Notes About Moving On
Letting go of the fear of change, and thoughts about coming back to New York
I am on the cusp of change and the curb is shifting fast. - Audre Lorde
I know these posts haven't been as frequent as in the past. My excuse is — I just made the journey of traveling back to New York from Houston during a global pandemic, my unemployment insurance ran out. I'm transitioning to working a remote job that I just got (thank god), and I've been adjusting to being back in NYC. Also, to be honest, I just had writer's block.
I must say being back in the city is bittersweet, the first day my Uber drove me through Manhattan, and everything seemed wholly unfamiliar and foreign. I had gotten so used to the peace of being home that I lost the chaos blindfold that I earned from ten years of living in New York, but this chaos was completely unfamiliar from the New York of yesterday. There was a fever in the air that I've never experienced before; the streets in SoHo were filled with protestors, the Lower East Side had set up mobile showers for the homeless. However, on the other side of the road, there were restaurants open with ample extended outdoor seating, and the mostly white patrons seemed jovial and unbothered. I was in shock until I crossed the bridge to Brooklyn, I got to my empty apartment and took a hit of my first real blunt in two months, and as I sat on my couch high as hell I started to realize my relationship with New York has hit a roadblock.
I know there's always an adjustment period coming back to New York, but I still can't shake the peace I felt being away from the city. I didn't want that peace to end, and I came back hoping it would follow me here. In a lot of ways, I'm happy to be back. I am happy to be closer to my community; I am so glad I'm not in a car all the time, I am happy to be back in a city with people who understand they/them pronouns (more on that later). But looking around at New York, I don't know how this city is operating at this time. I’ve been asking questions like? What is community if it is still unsafe to assemble, how can I rest when there's still protest in the streets, and how can I thrive in isolation when things are opening prematurely? Also, I heard they have bouncers at the park now like it’s the club, and the only thing I could say is, the ghetto.
Change used to be such a scary word for me but now I am at a place where I must embrace it. When I consider the mistakes of my past, I always remember when I didn't trust my instincts as the moments I regretted the most. Things are shifting drastically, but I’m learning to adjust with the change of pace. I'm almost thirty, I’m still young but I'm at a point where I think having a backyard would be dope, and every day I'm considering moving to achieve that. At 29 I started a new chapter, and the pages are turning fast, and ultimately, it doesn’t serve me to be afraid of what's next.
So in the words of The Vocal Bible.
If it don’t work for me guess I’ll be moving on.
What situations are you letting go of at this time? How are you moving on? Let me know in the comments below.
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Remember you are more powerful than you know.
Kile Atwater