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I’ve been missing New York City a lot lately. Yesterday I started looking at pictures from my move back to Missouri, and when I did, I realized there were things I had intended to blog (about my move) that I wasn’t able to at the time for logistical reasons.
Case in point: My last trip to Dunkin’ Donuts…
One of the first stops my dad and I made for gas once we’d exited New York City was a gas station with a Dunkin’ Donuts inside. I ordered my last New York-style Dunkin’ Donuts bagel with a cup of Yogi Tea, instead of my usual coffee, since it was late at night. Yogi Tea always has a quote or insightful message on the paper tab that hangs out of the cup, and that night, my Yogi tea sent an eerily relevant message.
All of my belongings were packed into a single van (not a truck…a van), we were headed 1031 miles away for me to begin my new life in my hometown, and this is what my Yogi Tea had to say…
Travel Light, photo by smalltowngirl
“Travel Light, live light, spread the light, be the light”
***
The contents of my New York City apartment, in a van:
Traveling Light, photo by smalltowngirl
Part One:
I’m grouchy today.
Missouri is so nice, and people here are so nice. It’s all so…NICE.
Where’s the grit? Where’s the texture? Where’s the edge?
Oh, that’s right. It’s Missouri. It’s not gritty or textured or edgy. It’s nice.
Photo by smalltowngirl
Thank God for blogging, FB, and Twitter…And thanks to my NY friends who are following my blogs, photos, and tweets, caring about this journey I’m taking now, back in Missouri after so many years away.
I had hoped that social media would help me feel close to some of what (and who) I love about New York, and though some days I’m not sure it’s working, other days it’s the thread that keeps me connected, and by extension, keeps me sane.
So thank you, if you’re following, emailing, and commenting. And if you’re following but not commenting, it would be so good to hear from you.
NY=1; MO=0
***
Part Two:
For all the missing New York I’m doing now, I missed small town MO very much over the last 10+ years, too. Sometimes I longed for the quiet, humble, nice Midwest
While I can’t walk down the street to grab the Times from a bodega or newstand in my small town, I can read it online from the coffee shop, where the barista visits with me for ten minutes at a time, and I can buy a large latte for less than a small coffee in NYC.
And while French Press coffee and omelets with hungover 20- and 30-somes isn’t quite the same as drip coffee in the pot at home, it’s really kind of nice to wake up sober, to family and a little white dog.
So I’m trying here – I really am – to seek out the best Missouri has to offer.
I want to love life here, or anywhere that I am, for that matter. I want to be one of those people who can find beauty and happiness anywhere.
I’ve started a community calendar here. I hope that this can become a space for locals to seek out hip, healthy, and interesting events in the area.
I’m independent, so I can publish any event (unlike other, corporate events calendars I’ve found in MO). If you have events you’d like published, tweet me, Facebook me, email, or leave a comment.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a few good local things I’ve discovered this afternoon:
Eyes burning, but snug at home with my hot tea and fuzzy pjs, I feel good about moving back to Missouri.
I’ve spent two days this week working in various parts of St. Louis; driving in city traffic, eating in city restaurants, and talking to city people.
I’ve spent the other days in small town Missouri; taking my Class E driving test at the highway patrol office, getting my new license at the DMV (I can drive company cars now, woot!), jogging on trails in the woods, and appreciating the mornings’ sunrises.
I’ll leave you tonight with the promise of a horseback trail ride and campout blog on Sunday, and with this photo, taken out of the sunroof of my car in downtown St. Louis on Monday. I love being a tourist in my own city:
Good night, all!
Dad pulled in to Brooklyn just before 2 p.m., and after finding a parking space and exchanging a bear hug, we headed to La Bagel Delight for a sandwich.
Bellies full, and drizzly rainy grossness falling from the sky, we opted out of staying the night in New York, and opted in to packing the van to get the hell out of dodge.
Photo by smalltowngirl
Several trips down my four flights of stairs later, my room stood empty, the moving van sat full, and Dad and I prepared to sit in traffic on our way out of the city.
Two of my roommates, Bill and Suzanne, got home just before Dad and I were leaving. We spent a few minutes saying our “goodbye for now”s, we gave each other hugs, and they stood on the stoop to watch as Dad and I drove away.
South Oxford Street Gang
Photo by PapaG
As we made our way uptown toward the Lincoln Tunnel, Dad got a quick peek at Macy’s, and I convinced him to make a minor detour so that he could say he’d seen Times Square.
At about the same time this afternoon, my mom looked out the window to see eleven deer in the backyard. She snapped several pictures, and blogged about it, saying “NY = 0; MO = 1″.
Wrapping our way back down 9th Avenue and over on 39th street, we entered the Lincoln Tunnel.
When we exited the tunnel, New York City was behind us, and once it was, I didn’t look back.
I gripped the rungs of the ladder, excited. Kids laughed and hollared and water splashed in the pool beneath me as I placed my foot on the first cool, metal rung.
Quickly, I ascended, afraid to look down. The top of the ladder came quickly, and as my eyes became level with the diving board, I realized for the first time exactly how high in the air I was.
What would happen if, at the top, you froze and couldn’t get yourself down? Would they call in the fire department like the do when a cat gets stuck in a tree?
All of time stood still for a moment. Butterfiles rose up in my stomach, and fear trickled slowly from my core, into my arms and legs, and on to my fingers and toes.
It was quiet from the top. A place of relative solitude. The kids down below looked small, and even the lifeguards – in their towers of authority – were beneath me.
I was on my own, and while I wanted to feel the rush of the dive, I was terrified to actually jump from the diving board now that I was standing on it.
Whether it was fear of humiliation, the uncertainty of what would happen if I simply sat on the diving board and refused to come down, or my innate sense of courage and adventure, I’m not sure.
I walked to the edge though. I took a deep breath, and I jumped, a scream of terror and delight escaping my lips as my body hung in the air and began plummeting down.
When I crashed into the water and made my way back up for air, I couldn’t imagine not having had the courage to make that leap.
***
“How are you feeling about the move?”
With twenty-four hours left, maybe this helps answer that question.
***
It’s Lincoln’s birthday, which means that it’s a floating office holiday. I had to work for a few hours, but now it’s time to enjoy a gorgeous day outside by stealing my own Shake Shack virginity, and taking a walk in Manhattan with my camera.
Countless people have asked me two questions over the last few days. The first of which is, “Why are you leaving New York?”
The people who ask this question are bewildered at the prospect of leaving The City (i.e. the only city, in their New York-centric perspective) for the rural midwest.
The second question is, “How are feeling about your move?”
I’ve answered the first question in my other blog.
The second question is actually the more interesting one.
I feel:
Numb
Nervous
Exhausted
I cannot:
Seem to get enough sleep
Take in enough of New York before I leave
Imagine not coming back
I can:
Live without hard goodbyes
Manage change in my life
Find the positive in any location, position, or situation
I’ve got a lot of stuff going on in my heart and my head. I have so many things to do in the next week that my feelings and thoughts are dominated largely by necessities like transition plans at work, logistics of moving 1030 miles away, and finding someone to take over my lease.
Following my afternoon adventure today, I think I should have photos and better stories to tell. For now though, I thought I needed to document the moment.
Speaking of the moment, it’s 1:28 p.m.
1/28 is my birthday, 1:28 is my personal moment of the day, and though I don’t generally subscribe to the concept of luck, 128 does seem to be the luckiest number I know.
On that note, it’s off to Madison Avenue to have a burger and shake!
I sat with Jeff on a park bench in Chinatown watching teenagers in t-shirts toss a football to one another. It was nearly fifty degrees today after weeks of temperatures that hovered around zero, so warm sunshine and the lunar new year brought a sense of lightness to the park around us.
My hope when he invited me to come with him to Chinatown today was that we’d find our shared space again – the space where “he” and “I” are “us”.
We talked quietly about what lead us to break up; how I wouldn’t have applied for a job out of state if I’d known he saw a
future with me, and how me applying for a job out of state was the beginning of him falling out of love with me.
In seven months, he’d never spoken the words, “I love you” to me. Today he spoke them twice, and while it was good to hear him verbalize his feelings for me, it wasn’t romantic or special the way it should be when those words are spoken to someone for the first time.
I watched a lanky Asian boy gracefully catch the football his friend threw.
Instead of sharing the words, “I love you” with a sense of excitement or aniticpation, I heard them from Jeff for the first time with a football landing in a teenager’s hands, and a vacuum-like sense of emptiness in the pit of my stomach.
The words, “I love you” weren’t followed by a kiss or a hug. They were followed with a request that we be “friends.”
“I don’t want you to be my ex-anything,” he said to me. “I don’t think of you as my ex-girlfriend. I think of you as my friend.”
Kids laughed and an old man shuffled by in clunky black tennis shoes.
A hawk flew down from the sky and clutched a mouse from the sidewalk between its talons. As quickly as it landed, it flew away again. I’d never seen anything quite like that – such a breathtakingly graceful gesture, but one that ended in the death of a living thing.
I’d never felt anything quite like what I was feeling then, in the park, when Jeff finally admitted that he loved me, but followed it with a request that we be friends, either.
Some things just aren’t built into our natural, biological, or intuitive sense of understanding. Hearing “I love you” followed by “I want to be friends” is one of them.
“I want to be your friend, but I’m not even sure how to do that,” I told him.
I’d have my opportunity to learn how to do that a short time later as we entered a party thrown by his coworker, Ed, who promply introduced me to someone else as Jeff’s girlfriend.
I was proud of myself for smiling, not crying, and making small talk with the people there. I was proud of myself for doing everything in my power to be Jeff’s “friend” when so deep inside my heart, I feel pulled to be the girl he loves and holds and takes care of - not the girl he’s friends with.
“This is my friend, Melissa,” he would say to people as he introduced me.
I am his friend, Melissa. I would think to myself, rehearsing this new role that I’ve been forced into.
We went to the roof of the building, and I looked out onto the streets of Chinatown. Colorful scraps of paper littered the streets from the parade earlier in the day.
Nearly two weeks after accepting my new job in Missouri, a sense of the scale of that decision hit me firmly in the chest as I stood looking out on Chinatown from that rooftop.
I’m leaving New York, and in deciding to leave, I’m also turning my back on one of the best things that’s happened to me in a very long time; my relationship with Jeff.
The tears started then, as this sense of perspective hit me, and Jeff and I said a quick goodbye. He squeezed me in his arms, but it wasn’t the same as it used to be.
I wiped away a few tears there on the roof, but tried to hold my composure until I reached the street outside of Ed’s building, at which point tender sobs grew out of my hurt.
I walked crying through Chinatown, to the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I cried as I walked across it into downtown Brooklyn.
Through Brooklyn Heights and into Fort Greene I cried.
I cried as I walked through Fort Greene Park, down Dekalb Avenue, and onto South Oxford Street, where I sat for a few minutes on the stoop of our brownstone, taking it all in, and letting a few more tears stream down.
That was hours ago, but tears are sliding down my cheeks again now as I write this, in my pajamas, in my little bedroom in my shared apartment in Brooklyn – a place I can’t call home much longer.
I’m not his girlfriend anymore, and soon I won’t be a New Yorker anymore either. I pray that this decision I’ve made is the right one.
