I am secretly a girly girl. Whether I like to admit it or not, I looove to dish to my girlfriends about clothes and hairstyles and relationship woes... One of the better vacations I've ever had was an overnight trip to the beach in Alabama, where three other girls and I got hammered on gigantic self-poured cocktails and bitched about our boyfriends in backwoods Alabama twang. But now, since I left New Orleans, that's changed. I left the relationship that caused the woes, and since then I've been in sort of an awkward emotional state. I've been grieving for the loss of my companion of six years. Trying though he may be, I really loved him an awful lot and he was a really great friend.Anyway, that relationship began within days of me turning 22. Now, at 27, I feel like I missed out a bit on that whole being-single-in-my-twenties thing, and I've been really nervous about it. Don't get me wrong, I've gotten really good at opening my eyes and noticing attractive people, it's just that my 'Taken' switch hadn't really been turned off. Then suddenly I went on that random date on the same day I saw that guy on the subway. Since then, a realization has been growing in my head, and this last weekend, doused in champagne, it really kind of dawned on me. The decade is still young. I have two and a half years of my twenties left. As strange and foreign as it seems to me, I can do whatever I want with those years and all the years beyond them. I am single! Unattached to any other human being! I answer to no one! Weird! Scary! Awesome!
Monday I cruised into the office to an iPod soundtrack of upbeat contemporary pop music (I'm kind of obsessed with The Go! Team right now), thinking about how wonderfully single I am and what that means in terms not only of dating, but also in terms of everything else. I felt free, like I'd finally cut the leash I had been wearing in deference to JH and New Orleans and to goals I had set at the green age of 19. I saw AIG on my way in and flashed a confident smile. I think it caught him a little off guard, even though we're sort of friends now. I laughed breezy hellos to ODG and 2.0 and chatted merrily about our antics from last Friday.
I feel so good, like my world is shifting back into balance. I'm settled into my apartment, I'm about to get my cats back, I have some friends, my family is doing great, and I'm ready to make my next move, which is the Big Job Push.
It's taken four months and a lot of stress, but I finally feel like I belong here in New York! I'm home!
4 comments:
Awww! Yeah! This weekend when people asked how you were I said, "She's great, actually. It's definitely been difficult but she's tough and she's rising to the challenge. She has a decent temp job, starting to make friends, going on dates, and really settling in. It's really a great thing to witness!"
The only bad thing is that you're not here to go with me to the maple festival this year!
Oops. Actually the maple festival has been moved to April. Weird.
Go you! And 2.5 more years of being in your 20s = lots of time to be a fun, single-in-her-20s New York gal ;)
Yay - that is great. If NY feels like home after a mere 4 months you are def doing something right. It took me 6 months, but when I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn a year later, that was when I realized that it truly was home. But I love Brooklyn more than anything.
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