Vintage V

Originally written in my journal upon the return from a semester abroad in Paris
January 12, 2004

This place. This city that I so identify with. New York. Manhattan. NYC. The Big Apple.
I'm returning to it.

It's gone on for so long without me.
I've gone on for so long without it.

I'm honestly really scared right now.

Floating over a purple sea of cotton candy lined with the pink of another day's sunset I travel from one place to another.

The flight attendants crisscross the aisles as a woman one row up re-applies her makeup. My dog watches from my lap in wonder. The sky somehow beneath her paws, horizons reflecting in her big brown eyes as they come alive with the wonder of discovery. A grin spreads on her furry face.

The cabin rattles a little. Turbulence. And now, with Bradshaw resting safely at my feet, I suddenly see only darkness at my window. The pink has changed to black and we appear to have entered a storm.

New York is mad with me.
I have strayed. Cheated. Slept with someone else's continent. Some foreign bed.
I fear I will be punished.

I laugh a little to myself. It doesn't seem to be the returning to old (new) friends that worries me. It isn't the concept of turning 22 in a week or even the reality that I will be graduating with a degree in of all things "Drama" at the end of this final semester.

New York itself has gotten me anxious, on edge.

It all feels rather hopeless - very give in now, it's all too much to handle - but then I look out the window and beside my own reflection I see this city, it's lights, emerging through the storm.

And there's no other way around it.
I'm home.