It’s a blank slate, and I’m at a whole new part of my life writing this.
A lot of my dreams have come true. But in growing up, and going through minute by minute, all three hundred and sixty-five days of a year until you get to the present you realize that every new chapter can still surprise you.
I’ve dreamed of moving to New York for almost as long as I can remember, and maybe even before then. In fourth grade, in the very first house I lived in, I remember the moment clearly when I picked up my first edition of a series about the glamorous, artistic life of New York- girls that were Barbie blonde and thin, but full of secrets. I remember the sensation of the paper, the serif text that held the story to the pages, just one layer of reality away from me. That was the first moment I remember being struck by the thought of moving to this city, the biggest and the brightest.
Then, do you remember watching the movie Madagascar when it came out? And those animals were New Yorkers too, with their festive animated mornings, Marty running on the treadmill to a mural of nature painted against a concrete zoo wall. And I couldn’t have been much older then, maybe I was in fifth grade, and I remember I was watching the movie in the theater with a friend and her mother, and then again the thought struck me like the most natural thing in the world – one day I’ll move to New York City.
Almost ten years later, I found myself in Los Angeles. It wasn’t really a city that I had ever thought of much, not on my radar. It was the city of Hannah Montana, the city for TV openers and cinematic flashes of the Hollywood sign in music videos. For all I had cared back in the day, it could have been a made-up city. One summer in high school I did go to a writing camp in Valencia, and I remember those sweltering mid-days, where I would walk around highway passes and random plazas with huge store names and little people my age that made me feel like I was truly in the middle of nowhere. Only a year or so into college at UCLA, with an initial dedication to pursue a side path of booking and auditions, did I begin to see Los Angeles unfold in front of me, layer by layer. (But that’ll be a story for another time…) In high school, I had always dreamed of foggy winters with barren trees, and shrouded campuses with dark ivy raking up the walls and fences. I saw myself there, from my first year of high school until the day I submitted my last college application and decided to leave the rest up to fate. Fate threw me a dash of mysterious, perplexing spontaneity. At the end of high school, I had opened some college letters and realized that I would be going deeper into California- into the last city I had ever expected.
I sat on rooftops and looked at the silhouettes of palm trees for more cotton-candy colored sunsets than I can count or remember. For a long time, I felt like I was drifting.
Now I’m thinking, it’s not about the place, it’s about the people. It’s about stories. And New York is the kind of city where stories are everywhere to be found.
See, I’m here now. It’s a full loop, I feel like I’m at this point in my life where my experience is so full of meaning that even my hardships motivate me to stand my ground. When I wake up in New York, I feel a desire to stay here and fight for what’s meaningful to me.
I’ll say that although I feel like this part of my life is in a setting that I feel finally makes sense, I am perplexed still by the difficulties that I was unarmed to face.
Given the amount that I’ve traveled and the time I’ve spent living on my own in foreign countries, it’s easy to forget that transition and change have always been a challenge for me- and it takes a while before I’m able to blossom fully into my surrounding.
So let this be my metamorphosis.
I can have the tendency to see things in a very black and white manner. This has protected me in ways, which I don’t believe is a bad thing. In life, I believe the greatest thing you can be is yourself, without apology.
I know my faults to a fault, I’m cognizant of the darkness alongside the light. I’ve sought shelter in the ways that I’ve needed and I see that as a good thing. And also, I can say very definitively, “this is me” or that I stand by this. Strangely, it is my linear thinking that brings me to a sort of faith- and my faith is that things in life are by nature well-meaning and kind.
Recently I feel that artwork and inspiration is all around me and I feel very thankful for that.
The same pain I feel in my stomach, the same loneliness in winter that I secretly love to experience, the waves of missing summers abroad when daylight becomes shorter and leaves quicker, the same satisfying tiredness when I’ve worked so hard for days and days until vertigo pulls me to my bed to close my eyelids with a strength equal to any drug.
These are genuine moments in my life. I can recount the iterations, as I go through different cities and ages, the feeling remains, and grows stronger with each experience.
It’s a love story for sure, perfect for a romantic like me.
sincerely,
A
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