Then with all alacrity, give it your best shot.
Because this is the year that I will hurl that massive fireball right back at you and promptly shut the door, lock it, stuff a towel under the frame, and ignore your repeated knockings. I will have no more of it.
Months and months ago (I truly don’t know when as it’s been that long since I’ve visited this site) I posted a poem by Dylan Thomas that I found in a book I was reading at the time. “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” was its name. At the time, I was so proud of myself for finding it, for sharing it, thinking I was not only being stuffily literary but that I was one of those who rages, who fights, who never settles quietly for something less than what is desired.
But I did go gentle.
Maybe gentle is not the right word. Maybe disconnected is closer to what happened.
2011 was the worst and most eventful year of my life. Granted, that life is only 23 years old, which is probably nothing in the grand scheme of things, and really, now that I’ve seven billion other neighbors to contend with, my problems are relatively minute, but for now and to me, that is what it remains. It was the year New York made me her own. She ploughed in and made a den inside me, filling me with her craziness and beauty and grime and I let her.
I don’t want it to seem that I simply gave up, simply stopped being any vestige of myself and left anyone and everyone I knew in my wake. No, this came from something. There was a hardness to 2011. A continuation of separate events that flung me to the floor, where I stayed only until I could climb to my knees again.
So in a way, it had to happen. I had to disconnect and dissolve a bit. If the year before last can be marked by anything, it can be marked by a desperation, so that simply to get by, I had to dunk my whole body under the water that is the rush of this place so I could rush with it. Because sometimes it really is easier to give yourself up and drift along for awhile, never touching the bottom or the surface. Because sometimes you find that you simply cannot stop moving because if you do, everything you’re trying to avoid is there waiting for you, quietly, determinedly, an incendiary in the shallows.
And New York was there for it all. She was there when I cried on her streets, when I ran down her sidewalks, when I lost people, when I gained jobs, when the world seemed to slip and I could no longer hold on, when the person I used to be was forced to change into the person I am today. I used to imagine her smiling down at me as I blundered through, never slowing down so she could catch up.
It took a while for me to realize this. It began to slowly creep up on me last autumn, that something was off, that something had shifted. But I ignored it as we all do when those first few tendrils of doubt emerge. This continued on into the beginning of winter, gradually building up into the holidays when I traveled back to the mountains that I call my home.
And slowly, slowly, it all came back. The person I was before I left. I found that she hadn’t died, New York hadn’t killed all of her, that a small part was still there waiting to dig herself out of the rubble when she knew she had the strength again. And she started to remember. Remember how to laugh, when to be quiet and still, how to sit on the front porch and listen to the branches whine in the cold. We remembered, she and I. Who I was. That I am a person who loves to read to the point of fanaticism, who is unsuspectingly strong, who moved to a place so opposite of anything she had ever known to prove to those who doubted and scoffed that she can make it with no one’s help. Who will buy a book before food, who believes there is still an immeasurable amount of room for imagine in this world, who will gently rage if you make a fool out of her, who is creative and stubborn and vulnerable but will try and hide it to her dying day, who hates admitting she is wrong, who has caused pain and who has suffered much, who daydreams more than is probably healthy, and who will never ever stop reaching.
And it was this person that came back to New York, back to the lights and crowded streets and unending competition and struggle and edginess and splendor. I feel that she may have a paused a moment when my cab emerged from the Holland Tunnel on December 29th, stepped back a bit and studied me, then with a knowing smile, opened out her arms as I finally reached back.
She smiled because I know now, I finally understand her. She is a greedy city, but only to those who are unknowing. She will take what she wants of you, to feed her and nurture her and thousands upon thousands are consumed by her. But she is also deeply loving, if only you can find it. Because those she loves best, those that she will keep and harbor and let thrive and love, are those that fight back. Those that and say no, I will not let you take all of me, this is mine. Because she is nothing if not a fighter. And those she lets in, those that she will respect and urge on and protect are those in who she sees herself.
I know there are hundreds of accounts of people’s lives here and every one is different and similar and feels like something we’ve heard before. But that’s the thing about this place. It’s so hard to describe something new when that something is being experienced by millions of people around you at the exact same moment. But to you, it is new. It is fresh. So mock and laugh if you will, but these words are life here, my life. This is mine and no one will ever take it away again.
I will go gentle no longer.
