Monthly Archives: September 2012

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I Want To Meet Someone

I want to meet someone.

Those five words lingered in my head, even as I tried to ignore that they were there. I distracted myself with thoughts of other things and by making to-do lists in my head. I pretended this desire wasn’t bubbling beneath me — but as I sat, overlooking the Hudson with Lucy fast-asleep in puppy dreamland in Riverside Park on Sunday — I couldn’t stop the message my heart sent to my mind.

I want to meet someone.

Though powerful and constant — it’s not a helpless feeling or a dissatisfied longing. It’s different than it was years ago. I don’t feel like something is missing or part of me is still void — I’m not lusting after every man I see or pulling strings and squinting my eyes to make it work with every dude who buys me dinner. I feel no rush and no pressure, no need to speed along a road that I’m not sure how to navigate yet. I don’t believe it’s impossible to find happiness and I do believe I’m meant for a long-term love– and still. Still – after (many) failed relationships, hundreds of blogs debating where I stand on love and loveless and loving, endless conversations with my ever-so patient friends– I still want it.

I still want to fall in love.

But the craving has changed. It’s not wistful and romantic (well, only a little). I’m not looking to be completed or rescued. I’m not hoping to make a married man out of a guy who doesn’t even like to date or is totally emotionally unavailable. I’m not making myself something I’m not so I can be granted the so-called coveted title of girlfriend.

Instead– I want to meet someone… like me?

Someone with a heart that often feels too big for his chest. Someone who can see the good — the possible — in every part of his life, and especially with me. With us. Someone who captivates me, pulls me close and lets me fly. I want to meet someone who accepts himself and does what he can to understand the world. Someone who likes to read and run, travel and learn — explore and make mistakes, dream and slow down. Someone who makes me want to be a better me and be part of a better we than he has before. I want to meet someone who knows how to love– who wants love— who may be afraid of it, but tries it anyway. Who knows how important it is. Someone who has goals for himself and plans he will break for the right thing, the right person, the right place – the right time. Someone who is happy with the someone and the something and the somewhere he is.

I want to meet someone who likes the way the city rests on Sundays and how it’s the perfect day to wake up late, make love and eat pancakes. Someone who wants a family just as much as they want an amazing, fulfilling career, and knows you’ll never be able to be perfect at either. I want to meet who thinks about his future further than Saturday night and deeper than one night stands and tequila shots in Murray Hill. Someone who wants to try new things but also likes to be a regular at places he can’t and won’t stop going to. Someone who knows how to kiss without being rough and knows that love isn’t always enough– but it’s always worth whatever it brings or makes you learn.

I want to meet someone who challenges me and yet, makes me feel comfortable in my running clothes, without any makeup, without any hesitations. Someone who wants to know what I know, who wants to see the town I grew up in. Who can’t wait to share a beer with my dad or go on a walk with my mom. Someone who comes from a place I admire and has a laugh I long to hear. Touch I want to feel. I want to meet someone who is strong enough to stand next to me and sweet enough to let me fall into him when I need it. Or even when I don’t, but want it. Someone who remembers the things I say and can hear the things I don’t, someone who will be there today, tomorrow – always. I want to meet someone who wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here, with me. (And Lucy.)

I want to meet someone.

Someone out there in this big city, living on some street I’ve crossed a million times, taking some train at the same time, thinking about when he would meet… someone like me.

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Liberated By Lucy

On my 24th birthday last week, I was feeling antsy.

In fact– all the weeks leading up to my birthday I had felt anxious and unsure, wondering what my last year of the early twenties would bring me and what I should do next. I found myself lusting after expensive things and fancy travels, men in pressed suits and visions of apartments that are rent controlled with views of the park. I was wishing and hoping for a huge change that would rock my world in the most exquisite of ways, that would shift my negatives to positives and my fears into flights.

But maybe those things were less realistic and more idealistic, I thought as I walked from the subway to Union Square to meet my friend M. I’ve been lucky to experience so much so quickly. I’m happy in a job that brings me happiness each day,  and while the floors are old and the walls dusty, my name is on the lease of an apartment that feels like home. My friends are as thoughtful as they are entertaining, bringing me the best support and experiences I could ask for. And yet, though the weather was the perfect blend of summer days and fall mornings, I felt like something was missing. Like something had to transform for me, just as the seasons were doing. Like I needed to take a plunge and try something I hadn’t before. Something I’d always been scared of doing.

Many friends said I needed a man  — and while I won’t disagree that I’d love a love affair of sorts, it wasn’t romance I ached for as much as I longed to… nest. To really let my roots run as deep as the subway passages and make my stay in NYC more permanent than the zip code I write on the back of cards.

I considered redecorating but that felt silly when I know I won’t be at this apartment forever — and paint and drapery is both as expensive as it is unnecessary. I dreamed about recreating my wardrobe and putting the old out to find another life to indulge in the new I simply don’t need. I thought about starting another blog until I felt guilty about not updating this one as much as I would like. (Sorry, y’all.)

It’s true, even walking from store to store and giggling with M about the things that only best friends can find funny, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to do something. To own something, to try something, to go or to stay or to run or to sit still. Or to what? I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that was making me so uneasy, when really, everything in my life (give or take) was rather, well, easy.

And then I saw Lucy.

Or, rather a seven pound, six-month-old Maltese and Pomeranian mix at a pet store in the West Village. Not just any pet store though — it’s the one I always go to when I’ve had a stressful day or something is causing my heart to ache apart. It’s the one that’s near my friend K’s apartment and the one I’ve stumbled into far too many times after a boozy brunch to ooh-and-aww at the puppies that I wished weren’t trapped in tiny cages. But this time was different. This time — Lucy was there. Though I’ve never had this feeling about a man, when I saw her… I just knew. I knew when she climbed into my lap effortlessly and snuggled herself asleep that I’d be taking her home.

And I did…

I always knew that having a dog would be part of my life in New York. I had considered it further down the road — when I was in a shining, healthy, functional relationship. Or when I was newly married in a newly-remodeled apartment with my new husband who I adored. Maybe the puppy would be the precursor to babies — you know, practice? But as this city has taught me time-and-time again, nothing quite goes as planned. And the best thing you can do is just to roll with what feels right. Admittedly, I’m not the best puppy mom that ever was — I’m neurotic and incredibly worrisome, plus a little freaked out by mostly everything she does or doesn’t do. I don’t have the most patience but I’m learning. I’m getting to know this lovely little dog who in a week, has already brought so much joy — so much love — to my life.

She’s getting to know me too, and my schedule and this “gigantic” apartment that’s near the biggest, most exciting park in the whole wide world — or at least, almost as thrilling as the trash outside. I’m running more than ever, now that my alarm is set earlier, forcing me to get up to relieve a bladder that’s not mine. My room has never been as tidy or organized as it is now, for fear that something as small as a piece of a paper could be dangerous to something furry and adorable. I keep to a routine and I watch my money, knowing that anything could spring up and I need to be prepared to care for something that depends on me fully. Plus, you know, she’s enrolled in puppy obedience school already, hence why she’s passed out in my lap as I write this blog on Sunday evening.

Maybe what I needed — what I felt was missing — was unconditional love. Was something to come home to. Sure, that could be in the form of a boyfriend, and I know (somewhere deep in this only slightly-bitter heart) that I’ll find someone special enough to share this life with one day. But for now, Lucy is the perfect companion. And like her middle name after the lady of New York herself, Lucy Liberty is teaching me to liberate myself from all of those silly two-year, five-year or ten-year plans I had for myself. To liberate myself from worrying about what’s next or if I’m doing everything right. Because really, there’s no way to ever know. And nothing ever turns out just as you thought it would.

Instead though, something sweeter does.

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You Have No Idea

When I moved to New York, there was only so much I could fit in those suitcases. I packed the essentials — dresses with leggings for the end of spring, a nice coat and scarf, interview clothes and big boots, heels and flats. I took two towels and some discounted shampoo and conditioner, along with a few inspiring framed messages given to me over the years. I knew I didnt need much more than my Southern kindness, my six-internship rich resume and that brazen, unstoppable optimism and ambition that’s taken me far.

Once I settled into that first little apartment, where this little blog all got started, my mom started mailing me boxes — all filled with more clothes and bath and kitchen accessories, artwork and
knickknacks that I’ve held onto for years. She sent a box every two weeks and they always smelled like home when I pried them open (probably because she sweetly placed dryer sheets all around for a welcoming, reminiscent effect).

My very first apartment in NYC!

Over the past almost three years (um, wow!) I’ve slowly brought things from North Carolina to New York, often taking a near empty suitcase out of LaGuardia and bringing an almost-over-the-weight-limit bag home from Asheville.

Now, not much is left in my childhood bedroom but scattered books I’ll never need and piles of t-shirts from high school and college I’ll never wear. But over Labor Day weekend, my mom brought something with her that I had cherished, yet somehow forgotten about in all the moving, packing and unpacking– my journal from my very first summer in NYC when I interned at Cosmopolitan.

It’s rough around the edges and the pages have torn here and there but when I sat down on my bed in my Upper West Side apartment to read about my first journey here, I was instantly taken back to those hot summer days.

Yes, I decorated the front.

My words are saturated in blissful innocence — detailing the first time I experienced anything in this city. From the guy who went to Yale and asked me out in the subway platform to the one in the green shirt who slipped me his number while I was hostessing at a fancy restaurant in Times Square. I kept every business card from every editor, every guy, every bar, every shop, every everything.

I taped the yellow sundress photo to a page and wrote how that moment gave NYC the sense of romanticism I always loved about it. I wrote the exact dates of the Metro cards I bought and kept a running list of the people I wanted to write Thank You’s to once I had to leave. I had a master to-do lust creates by friends who lived, loved and knew NYC, and checked off nearly everything that was on it. I tucked away a feather a drag queen gave me from his boa, a plastic daisy I found and a leaf that fell directly on my notebook as I was writing in the park, a few hours before my flight took off for the South.

This went on for four pages…

And in between all those days and nights that made me fall in love with this city even more ridiculously than I already was, I wrote about my fears.

About the reality of living in New York and what that would mean for me as an adult. I wondered about expenses, savings and if I could really manage it all, all on my own, in just a few short years. I wrote about how I thought the city was a terribly difficult place to meet someone and that with all of the beautiful, tall, intelligent and successful people to pick from, why — oh why — would a man pick me? I worried about breaking into an industry that I knew was incredibly difficult to make a name for yourself in, and the competition, even more fierce than the dating scene. I considered if I’d miss those rolling hills in my rearview mirror and if I’d grow to become a bitter woman in the city, adorned in black that matched her stressed -out, overworked spirit. I wrote about my struggle with feeling good enough or talented enough, pretty enough or just enough — to make it here, in this place I knew I really loved and really wanted to live, but didn’t know if it’d feel the same way back.

Reading that New York journal, remembering those feelings all too well, I smiled. Those pages brought happy tears to my eyes. Because if I could tell myself then what I know now, I’d only say four words:

You have no idea.

You have no idea what beauty is before you.

Summer 2011, Mr. P’s old rooftop.

You have no idea how all of that hard work and those happy, positive thoughts will lead you right to the career that’s perfect for you.

Entrance at my lovely job!

You have no idea how many people you’ve yet to meet that will end up being so important in your life.

Before the color run with K + M.

You have no idea what memories you’re going to mold and what days that will turn into nights that will turn into another day, in the city you are, indeed, meant to be in.

Rooftop birthday with E + A.

You have no idea how proud you’ll be of that first little place that’s yours, seeing that first paid byline or going home for Christmas to tell everyone about your wonderful new life.

New York Magazine and coffee, waiting for my plane last Christmas.

You have no idea how much your heart will expand to love someone the very best you can. You have no idea how much more beautiful you’ll feel in the years to come, how much you’ll settle into your own skin.

My handsome gay hubby + I.

You have no idea the men you’ll love, the love you’ll make, the hearts you’ll break.

Mr. P + I, circa spring 2011.

You have no idea that one day, it all really does just come together. It just works itself out — no matter what stages you go through.

Silly faces with A + M.

I don’t keep a physical journal anymore — I let these pages do it digitally for me. But my fears aren’t all that different now than they were then — they’re just older, a little wiser, more mature. They’re thinking further ahead than 21 and out of college, they’re thinking 25 or 30 and what that means. What that’ll bring. And so, even though it doesn’t feel like it now, just as it didn’t feel like it then, I’ll repeat those words to myself when I feel those fears rolling in:

You have no idea. You have no idea what beautiful, life-changing, amazing, things are next.