okay.

i have arrived in utah where i will be for the next three months.

right now three months seems like an interminable amount of time to spend in a place where i don't really know anyone. in a room that feels awfully tiny, awfully white, and awfully far from home.

but the mountains are large and green and one feels like they might just reach out their hand and actually touch them.

so i'll let the mountains do their work on me. and i'll be okay.

even if i have to cry a bit along the way.

like yesterday. on the plane. because i don't know that i've ever been so frightened. or felt so far away from what i had once imagined for my life.

or like today. because i miss my parents (and some really darn good tex-mex food).

but parents (and lupe's) will be in texas when i return in september.

and new york will be on the cusp of autumn when i finally make it back.

and who knows where life will be. and that's the exciting part, right?

the tub will wait.

so i got my cry.

on the subway, actually.

i'm starting to think all things in new york eventually come back to the subway.

i was that girl, in the corner, folded in on herself, falling apart.

someone handed me a stack of fast-food napkins, that's how bad it got.

but the tears were sweet and deep and when all was said and done, i stood up, climbed the stairs out of the station, and felt the cool, night air on my freshly-watered face.

tubs

tonight i dreamt of a house.

an old victorian home.

with a four-footed tub on the top floor.

a large white four-footed tub filled with warm, clean water.

in which to dive. to soak. to clean. to cry.

to cry, really.

yes, tonight i dreamt of a large victorian home with a four-footed tub in which to cry.

because i need to cry. but cannot.

i tried.

on the walk home from the subway.

in the cold, wet city air. i tried.

with each return to new york the question of what am i returning to becomes harder to answer.

(certainly not any kind of tub i'd choose to fall apart in).

and the thing is, the silence on the other end of that question is a certain kind of death.

sometimes...

sometimes...my past seems more inviting than my future. because it’s known. what i wouldn’t give to be the eight year old who survived on boxcar children and goldfish, who built forts and gave tea parties, who believed in kissing her bears goodbye each morning. sometimes i wonder if I took a misstep somewhere. and if with that misstep I’m failing my eight-year-old self. i wonder if there’s any going back. 

but then, sometimes...i have brief, fleeting moments of clarity. And I know. i know that the best is yet to come. that my days of forts and tea parties are not over. that love, as i know it, is only the beginning. and that there are no missteps, no wrong turns. that every good day, every bad, every right decision, every wrong, will lead me to exactly where i’m meant to be.

photos via ffffound

and visualize.us

once more.

today i awoke to a miracle.

the city was a revelation.

bathed in green. swathed in new light.

i stood on the corner of 77th and columbus and was lost. i'd gone too far. not far enough. where was i?

i looked up. 77th. columbus. no, this is right. and then i realized:

green. a canopy of green above. and with that, everything looked different. altered. the usual no more.

the city is a brand new playground. these corners and pockets that i know so well have changed and are beckoning me forth to explore. mapped and charted territory in need of new delineations.

suddenly, the usually banal cross town bus trip is like burrowing through the center of the rain forest. it doesn't last too long. but it's a glorious explosion of lushness in the gathered bouquet of skyscrapers and tenements that is new york.

new york is new again. new to me. and i could fall in love once more.

we forget, you know. there are times that our memories trail so close behind--clicking at our heels. and so we forget. trees lose their leaves. and then they find them again. of course. how could i forget this?

barren arms reaching to the sky. and then an answered prayer. blooms and buds. and flowers and leaves. cyclical. life is cyclical. and so the word barren is not right. trees are not barren. they are never without. they are in transition. life takes on new form.

i am not without. i am in transition. and soon a prayer will be answered and i will bloom and open. and i will be the same but altered. and i will get to explore this new me who was here all along. and the cycle will repeat.

the trees sang me a song this morning and my ears are alight with their hum.