How To Be Young

Think you’re old and never realize how young you actually are. Fixate on the fact that you love The Container Store and Bed, Bath & Beyond and drinking tea and eating organic. This means something to you. It means you’re figuring out how to be an adult and you won’t be left behind. Show your receipt from Crate and Barrel to a 30-year-old and say, “See? I’m getting there. Let me through!”

Don’t think too much about why all of this matters to you. Don’t think about why cooking your own dinners and buying a new rug for your apartment is more important than going back home in a cab drunk at five in the morning. Never admit to yourself that the drunk cab rides make you happier than the damn kale you bought at the bodega. That would make you feel guilty, that would make you actually feel young (something you’re never supposed to feel.) Life is all about being young and pretending to be old, and being old and wishing you were young. Are you getting it, yet?

Spend so many years not liking yourself while trying to get others to like you. God, we’re so hard on ourselves. If only you could feel like you deserve that wasted night with your friends and spending Sunday hungover with someone in bed—someone you’ll try to forget and later on try to remember. Being young is all about wanting to connect with someone but feeling too disconnected to actually do so. I think you’re getting it now.

Look back on being young when you’re old and remember this: perfect skin, flat stomach, a house full of young people laughing and dancing, smoking weed, listening to music on your little laptop while reading a magazine on a Sunday evening, your parents coming in and out, remembering a dinner with your dad in your hometown when you wanted to cry, the bars, so many bars, people who you got drunk with all the time but never actually knew (what did they do in the daytime?), getting a cat and hating the cat but needing the cat because it made you feel okay about being hungover and missing your Victorian Lit final. “I can fail Victorian Lit because I have a cat that I’ve kept alive. So there.”

Have sex with the seventh person who doesn’t mean anything to you and freak out for a bit. Remember losing your virginity on a creaky bed and feeling so many things, too many things, and now you’re having sex with someone who looks like Danny Devito and it means nothing. How could this happen? How could you go from shaking like a leaf whenever someone touched your neck to feeling so numb whenever someone went inside of you? You want to know when this change occurred because you think it’s the reason why everything went sour. It’s the reason why you feel old. Every time you sleep with a nobody, it ages you five years. At this rate, you figure you’ll be a 100 at 28 years old.

Hold on to things. You’re not old enough to know what should matter and what should be left behind yet so you just hold on to every single thing. You’re like a memory hoarder. You need help.

Have moments when you’re truly having the time of your young adult life. Sometimes you know it when it’s happening and sometimes you don’t. When you know, that’s when it’s truly special. You let go of everything and embrace your youth. “I DON’T CARE I FEEL SO YOUNG AND FREE IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL RIGHT NOW EVERYTHING FEELS SO GOOD.” PS. You might be on Ecstasy for these moments of realization.

I know what you’re doing because I’m doing it too. Just stop freaking out. Stop pretending to be happy over a new Swiffer and just kiss people and go out and stay up late and wake up early and screw up and learn from your mistakes and then screw up again. It’s okay. This is your permission slip to act young. Sign it.

Quote

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles roll

ed into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full.. The students responded with a unanimous ‘yes.’

The professor then produced two Beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand.The students laughed..

‘Now,’ said the professor as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—-your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions—-and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.. The sand is everything else—-the small stuff.

‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued, ‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.

Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and mow the lawn.

Take care of the golf balls first—-the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the Beer represented. The professor smiled and said, ‘I’m glad you asked.’ The Beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of Beers with a friend.

Random

I thought a thought that i thought i had thought but the thought that i had thought wasn't the thought that i had thought i had thought. So maybe if i had thought the thought that i thought i thought i wouldn't of thought so much.

Live fast. Die Young. Be Wild. And Have Fun.

 I was in the winter of my life — and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell asleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour and my memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times. I was a singer, not a very popular one, who once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet — but upon an unfortunate series of events, saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again — sparkling and broken. But I didn’t really mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is.

When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living — they asked me why. But there’s no use in talking to people who have a home, they have no idea what it’s like to seek safety in other people, for home to be wherever you lie your head.

I was always an unusual girl, my mother told me I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean. And if I said that I didn’t plan for it to turn out this way, I’d be lying — because I was born to be the other woman. I belonged to no one — who belonged to everyone, who had nothing — who wanted everything with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about — and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me.

Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people — and finally I did — on the open road. We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore — except to make our lives a work of art.

Live fast. Die Young. Be Wild. And Have Fun.

I believe in the country America used to be. I believe in the person I want to become.
I believe in the freedom of the open road. And my motto is the same as ever —
I believe in the kindness of strangers. And when I’m at war with myself — I ride. I just ride.

Who are you? Are you in touch with all of your darkest fantasies?
Have you created a life for yourself where you’re free to experience them?
I have.
I am fucking crazy. But I am free.

Random

The Last

"Umm.. How many were there before me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like.. How many girls did you love before me?"

"Love? 

5. I loved 5 women before you"

"What were their names?"

"Who, what, when, where, why"

"Can you tell me about them?"

"Who i loved, was a girl from college. I wasnt exactly close to her but with some superficial facts and a few interactions over the semester, u know like most guys fantasizing over girl they barely know, i filled in the blanks like a fairytale author. and who she became in my head was probably more than the reality. she was a 3rd year sorority girl. yeah and i was an infatuated freshmen sure, but the several times we got to spend together outside of class, it really allowed me to see she also had a good heart and a bright spirit. the only problem was, i was sort of just about every other guy. and while she turned me down nicely i swear, there were times when it seemed like the cliche sorority girl may have felt something for the typical awkward freshmen."

"What i loved, was an old friend. But she was much more than just a friend. We met early in college and kept in touch through the years after. We saw each other grow and changed and through multiple relationships. I saw different boyfriends come and go, she was also there for every girlfriend and breakup of mine. Personality, humor, taste, it was all there. Her and i were almost perfect. Only that wasnt perfect was our timing. We were never single at the same time. And what we loved about each other  was never enough to leave who we were with. This is something we eventually had to face and accept. And we had to leave behind, what we had."

"When i loved, was my first girlfriend in highschool. It's a bit unfair because she embodies a combination of both love and youth. Feeling of young love is unique and impossible to replace or replicate. Because we can only be that age once. High school was a time of innocence, discovery and adventure. We share these 3 elements together and things like our first kiss, late night sneaking out, and mad name movies, all of which now have become, a nostalgic love, preserved in a time that neither of us can touch but know t'was there. Even though we were just kids, but there's not a doubt in my mind that when we were there, we were in love."

"Where i loved, was the girl I met in Los Angeles. I never intended to stay there that long. It was just a 6 month internship after graduating. But it all changed when i met her. Soon, a year had past then somehow another year after that, I couldn't leave the city. I couldn't leave her. Maybe it was my desire to be on my own, or proves something to everyone back at home but she helped me accomplish it over there. With a relationship reflected of the city we were in. A new energy, and a new experience that really push me to mature more than anyone or anywhere else. When people ask what city i love the most, I say, LA. The city where i loved the most."

"Why i loved, was a close friend of mine who passed away. She told me after she was diagnosed that, death was not the one what saddened her the most. But the fact that she never really felt like she had fallen in love. She wouldn't get to have those emotions, good and bad. Of being hurt, and of being held.  After she passed, those words stuck with me the most. Teaching me to see that, one of the greatest gifts we have of being alive is the ability to give, receive, and even lose love. There are so many like her whose lives end before having any of those experiences. What a waste if we dont strive to love in our lives, she maybe understand why. Why waste this life not loving?"

"I understand now"

"You are the 6th."

"The 6th... So which one am i then?"

"You're none of them. Because you're all them"

"You're who i love. The girl in the pedestal, the fantasy, the make believe things that are actually true. You're what i love. The depth, the inside jokes, the best friend. 

You're when i love. A new history is to be started with you. We are the young lovers our older selves would someday reminisce about. 

You are where i love. Because I'd go anywhere, just to be with you. 

You are why i love, because before you, I didn't truly understand what i was looking for. 

Now that we've found each other, you've given my past and future a meaning".

"You are the 6th. You're the last."   

Vlog

Movie on 10-18-12 at 11.07 PM from Iva Aishah on Vimeo.

Quote

For what it’s worth, it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want, you can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

Quote

They’re floating lanterns in the sky. can you believe that? japanese lanterns as a symbol of letting go of the past. well here’s a news flash - we’re not japanese!you know what they are? children. like lighting a candle is gonna make everything okay or even saying a prayer or pretending elena is not gonna end up just like the rest of us murderous vampires. stupid, delusional, exasperating little children. i know what you’re gonna say. “makes them feel better, damon.” so what? for how long? a minute, a day? what difference does it make? because in the end, when you lose somebody every candle, every prayer is not gonna make up for the fact that the only thing that you have left is a hole in your life where that somebody that you cared about used to be. and a rock…with a birthdate carved into it which i’m pretty sure is wrong.so, thanks friend. thanks for leaving me here to babysit. because i should be long gone by now. i didn’t get the girl, remember? i’m just stuck here fighting with my brother and taking care of the kids. you owe me big.”“i miss you too, buddy.”

Poem

I Will Forget You

OCT. 16, 2012 

By STEPHANIE GEORGOPULOS

I will forget you and if that doesn’t sound romantic, it’s because it isn’t. It’s a simple inevitability, a truth colder than the last night we spent together. Remember that night? When I woke up in the morning and felt nothing familiar, that’s when I knew it was over for good. At least, that’s what I think happened. I fill in the blanks sometimes because I’ve already begun to forget.

I remember the color of your hair, but not the color of your laugh. I remember your name, that one’s easy; I don’t remember how your parents say it in their native tongue (I forgot that one the second you told me). I remember that you exist, that we spent some of our time together for what now feels like a blip, a sneeze, a little nothing. But I forget everything else, like what brought us together and what drove us apart. And mostly everything that happened in between that.

I forget what it’s like to kiss you and what it’s like to want to. I forget what it feels like to hold your hand, if we ever even held hands, it feels like we didn’t. I forget what it’s like to trust you, to believe in you, to need you. I forget what it’s like to think that I’d never forget any of it. For a long time, I thought I never would. You and I both know you left ghosts behind, but they seem to have found someone new to haunt. Maybe it’s you.

The inside jokes have already dissolved into unordered words with no punchline. The gifts have been reduced to objects whose saving grace is their monetary value, no meaning and all function. There are photographs, somewhere, but I’m not the person posed in them anymore and whoever that is sitting next to me, all dressed up in your costume and wearing your mask, well, that’s not you either. But what do I know about who you are? I forget that part, if I ever knew it to begin with.

I won’t forget you the way I won’t forget the Blizzard of ’96 or the pain of getting a wisdom tooth removed. Like something that happened to me once and then unhappened to me and then didn’t matter anymore.

But I will forget you where it counts, like in the eyes and in the mornings and in the moments that felt and looked and tasted a lot like love. I will forget you in those places because I already have.

It’s Okay To Be Not-Okay

JUL. 13, 2012 

By DONNA SHUTE PROVENCHER

More than any other phrase I plaintively text or whimper over a phone line in four a.m. moments of weakness, I catch myself voicing one desire: “I just want everything to be okay.”

This morning, as I swore at the rain and the cosmos and the inept metropolitan drivers on University Boulevard using language that would make Linda Blair in The Exorcist blush, I found myself questioning for the first time in my life — what is this elusive “okay” which so haunts my waking moments?

Does it mean I wish all my life plans were executed perfectly? Does it mean I wish my interpersonal relationships were easy and uncomplicated and I had no critical decisions to make, ever? Does it mean I wish everyone else thought exactly the way I did about everything and would operate in accord with my every whim? Does it mean I wish I had no character deficiencies, no figure flaws, no personal imperfections of any kind? Does it mean I wish I were universally loved and adored and never ruffled any feathers along the way? Does it mean I wish I could avoid all conflict and unpleasantness and failure and traffic and bad hair days — that life could always be comfortable, smooth sailing?

If so: keep dreaming, kid. I’ll throw in some oceanfront property in Arizona for you. Furthermore — and this, I think, is more fundamental — who died and appointed me the Fixer of All Things Not-Okay in the universe, anyway? Most of the pain and unhappiness in my own life — and I would go so far as to say most of the pain and unhappiness in other people’s lives as well — is directly attributable to a pathological inability to tolerate the Not-Okay. We fail to recognize this simple truth: that implicit in the act of living is the possibility of f-cking it up. We sell out on the deepest convictions of our hearts to placate other people; we avoid suffering at all costs, choosing instead to submerge our pain in sex or alcohol or food or video games or socializing or stamp-collecting; we quietly bury our chancier dreams to make room for a life of comfort and ease and predictability; we make decisions we wouldn’t otherwise have made in the name of keeping the peace; we fear failure and so refuse to hazard anything at all.

And so it goes, in a “dirty little self-repeating cycle,” as Chesterton once defined madness. So things stay clean and unrumpled and Okay, like a French-cuffed shirt with the life starched out of it — but at what cost?

When will we cut through all our carefully-constructed layers of bullshit and admit that sometimes things aren’t okay? Sometimes they’re sticky and messy and imperfect and don’t look anything like they do in the movies. Sometimes things are complicated and circuitous, and sometimes it’s because we screwed up, and sometimes it’s because somebody else screwed up, but regardless, the invariable result is one big gnarly knot of Not-Okay that even a Boy Scout couldn’t unravel. Yet we go so far in our desperate, frantic attempts to unravel and fix and repair and control and understand and disambiguate and Make Okay that we miss the whole damn point, which is this: once we preclude the Not-Okay, we have effectively precluded life itself.

We need to accept the imperfect, embrace it, maybe even bask in it. Yeah, things are Okay at “once upon a time” and they will be Okay again at “happily ever after,” but that’s beside the point; the story is what happens between the Okay. As Nigerian magical-realist writer Ben Okri once noted, “The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection, there is no story to tell.” You show me a story without a good central conflict and I will show you a blow-your-brains-out dull read (Waiting for Godot comes to mind). Life is not all, or even mostly, sunshine and lollipops and our most fervid attempts to render it such will only result in something bland and dull and artificial.

Too often, we view pain and suffering and mess like the early Victorians viewed pregnancy: an unpleasant yet necessary evil, meant to be slogged through but certainly not spoken of. Instead, consider this: what if this is the good stuff? What if these are the defining moments that, to borrow a phrase from Oscar Wilde, make or unmake character? What if we’re all just a hot mess at the end of the day, and some of us are just better at concealing it than others? What if it’s our very hot-messiness and confusion and weakness and ineptitude that makes us lovable?

At the end of the day, maybe joy is in the Not-Okay. Maybe it isn’t to be found in cookie-cutter lives in sterile rooms behind white picket fences, but in the squidgy details, at the blurred edges of our lives that make us squint. Maybe the only position in which we can encounter the divine is with our backs against the wall.

Maybe it is only when we are blinded by tears that we can really see clearly at all.

If You Don’t Like Your Life, Change It

OCT. 16, 2012

By RYAN O'CONNELL

Sometimes you can’t help but wonder if all your worst fears about yourself will come true. Like, yes, you will get fat. Not totally obese but just enough for old friends to pity you when they run into you on the street. Just enough for people to seriously wonder if you’re going through a hard time and have turned to excessive eating to ease the pain.

Or maybe you’ll screw up one too many relationships and actually end up alone. It doesn’t seem too far-fetched, does it? If you want to get loved by someone, you have to be out there living life, acting all kinds of lovable. All that stuff about finding The One when you least expect it are lies. The people falling in love have always expected it or, at the very least, wanted it so badly to happen. The people who end up single are the ones that have successfully convinced themselves that they’d like to be alone.

All of these things could happen to you, right? There was a time not too long ago when you believed that the worst-case scenario was very unlikely. You kept it hanging there in the back of your mind only because you had to, because it often motivated you to go in the other, better direction. But then — you don’t know how or when — it changed. The worst-case scenario quickly was starting to look like the only scenario for you.

How?

When did the narrative change?

When did your actions have any kind of permanence?

When did you stop being able to change your luck in the course of a day?

You should be scared. That’s good. That’s what might ultimately save you from leading an unhappy life. Fear either prevents people from moving forward or allows them to keep going after what they want.

Don’t let any of it come true. If you don’t want your life to go in a certain direction, understand that you have the ability to change it. You might already. After all, “understanding something” and “deciding to do something about it” are two entirely different things. It’s amazing how long you can stay paralyzed for, isn’t it?

This might sound weird but it took me a long time to realize that I had control over the course of my life. In fact, I’m still not quite convinced that I’ve realized it completely but at least I know I’m getting there. For so long, I viewed my life as this thing that I could poke and prod like it was a foreign object. I was a baby licking batteries, sticking my fingers in things that I knew could hurt me but I didn’t care. That’s the point: I didn’t care if I got hurt. In my mind, nothing stuck anyway.

Until it did. I think eventually everyone has this moment where they realize that being in charge of your life is the most serious full-time job you’ll ever have. Of course, life immediately becomes less fun when you realize this because you’re old enough to know now that you can get hurt. You know that everything has consequences so you have to consciously live a healthier life which is, for lack of a better word, hard. But, in the end, it’s so much better.

Feeling invincible has its high points. Being naive and stupid and crazy definitely makes for an exciting life but it will burn you out so damn quickly. It will make you feel like the rawest of nerves, crying over silly inconsequential things and never leaving your apartment. Your brain will feel like scrambled eggs, your body like a jellyfish, You know this.

If you don’t like your life, change it. Yes, you’ve heard this adage before and it probably sounded like nails on chalkboard. But perhaps why it’s so annoying is because it’s true. Because you know you’re the one in control here. You might just not be ready to take ownership, which is fine. Everyone’s entitled to a downfall. Just don’t forget to come back up.

Like Vs. Love

OCT. 17, 2012 

By CHRISTOPHER HUDSPETH

So you got a crush and started to like someone, eh? Well that’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world. Liking people gets a bad rap because it’s commonly connected to and confused with lust, which is notorious for being bad news. It’s nothing more than a guilty by association type of deal. However, there is a significant difference between like and love — one that features seperate levels of feelings. This is somewhat of a text based contour map that identifies those highs, lows, peaks and valleys.

People generally enjoy the early stages and initial feelings of liking someone. The desire to talk to and spend time together. The learning all those details about each other. You’ve got butterflies in your stomach. Or is that gas? Uh-oh, it might be gas. And if it is, you’d better not release it around your crush. That’s the difference between like and love. Like means holding in farts until your stomach aches to preserve your most appealing image. Love on the other hand will remain unwavering, despite someone letting ‘em rip. This is romance translated through flatulence – not the most eloquent description.

While that analogy may sound ridiculous, that doesn’t make it invalid. Having crushes and liking someone can be altered by a mere pet peeve or silly turnoff whereas love is a more durable, resilient link. There are plenty of stories of people going out with someone multiple times but eventually discovering some trivial thing, physically or personality-wise that they aren’t a fan of. So date number two, three or however many will be the last because of something insignificant.

That’s why some people (myself included) hate dating. A lot of the time it feels too much like an audition. Lots of politically correct statements, safe answers, hiding of weaknesses or flaws – it’s like work. Unless you’re an outspoken person, in which case you have no shame being frank about things. For those of us with a filter and some insecure tendencies, liking and being liked is hard labor. We carry around a lumpy sack full of giant turnoffs, like a self-conscious Santa Clause. Throughout the like stage we do our best to discreetly hide that bag in its entirety, removing potential flaws from it over time, only when we’re comfortable.

Then there’s love, which is much deeper, much different. It’s a thing of beauty. The way love is relaxed, yet still full of passion; similar to those emotions felt when you first met that person. It’s no longer about gaining the upper hand. There’s no not calling her because she hasn’t texted you or flirting with someone to garner more attention. Love will eliminate the imbalances and different degrees of feelings seen during like. It’s unconditional or bust. You can’t kind of love a person and they can’t sort of love you. You just love each other wholeheartedly, which is so much easier.  Everything can be removed from the bag of blemishes, all the gas can be passed and nothing changes. Now that’s a thing of beauty. It may not smell so good, but it’s certainly a beautiful thing to see.

Sometimes Places Hurt You More Than People Ever Could

OCT. 14, 2012

By EMMA DRIES

In the handful of times I’ve been home over the past year, I seem to have rejected New York like a bad transplant. The streets feel too crowded, the air feels too heavy and the anxiety grates against my skin; I can feel it there, picking away.

Perhaps it is not the city at all. Perhaps I am simply growing out of it in the way we all grow out of our hometowns. Perhaps New York is trying to shake me loose, trying to tell me to go live, that it will still be there when I return.

But my city and my home are rife with reminders. It was the place where I came to the world, but also where my father left it. The week my father died the crude skeleton of the Frank Geary building was just going up, but now it twists, thin and finished, into the sky. Beekman Hospital, grimy and dwarfed, lies at its base and I all I can think is – this is where my father took his last breath.

I was born in a Lower Manhattan neighborhood that was stuck with one foot in the past and one in the present. The skyscrapers of the Financial District swaddled my neighborhood, the Seaport Historic District, where buildings more than eight stories couldn’t be built. I grew up in a loft above the Fulton Fish Market on South Street, and almost two decades after I was born, the neighborhood is nearly unrecognizable. The fish and the fishmongers are gone. I lost the loft and I lost my father but the buildings have stayed, squat brick reminders. This neighborhood is not the same home it used to be, not anymore.

This is the city that changed before I wanted it too — when I was eight years old, in a din of twisting falling bodies and pale grey dust, burned hard against my eyelids, and again when I was 11, with the departure of the fish mongers and their crude laughter and incessant clamor. My neighborhood continues to shed and don shells and the streets, re-cobbled every five years, are both a nuisance and a reassurance of at least one constant. But overall, this is the city of growing pains, where my life moved faster than my mind wanted it to, leaving me with a dull ache that returns every time I come home.

People hurt you when they have changed and you have changed and your lives no longer intersect at complementary angles. You are not guiltless, but you hardly carry all the blame. You can blame faded connections on bad timing, on misunderstandings, the list goes on and on.

But places are different. Stagnant places hurt you with flash floods of memory; places that have changed too much hurt you all the same by reminding you how long you’ve been gone and how much time has passed.

When I was a kid I never thought I would go away to college, let alone spend my first year flush against the other side of the country. I never threatened to run away and I never understood why anyone would. My mother — born in the whitewashed suburbia of 1950s Southern California — fled to the East Coast in 1979 and never looked back. New York has been her home for longer than Los Angeles ever was and besides, she tells me, the latter never really felt like a proper home anyway.

It is much easier for me to grow accustomed to an entirely new place than to accept that a place I know and love is changing around me. But places never truly depart or die: they were here long before you were, and will remain present long, long after you are gone.

They say that grief is complicated, especially when you lose someone for whom your feelings were not so black and white. I have no father left to love, to hate, to adore and to resent. But I have a city. I have landmarks and I have reminders. And in the nearly two years since my dad died, the pace of change in New York feels exponential. Are things truly that much different, or is this just a natural byproduct of getting older – time feels more compressed the farther you hurtle through it, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

Walking down South Street today, I can almost smell fresh crab and cod over ice. I can almost see my father and I, walking a worn path to school, my two steps for his every one. I can almost hear the cacophony of the fishmonger’s swearing, my father is almost here. I am walking on the same ground I stepped on ten years ago, but nothing is the same. I blame New York for taunting me, for the reminders, for wrenching the home out of home, because home should never make you ache so much.

We Met At The Worst Possible Time

OCT. 15, 2012

By CHRISTOPHER HUDSPETH

We have control of a lot of things in life, but who comes in and out of it isn’t one of ‘em. Sure we can decide who we allow access to our heart and who gets the boot. When we’re introduced, where we meet and who we are at that time isn’t exactly something we can grab by the horns right that second. Perhaps it’s all meant to play out the way it does, but sometimes it can feel like it’s not. It seems as if the universe slipped up and made a mistake. A crucial error that’s led to you coming face to face with a person you had no business being involved with. At least not here. Certainly not now.

You should’ve seen me before, back when I wasn’t broken. Really, I wish you could’ve. It wasn’t always tense and complicated. I wasn’t always damaged goods. Battle wounds have left scars, permanent ones that can be seen too often for me to appeal to you, but for some odd reason, I do. The blemishes can be covered but why bother? The smokescreen’s mist runs out and the façade requires constant, conscious, strenuous effort that isn’t authentic or sincere.

If this had been a different time in our lives we’d be better. You wouldn’t see the good in me deep down, you’d see the greatness on the surface. You wouldn’t think of me as potential, you’d think of me as currently capable. And this mutually inaccessible stuff would not exist. I wouldn’t see you as a slim chance, I’d see opportunity. I wouldn’t think of you as a pipe dream, I’d think of you as a wish that came true. But we didn’t meet then, we met when we did and maybe that’s just how it was meant to be.

There’s a quote that says people come into our lives for a reason, season or lifetime and I always hope you’re sticking around for the latter. But if you are a reason, it must be to show me that I need to fix the breaks and embrace the wounds. Perhaps you’ve served that purpose and any day now we’ll part ways. That’s a sad thought – heartbreaking in fact, but maybe that’s just the way it is. If you’re a season it’s because you were more necessary than you probably realized and a significant part of my surviving a difficult stretch in life. You provided the little bit of light in an abyss of darkness, the nourishment when I was starving, the ears when I needed a listener. Like most seasons though, you’ll run your course and suddenly be gone. Reasons and seasons both suck in the end, but they’re deserving of some appreciation if you take them for what they’re worth.

Now if you are a lifetime – well then that means everything is going to work out. The worries, concerns and uncertainty will eventually disappear. Being involved in each other’s forever may not show in the cards right now, but who’s to say that the next hand we’re dealt won’t make it visible? If you’re here for a lifetime then that changes everything. If you’re here for a lifetime we haven’t met at the worst time, we’ve met at the right one — the perfect one.