I live in your New York now. I live in it, in all its filth, in all its emotions, in the grime. I’m fucking rolling in it. I am fucking suffering in it and the world is on fire and I know someday it’ll get better but I know it won’t be today. Today it floods and I wash away with it. I really want to wash away with it. Today I feel everything nobody ever wants the privilege of feeling. Today I relate to all the ballads. Today I bawl. Today all the tears come and I am not sure if I deserve to cry. Today I feel betrayed, lost, disappointed, upset. Today I don’t know if I matter. And that’s what you wanted right? For me to live, to know that I get this single precious life and it’s cowardly to avoid the hard times, the difficult feelings. Today I am not sure who I am anymore. I guess I know who I am but I’m not sure what I stand for.
Today I am in Joan Didion’s New York and I feel so alone. I feel like its lone inhabitant. Today I feel like I fucked up. And by fucked up I mean that I did nothing wrong but have to clean up the mess that others have made. Today I feel like I want a ticket home, today I wish the water would just drown me. Today I face consequences for other people’s rash decisions. Today I am cleaning up a mess that I swore I didn’t make. But that’s life, right? We can’t all choose how it plays out. We get these cards and we deal with them. And that’s not fair. Life is not fair. I’m sorry Joan Didion, but I’m not a fan.
I’m not a fan of trying to fall in love, for trying to mistake something for love, maybe. For interrogating my emotions in the same way that you do. For having to face uncomfortable truths. For a man to tell me that he slept with another woman without protection and that it crossed his mind that it would hurt me but he did it any way. And it really was the last part that hurt: that it crossed his mind and still went ahead. Because I felt betrayed. I felt like as a friend I should be afforded some consideration, some respect, and in a way, I felt that I as a person was disposable. My feelings, my friendship were disposable. And then fuck you Joan Didion because then I had to accept what was given to me and have to learn all the rules and try to understand what had happened. Like this fucking sucks. You probably know that it hurts, it really hurts so badly. I wish I could tell the one person who has become my best friend in this fucking city but I can’t even tell that person because that is the person that hurt me. This is so heavy and everywhere, it fucking floods. Everywhere I am not sure where to go. I am not sure if I have to return a pair of shorts and go get my computer monitor and face towel. I am not sure if I will never be able to walk part that apartment and look at it in the same way. I am not sure if I can do this, if I will make this through. But you laugh because you know I will. That I will get through this and I will grow as a person. But fuck this. Fuck all these emotions. Fuck this disappointment. Fuck this pride. I am swallowing my pride and it’s clawing its way out of my mouth. Fuck all of this. Fuck not being enough. Fuck that I never feel good enough. Fuck this city. Honestly.
I’ve lived now, haven’t I? And it’s so painful. It’s painful knowing that I am not important. It’s painful seeing actions from someone you care about demonstrating that they don’t care about you. It’s excruciating to be terrified of what’s next. So many phone calls with my friends expressing how it’s this fear of being alone that keeps me in this. That kept me from under reacting. That’s motivated me to propose other arrangements. I am so sad. I don’t know how to feel because I am washed in this wave of sadness that I’m not sure how I get out of. I am devastated. I don’t feel broken, maybe just not yet.
I guess when I think about what happened with D, at least I knew what I did wrong. It was my fault. But this is not my fault. This is the fault of shitty actions by a shitty person, and I am so conflicted about calling that person a friend. And I feel like it’s unfair that I have to be the person who decides what’s next. How do you respond to a shitty act? How do you reconcile the thought that someone that you thought was a friend at a bare minimum would do something like that? And how do you just rip the bandage off and realize that there is nothing left afterwards. That you can leave this behind and now everything is a desert. And you chose to drain all the water because that was the moral thing to do. That was the sensible thing to do. That’s what a strong person would do.
And Joan Didion, I don’t know what happens next. I am so upset. I am not quite heartbroken, though I’ve realized that maybe it’s because I don’t know whether or not I am heartbroken. I don’t think I have figured that out yet. I don’t want to. I’m afraid of the answer.
I can’t believe that my house is on fire. I can’t believe that everything is burning and everything is flooding and I am supposed to deal with this shit. I can’t believe that I joked about toeing the line between wasting my time and having fun and now I have no choice but to admit that I’ve been wasting my time. Because now I’m not having fun, I have been hurt. Now I feel like I’ve lost the game and I am embarrassed.
And Joan Didion, this isn’t my best piece of work but I want you to know that I really took your advice to heart. I tried to really live in it. I tried to experience it all. I’ve tried to live recklessly and I don’t know what to do next. I am devastated. I’ve already said this, but I hate feeling this. And if I’ve learned anything it’s that I have a voice, I am a person, and that I don’t have to make every choice right now. But I inevitably will have to, because life does that to you, doesn’t it? It pushes you to make the hard choices and you grow stronger for it.
When I moved to NY all I wanted to do was grow, to live. And I got that!!! And this sucks. This fucking sucks. This fucking sucks that I have skin in this game. This fucking sucks that I have to grow up. It fucking sucks that I feel upset. It fucking sucks that I am crying. It fucking sucks. All of it. I am not hysterical, but I think there were flashes of that. Right now I feel like there is work that I should focus on. Right now I feel like I should sleep early tonight because I will wake up with puffy eyes otherwise. Right now I feel everything I should feel. And that is everything all at once. And I am not sure how that ends. I think that makes me nervous.
I think what enrages me most is that he doesn’t seem that apologetic about his actions when they were hurtful. Like the fact that he didn’t tell me for over a week when he could have done it, I want to know why. I think I deserve to know why because I want to hear from the horse’s mouth that he was a coward. And I think what I am so conflicted on is how I can really trust someone to not burn me again. And yeah, I will admit I’ve let him dictate all the rules, but I suppose I’ve been complicit in that. I haven’t brought it up. I am still guilty. Like I had a role in it even if it’s not completely me. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
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