. It's the way you can find takeout at 3 am. It's the way I feel when I am hurtling down Central Park West on a night bus. It's the fact that I recognize my fellow bus riders each morning. It's the way you can pack a picnic and spend an entire day laying in Central Park.

So as I come ever closer to the reality that I need to leave by the time my lease ends, I also come ever closer to realizing that I have become attached to this crazy, sweet catastrophe of a city.

New York, you could have been great. I just don't think I'm strong enough to be patient enough to give you anymore.