If I’m being honest, I think I owe it to myself and to anyone else reading, to write a few words pertaining to what happened next. There’s always another page, always another story, always a next.
It’s been slightly over one month since my return to the big city. It has blurred by in a mixture of express trains, walk-up buildings, and quite entertaining dates when I can find the time. I'm in real estate, I hear myself casually drop at least three times a day, maybe because I'm proud of it, maybe because I'm prospecting, or perhaps just because I've begun to breathe it every waking moment. You have to, this is New York City. Go hard or go home.
Coming back to New York was a multi-faceted experience. Everything looked different and the same all at once. I was a new me, I had a new perspective, I was better, stronger. But no matter how far I had come, some things were still there, as expected, waiting. They begged to be reckoned with, beckoned my temptation and I fell for it...but only for a second.
More often then not I find myself thinking about my time in Africa. I think about how even though I so strongly wanted everyone to feel it, to learn from it, to understand it...I've come to accept that it really was for no one other than myself. I'm the only one who can truly understand, who can truly learn from it, who can bring to mind in a single heartbeat the kids, the smells, the sound of Kenya. And I keep it with me, every day, along side my grocery list and taxi receipts and weekend plans. Most people don't have the time it takes to truly hear you, but all in all, I realize I don't need them to.
It's true what they say about reciprocity, you know. When you're finally ready, when you're finally done, when you can finally say goodbye...it doesn't matter if the other person is there to hear you, to know it. You won't need them to know either way. Because the only one who ever really needed to say goodbye...was you.
‘Tis the season...Christmas in New York. Coffee burns my tongue as I sit behind a window watching the snow fall; I think about plans to ice skate in Central Park and new romance amidst apple cider and spiced rum. New beginnings, new endings, and an anticipation of the unknown. Love Actually and Miracle on 34th Street play repeatedly on DVD players and TBS specials, the tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center is advertised in the New York Times, and once again I know...anything seems possible.
