I’m still here.
Oddly enough, not in New York anymore. But so far, leaving New York has turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made. I’m a zookeeper, I go to Salisbury University and my life has never been more stable.
On the flip side - I sort of had my heart ripped out through my chest and stomped on not so long ago. I can’t say I don’t regret giving someone the opportunity to get close to me and see the way I tick. Because I do. Relationships never cease to amaze me, how they evolve, how they turn into something so disastrous that you can’t even remember why you liked the person in the first place. What changes a person’s visceral reaction to the person they came to know? I feel like I’ll never know. The thing that scared me the most about this situation was that I wrote poetry again. Poetry to me was a thing that died in me right along with my entire New York experience. Died when I was brutally assaulted and kidnapped by a cab driver. After all that, what could I possibly have to write about?
I’ve become just like everyone else. I’m afraid of change, hesitant, trepidation exudes from my every pore. But I’m also ok. Physically I’m fine, job is great, school is great. Heart? Still beating, but in fragments. Hell, I don’t even play video games anymore. And that was a source of real joy in my life (go on, laugh). Give me a first person shooter and I can occupy an entire day. Now? I have girl on the mind. And I want said girl out of that head of mine.
I wish I could tell you this is a romantic comedy. That I didn’t black out on the first date and push someone away that I really liked. I really wish I could tell you that. But I can’t. I also wish I could tell you that I won’t ever hear from her again. Sadly, I don’t think that’s the case. I think just like the other girls in my life, she’ll pop up again - because she has no idea what to do with me. At least with my ex, she found her moment of truth and followed through - something that I appreciate more and more as time goes by. When I left DC, I really wanted to believe I would never go back there, never have a reason to be lonely and sad about ever going there in the first place. Here I am now wondering if I’ll wind up getting in my car and giving it another chance. Will I go back to 16th and U? Probably. Will I know for sure any time soon? No. Now I’m grasping at straws and praying that I keep it all together, because sometimes mistakes become real tragedies. I’m starting to feel like that might be what this is.
Lately, I keep thinking about an experience that changed my life. I call it “The Ultimate Buzz Kill.” When I lived in Pennsylvania with my ex, her and her sister really wanted me to drive them to their family reunion. It was because driving in the car with me was fun, I played music, told stories, joked, etc. I also loved driving to places I had never been to and intentionally getting lost. So naturally, I obliged. It took 4 hours to get to upstate Pennsylvania - specifically State College. When we got there, it was dark out but that was no damn reason for me not to prowl around and see where the back roads would take me. Ali and her sister were more than happy to have me drive them around the creepy, farm laden and rural roads of Pennsylvania. As we drove along, after about an hour or so I came across a particularly dark area of road. Houses were sparse and I noticed there was something in the road. As I got closer, I realized it was a man, face down. Now naturally the shock of seeing that with NOTHING else around set in immediately. I stopped the car and can honestly tell you there was a good minute or two of stunned silence. Then I noticed a motorcycle on it’s side about 30 feet away. With 3 cellphones between us not one of them had service. Not one. I told Ali and Amy to stay in the car and got out. When I walked over to him he didn’t have a single scratch on him. I marveled at that. I couldn’t move him because I was no longer EMT certified and I know well enough to know that if you move someone with trauma that severe, you could be the difference between life and death. For 5 minutes I knelt down beside him and listened to a dying man. Hearing life leave a human being is something I can’t explain. There was a clear death rattle, groans that I may never hear again and hope not to. I stood in front of a dying man and had absolutely nothing to offer except my witness to it. I saw lights in the distance and noticed a car approaching. I ran to it and told the kid behind the wheel to dial 911 as there had been an accident. It took EMS 15 minutes to get there. When they showed up they walked casually to the body, joking about something they were discussing on the ride. I was awestruck. They did vitals and within minutes I watched a white sheet get draped over him on the road. He died right there. And I was the last person he had contact with alive.
Things like that happen, and they change you. Sometimes they harden you, but for me, I feel like it’s made my heart bigger. And when it breaks, it breaks into a thousand pieces anymore.
