brave.

It's 1:18am and I'm going to kick myself tomorrow when J wakes me up to go skating, but I don't really care. I'm sitting in the living room looking out at the city and I want to just cry because it's all so god damn beautiful - more beautiful than I can even put into words and I don't even want to try because I just don't think I can encapsulate it all. I love here....I love being here. I love being here with someone who loves and appreciates New York more than me because there is just so much to learn. Stories and places and pictures and smiles and laughs - soul opening laughs - and from the very first time I stepped foot into this city in 2009 I always knew that it was special to me. I'm so different from that girl. But that's what I really love about New York, no matter how long it's been, it's still the same and yet so different and it's really at these moments that I notice even the slightest differences in myself.

I wish I could just capture this moment. I wish there was some way to hold it in my hands and come back to it whenever I need to. It sounds ridiculous - all of this does, and I'm just so past the point of even caring. I want to let loose and scream and laugh and smile and eat really good food and love it. I want to dance all night and sing at the top of my lungs and be okay with it. Because fuck, I think about sitting in group when K asks me all the time, but what else are you? And it's such a god damn struggle to say anything, so I just say what I always say after its choked out of me, but I just want to scream right now that I'm brave and I'm beautiful and I'm funny and I'm smart and I'm caring and I'm kind and I'm so many things and have so much potential to be these things and be the person I'm supposed to be, whoever that is, and I can do that. That's who I am here. Everything is balanced and centered and my friends in the next room sleeping and I just want to say Thank You for changing my life. Thank you for sharing this with me and letting me be apart of it because fuck, it feels so good to be apart of something, whatever it is. I walk down the streets of NYC and know this is where I'm meant to be. I sit on the subway and I wish I could just explain it, you know? I wish I could make my mom understand, make people understand that this is the only thing I'm sure about in my life. That honest to god, my purpose in life is this city. it's not the future children I may or may not have, it's not the person I've been crushing on for the past year, it's not to cure cancer or be a book publisher or a doctor or anything. It's this city. That simple and that complicated.

My first night here in July I just laid on the futon and cried. I cried because I felt disgusting and so unworthy of being here and being friends with J and crying over a fucking donut and I'm sitting in the exact same spot and I just can't even put myself to that girl. Which is strange because its 130 in the morning and the night is when I always slip away, and I'm so god damn present right now and I want more than anything to stay here.