it's been awhile. Okay, it's been a ridiculously long-while, but I'm alive and well and living down unda' and settling in as much as I can, being someone who likes a certain amount of future-certainty in her day-to-day living, and who will not be able to have anything close to any such thing until March when my future location will be decided for me. BUT, I wanted to pop in and say that I am here, and that I have been sporadically catching back up on the blogs that I used to love in the US, and I am happy to feel like I'm back in the know on the goings-on of these internet-people I have never met. :)
And, yes, most of those blogs are written by New Yorkers and so most of those blogs revolve around the happenings in that city I just left. But I am very, very, very happy to report, that I can read about those happenings now, without crying. Even late at night.
And yes, a huge amount of that might be due to the fact that summer is finally peeking its head around the corner here in the land down unda', so my spirits and my mood are inevitably lifted. And yes another huge amount may also be due to the fact that I am once again working out and thus have a lot less energy to spend on missing.
But mostly, I think I'm slowly getting the hang of what my co-worker warned against, that I make sure to not look backwards. To only look ahead. Forward motion. Is it sad that it took me nearly 6 months to be able to think about NY without missing it horribly? To be honest, I'm pretty proud that I've been able to do that. Because I love that city. Love it. Still think about moving back probably every other day, and mull over the ins-and-outs that such a move would mean to the relationship that I really care amazingly about. And I ponder, also, about if it makes me horribly, horribly selfish to want such a move so badly. And I go back to the pros-and-cons that inevitably lead me back to the fact that I love the relationship for which I moved here. And that the move was undoubtedly, 100% worth it, in that it allows us to be together in a real way, and it allowed us to see that we do work pretty wonderfully together.
But, that forward motion thing, it's tricky. Because life keeps on moving along and the feelings you have and the things you want, they change too. And, worse, really, is that they don't always change effectively together. So, day by day, I miss New York and remember what it felt like when spring was brightening up the city there, and compare it to this spring I'm experiencing here. And I come face-to-face with the fact that I really don't see myself, yet, as being a person who will say "I lived in New York once...." because I so wholly believe that I will live there again. And thus, will be a New York-liver more than the once. Hopefully with this down unda' lovah of mine. Because that is where my forward-motion begins now. As part of a duo.
Which, as would be the case, makes every thing harder. Because you can't be selfish. But you also have to know what you want. You have to know what you want in a couple, when you decide that you're happy as part of a twosome. And you can change what you want, and you can edit a desire, and you can think about things and discuss things (and I learn everyday that you should, that the talking is key although maybe not moreso than the listening), but I can't help but feel that you do have to know what you, in your own person, want, in order to keep a relationship healthy and working and functional and happy. So that's not selfish then. If acknowledging what makes you happy, propels honest communication as part of a couple. But, still, it feels selfish.
It's a hard thing, to love a city. To love a place. To love a place, on its own, not because the family is there, or the job is there. Strictly the place. And it's energy, which is so nebulous and fleeting and addicting and exhausting. Hard to love a place based only on itself, and hard to love a feeling about a place, which can be both life-giving and life-sucking. Because there were days when I hated New York and when I would complain to everyone I ran into about the heat or the noise or the crowds. But I never wanted to leave it. I complained to them because they were in on it too. We were in it together. I hated those things - the crowds, no personal space, the freezing cold and the humid heat - and through them I remembered things I loved about California and my life there, but still I could never see myself abandoning New York. Because I had so much left to gain from it still. Because with everything I hated, I could rest comfortably in knowing that there were places I could go if it ever got too much - that there was a California with its awareness and its openness and that one could find work there and afford to live on their own there, and own a car there, and find their way around in said car. So if I ever needed to, I knew I could be able to make a change like that. Because I had come from that.
But there still was so much left to see and to do. There still are so many things in that city. And when I think about it too much I literally start to itch, in my head and in my gut, because I just want to start the process. Move my forward-motion back to there.
But it's not just my forward-motion anymore. And I don't want it to be just mine.
And I'm still adjusting to things here. (Not as well as I should be perhaps, as it showcased by that diatribe about the city I left...) And there are still things here, I am sure, that I need to see and to experience and to be a part of. And there's still that nagging worry about what I want and if I want it enough to verbalize it, and work to make it happen, for two. Because it's just a place. Because circumstances change and those changes can affect a place's appeal so, so much. So I go back and forth.
And I almost sort of prefer to going back-and-forth at this moment. Because I don't have to make a decision when I'm weighing my desires. I can just think on things, and let another day pass, and think on them some more.
And write hugely long posts like this one, without even a picture to help it to make sense. If anyone reads this - Mom and Dad perhaps? - apologies if this stream-of-consciousness makes absolutely no sense. When I speak I often launch into tangents I never finish, so there was probably a lot of that in this.
But I guess I just wrote to say, I'm still here.
