Cultivate the Heart

I do not love NYC, and perhaps I never will,yet time keeps passing.  Already six months since Penny and I arrived at LaGuardia, already two semesters at my new job, already three months since I entered my late twenties.  In that time I have eaten more fantastic street food and been verbally assaulted more times that I can count, and yet I still feel like I haven't even arrived here yet.

My first month in the city I tried so very hard not to go outside.  Not to leave the apartment, not to acknowledge that anything had changed.  To resolutely wake up every morning imagining that I was still in our Illinois oasis, ready to walk barefoot in the grass and watch the pheasants fly to roost at dusk.

But now I go out and about every day, for better and for worse.  My job is my saving grace- it's all about people, and the people are beautiful in the most real way people can be.  So work exists and home exists, but so far I haven't allowed myself to exist here.  I've been keeping myself to myself so resolutely that I can't even picture what's been going on for the past six months.

And now I need to change all that.  In one week I begin a new position at work where I will need to be fully mentally, emotionally, and spiritually present.  In one month I will head off on a trip that will be a defining moment in my life, and I need to open myself up to the relationships and memories that it will bring.  

So I suppose it's time to start to loosen the knot inside me that fears, resents, and stubbornly ignores the fact that this is my "now" and this is my "here".  Time to loosen my grip and realize that life has not ended, and it hasn't started fresh, either.  It has simply continued its natural course, and it will continue onward here in NYC, whether I approve or not.

So much love,
~Mersydotes