Today marks 6 months in New York. Well, more like 6 months and 2 hours. Kassie and I arrived at Lindsay’s apartment in Brooklyn around 10pm on the night of July 9th.
I didn’t realize that until this moment—as I wrote that date—that it’s the same date Taylor Swift wrote about in “Last Kiss” (don’t worry—I’ll update this link to Taylor’s Version as soon as it debuts):
“That July 9th:
The beat of your heart—
It jumps through your shirt.
I can still feel your arms,
But now I’ll go sit on the floor,
Wearing your clothes.
All that I know is
I don’t know how to be something you miss.
I never thought we’d have a last kiss.
Never imagined we’d end like this;
Your name, forever the name on my lips”
My July 9th felt very different—an adventure, an arrival—but it also felt similarly because leaving and breaking up are both different sides of the same coin of grief. But sometimes endings look strangely like beginnings. It’s why I have a sunrise and sunset mirrored on my finger. Even in the beauty of a beginning is the necessary grief of the parallel ending.
And the last 6 months have been this dance of loss and gain. Loss of sleep, gain of friends. Loss of one job, gain of another. Losses and gains of weight and stress and money. I’m learning to value the calm and the steady: the fresh air and a friendly face and a sunny day.
No choice or change is without loss or opportunity cost, but you have to decide what’s worth it, even if you don’t know the ending. Because you never really know the ending. All you can do is factor in everything you know and lean into the feeling of what you hope for, believing it exists. This is true for love, for adventures, for new cities and new dreams.
So I think all I can truly ask myself after 6 months is: has it been worth it? And all I can reply is the cliche of a resounding YES.
*And I’m posting this a day late because I watched the new season of Search Party and had dinner with friends and forgot about posting this, which really speaks more to the goodness of life than any photo, don’t you think?
photo by my friend Michael on a good day