The Kindness of Strangers pt. 2

I woke up with the same dread that I had fallen asleep with the night before.

An entire day to myself. Not a damn soul around. 

My mind alternated between All by Myself, One is the Loneliest Number, and On My Own for hours.

I had off on a Saturday. A beautiful Saturday. The kind of Saturday that renews your hope in mankind, and I had been dreading it for days.
The extrovert in me cannot be alone. I can be alone, if I choose to do so, but if being alone is thrust upon me without my consent, I feel like I am trapped in a closet with no way out. Or, I guess I should say a city of 8 million people that I don't know.

But, for once in my exceptionally whiny life, I decided to have a good attitude.

Around 1:30 pm (after staying up until 5:30 am watching OITNB, which is fantastic), I finally decided to leave the house and take the hour ride to the beach. Two hours and 4 transfers later, I called my dad crying.

My boss had just informed me that I would be recieving the following Sunday off. Working retail, getting a full weekend off is like when you buy a special treat and open the bag and realized you got two, it is special enough to get the one, and the two is just a miracle. Except without the advanced notice, my very special full weekend off is being wasted with a 2 hour train ride in which I am doing my very very best to not have a full on panic attack.

I asked her to please give me a different Sunday, one in which I would be able to prepare and make actual plans. The truth was that although I wanted that, I did not want to have to spend an entire extra day in this very tiny, very large city all by myself. The thought of that nearly made me nauseous. I wanted to be at work, at a place where I had a purpose, where it didn't really matter that I didn't have anyone to call up because I was busy and doing something productive.

She responded by giving me Sunday AND Monday off. I knew that she thought that she was doing my a kindness, but it was enough to send me into spirals.

Typing it out now, it seems to sad and little and stupid, but in that moment, publicly sobbing on the train, it was choking the life out of me. And so I called my dad to let him know.

What is wrong with me!? Why does this always happen, again and again? Why am I always so alone?

I guess at this point, I have to add that I am single and that obviously makes it worse. This post isn't at all about being broken up, but it sure didn't help the situation.

Why can't I just be a normal person?!

My dad said all of the things dads say and I finally calmed down and found my way to a spot on the beach. I took a deep breath and opened my book. (Just a note, I read The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls and it was fantastic, I really loved it, everyone should read it. ALSO I just read that it is going to become a film with J.Law?! Be still my heart!)

I told myself that it would all be fine. I had bought 10 books the day before and had a fridge full of food, how bad could life be? I could finish OITNB, reorganize my room, bake cookies, sit in the park, it would all be just fine.

It started to get hot on the beach, despite it being 4 pm and so I shoved all of my stuff into my bag, put my towel over it and sprinted into the water and sprinted back. I checked my bag and all was well, my things were all accounted for. I ate about a half lb of brie, read 5 or 6 more chapters and decided that it was naptime. I again shoved my belongings into my bag, looped the handle through my arm and snoozed away under the westward sun. I woke up, everything was all accounted for and I was feeling lovely. The sand in my hair felt comforting, the smell of the sea breeze felt familiar. I was going to be fine, I was being such a baby before. There is nothing wrong with being alone, I am an adult and it will all be fine. 

At about 5:15 I turned my body toward the sun and wrapped my towel around my back and turned my attention fully to my book. I read until it really began to get chilly and I realized I should save the last 30 pages or so for the train ride home. I dog-eared the page (don't start with me, it makes my books feel like old friends when I see places I've left off in the past), and started to get dressed. I reached into my bag to check the time and realized I couldn't find my phone.

Panicking, as I usually do, I dumped my stuff out over the blanket and began to search. It wasn't there. I tore through the sand, shook everything out, dug deeper in the sand. Still no phone. I felt the tears quickly approaching.

Not now. Not today. I just want to have a nice day in this damned city.

I approach a couple and ask them to please call my phone as I am unable to find it. They look at each other, then back at me. The women speaks in broken English,

"Call... your mobile?"

They call for me and it rings twice and then goes to voicemail. I turn back with tears in my eyes and expletives leaving my mouth. They quickly pack up their belongings and move further down the beach.

 I approach a group of people my age and tearfully ask them to please call my phone, it has been stolen.
They were sympathetic and let me call. I left a voicemail, I know you stole my phone!
I later realized they won't know my passcode to access the voicemail...

I go back to my spot to go through the sand, though I know it isn't worth it and start to cry. Not tiny little tears I had been holding back before, but just wail. I have a lot of things, shame isn't one of them.

It was not my phone that I was crying for. That stupid thing had 3 separate screen cracks and was probably going to stop working any day now. I felt so stupid. I felt so violated. Someone had snuck up behind me and reached their hand into my bag. I felt so angry. If I had any damn friends, this wouldn't have happened! If I still had a stupid boyfriend, this wouldn't have happened! If I hadn't been so forceful with myself, if I hadn't tried so freaking hard to have a nice day, this wouldn't have happened!

I let my misery swallow me as the sand had (hopefully) swallowed me phone.

Hon, you ok?

I didn't think through that a young woman crying all alone on the beach would attract a bit of attention.

Yeah, it's just... I mean it's stupid, someone stole my phone.

A look of relief crosses her face,

Damn girl, I thought you were gonna say it was aboutcha boyfriend. Cuz I was gonna say, f*ck your boyfriend.

I can't help but laugh and the tears subside.

Well, no, although I do have an ex I am a bit annoyed with at the moment, but no, I am just having a day of misery and this didn't help.

Hon, you can't trust these people. You look like a girl with money, you can't be lookin like that. Did they take your wallet? Do you need money to get home?

I do? Well, that's not too true. My phone had 3 cracks in it and is two models old. I don't know how that looks like money. But no, they didn't take my wallet, thank you though.

At this point, I am near crying again because I am so relieved that beautiful people still exist.

These people are stupid. They don't know that.

They are stupid.

You gotta watch out for these people. You can't just be trusting anyone. You gotta know who to trust. You gotta know who to value. Like, you can't just break up witchya girlfriend because she found outcha man is runnin' around on you and tells it like it is. You can't be gettin' mad at her for that. She tryna tell you the truth. F*ck ya man if he runnin around on you, don't break up with your girlfriend! 

I am not sure what to do with all of this information, but I can't disagree with any of it. I respond affirmatively. And thank her for her sweetness and kindness for a stranger.

Honey, I ain't sweet. I just love God and I can't see a girl crying all alone. I am 63 years old and you wanna know what the secret of life is? I'll tell you. The secret of life is don't give it away.

 (I have no idea what this means, but she keeps going)

Don't give anything away. Don't do shit for people who don't value you. Where does that get you? How does that help you? Like, you gotta man who wants a guitar so he can be a rockstar or some shit. So what, you gotta buy him a guitar? Man, f*ck ya boyfriend and f*ck his guitar.

I am entirely lost at this point, but I love everything the woman has to say. We chat for a while longer, I find out that her name is Norma and she is with her adorable grandchildren today. She reminds me to be thankful that they didn't take my wallet, or my life (!?) and to be kind to myself.

New York, you are awful, but you have redeemable qualities.

I rush to the train (no idea how to find a train without Google Maps, mind you) and head to the only Verizon store that I can pinpoint to its exact location. About 5 minutes from my ex-boyfriend's apartment. I have no problem seeing him, everything is amicable, but at this point I am tired, hungry, dirty, tear streaked and slightly sunburned. The last person I need to run into is an ex. I find my way to the train, and 40 minutes later arrive at Canal street and sprint to the store, only to find it locked and the men waving me away to let me know it is closed. I look at the hours sign on the door and it says they close at 8 pm.

I can feel the panic arising again. It is bad enough that my phone is gone, but what if they crack my passcode? I've used banking information on there, personal contacts, my email, etc. They don't open until 11 am the following morning, meaning the asshole thief will have been able to access my stuff for over 12 hours! I knock again and they give my the same blank look. Feeling very alone and defeated, I did what I do best. I slumped along the side of the store and began to cry. In public. Again.

A girl approaches me and asks if I am ok and if I need a phone. I assume she is peddling some stolen goods (it is Canal street after all) and tell her that I am fine. She pulls her own phone out of her pocket and offers it to me, if I need someone to call. I thank her for her kindness but tell her that I just need to get my phone turned off and the damn store is closed. I ask her the time. It is 8:02 pm.

She walks away and I stand in front of the door, trying to loudly whisper through the half inch crack between the doors.

I just need to get my phone turned off! Please! It was stolen! 

Whether they can hear me or not, they don't turn around. I don't know what to do. I have to get this issue resolved! I lean against the door, fighting the tears for the 4th time when someone approaches from behind the locked doors. I wipe them away, fully aware of the black streaks and explain my situation. He looks at me blankly and walks away. I stand there again, not sure what emotion to feel when a younger man appears. He opens the door for me and says he will help me. I must've looked manic when I loudly exclaimed my gratefulness and thanks because he began to look very afraid. Nonetheless he disconnected my phone, flagged it as stolen and wrote down the number for me to have a replacement phone in about 5 minutes. His name was Norman.

I get back on the train to head home. I've got about 40 minutes to go and my book is finished. I reach into my bag to grab my phone and smile to myself at my mistake. Then I realize the worst part of it all. I was on level 351 in Candy Crush. I will not be re-downloading the app.

It takes me a while to realized the coincidence, a woman named Norma and a man named Norman, two kind souls who took pity on my pathetic self. I go home, exhausted. I tell my roommates about the day and find that I am able to laugh about the ridiculousness of it all. We re-enact the scene of the crime and I realized that the person truly snuck up behind me, just an inch away while I was reading and grabbed my phone. My stupid, cracked screen, 2 models old phone. I contacted my parents who were terrified that I was kidnapped by the Russians and tell them I am coming home. I find the first bus leaving the city that morning and escape to suburbia for 2 days.

I am alive. I have my wallet. I have my family. I do have friends. I have a job that allows me to have the money to replace my phone. For every miserable SOB in the world there are 3 or 4 kind ones who make up for it. I am alive and wasn't kidnapped by the Russians. I have friends who at a moment's notice make plans to see me. I have a family who endures my ridiculous antics. I have roommates who I can come home and tell my stories to. And somewhere out there, some asshole has a 2 models old phone with a cracked screen that is disconnected and is unable to be used for anything other than playing candy crush.

New York's Not My Home

Well things were spinnin' round me
And all my thoughts were cloudyAnd I had begun to doubt all the things that were meBeen in so many placesYou know I've run so many racesAnd looked into the empty faces of the people of the nightAnd something is just not right, 'cause I know

New York's not my home. I hate myself for saying it out loud, but it is the truth.

If you know anything about it, you'll know that New York was always my thing. If you asked me where I was from I was quick to say that although I was brought up in Delaware, I was born in Queens. I had to let everyone know- New York is my place. It is where I belong. It is my home.

This morning I got on the train as I went to work and sat down in a seat and a woman across from me started to make quite a ruckus about my chair. I tried to ignore her as it was early and I was tired and I just wanted to sit in peace for the 20 or so minutes, but she wouldn't be ignored. Apparently the gentleman before me had urinated on himself whilst sitting in the seat that I was currently sitting in, the girl next to me explained. But, he had turned to the side (the side was closest to the aisle) and... I guess peed on the floor? The girl assured me that the seat was urine free and that she wouldn't have let me sit there had it not been. We chatted and exchanged names and she gave me her business card and it was quite lovely. But in the midst of our chat she asked me how long I had been here, and then how long I thought I might stay.

For whatever reason, we are most honest with strangers.

I told her that I had been here for about 14 months and ... I honestly didn't know. If you had asked me when I first moved here I would've said that I am dying in this city, (preferably in one of the parks since I refuse to die in a hospital... but more on that later), but now I can't say that for sure. Maybe I was just disillusioned by all of the slammed doors in my face or the lack of whatever I thought would happen to me once I moved here, but all of the magic is gone.

Though all the streets are crowded
There's somethin' strange about it
I Lived there bout a year and I never once felt at home
I thought I'd make the big time
I learned a lot of lessons awful quick
And now I'm tellin' you
That they were not the nice kind
And it's been so long since I have felt fine, that's the reason that

New York is mean and dirty and I don't belong here.

Yes, there is so much wonder to hold and I know that... but I feel that I have to force myself to remember that. After work I have to do everything in my power to not comeback and spend my evening binge-watching T.V. (currently catching up on this season's Call the Midwife - IN LOVE!)

The problem is, I told the girl, that where else could I possibly go?
Back home? I love my family and the 4 or 5 friends that still reside in the state, but what is there for me? What career, what future? So then what, perhaps another city? Boston, D.C., L.A., Chicago... maybe, but am I ready to uproot my whole life only to find out that they don't fit me either? I am at least beginning to conquer the demon known as the Big Apple, and as they say, it's best to stick with the demons you know.

(It also doesn't help that I just signed a 2 year contract with my job...)

I honestly feel that if I were to leave NYC I would have to leave the country altogether because after NYC, what else is there? When I was waiting to hear if I had received this job with Macy's or not, all of my back-up plans involved me leaving the country. A little dramatic? I mean, maybe. Necessary for my mental sanity? Absolutely.

But then if I don't fit in here, the most blended place on Earth, where else could I go?
This also ties in with the career bit- while I am thrilled to be employed full time again and forever grateful to Macy's for giving me a second go- I wasn't a little girl who dreamed of working in retail/fashion and/or business and management. I wanted a lot, but none were that. Twenty some years later I realize that I have a decent capacity for these things and I want to stay with it for as long as I can, but will it make me feel joy each morning (or late night)? I'm just not sure.

If my life were a novel, wandering would be a major theme. I can't ever seem to settle- not because I am adventurous, but because I never seem to find my place, and that makes me so, so sad.

If you are hoping to move here, please don't let my whining discourage you. I am a chronic complainer and glass half empty type, so maybe it isn't New York, maybe it is me. (Which is even scarier, because that leads me to believe that I will never be happy anywhere which is waaaay too much for me to swallow this late at night.)

Let me know if your city suits me better, I'll be forever indebted to you.


Many thanks to an ex-boyfriend who introduced me to this song... at least he left me with one good thing.

Sargeant Nicole's Lonely Hearts Club

We all feel it. So why is it so bad to say it?

I am lonely.

I am so painfully, bitterly lonely. I feel it like the cold in my bones that just can't be shaken, layer after layer.

Loneliness lingers. It fades away just enough from moment to moment, just enough to let you know how terrible it is once it returns.

Loneliness is not just being alone. It is feeling isolated. It is feeling abandoned. It is feeling trapped.

When I think of being alone, I think of this bit from The Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers.

Eowyn: Leave me alone, snake!
Wormtongue: Oh, but you are alone. Who knows what you have spoken to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all your life seems to shrink, the walls of your bower closing in about you, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in? So fair, yet so cold like a morning of pale Spring still clinging to Winter's chill.
Eowyn: Your words are poison!

Eowyn, as usual, is right. His words are poison. But that doesn't mean that they don't feel real to her. That doesn't mean that they don't bounce around in her room after her leaves.  

So now I sit here, in my little basement apartment eating macaroni and cheese shaped like Spongebob characters and try to hard to evade this. I catch up on my favorite tv shows. I texted at least 6 different friends. I even called my mother at 10:30 pm and woke her up.

This is no one's fault. It is no one's burden. It is not anyone's responsibility to make me feel the opposite of what I currently feel.

Nights in the basement are particularly hard- the awareness that I don't know a single soul in my entire borough makes me shrink down to an eighth of my actual size.

I thought back as to how I dealt with this during previous moments similar to this one.
Studying abroad in Greece. Transferring to the University of Delaware. Days when I felt accomplished just by putting on shoes.

In Greece, I wandered and I spent money. I went in any which way hoping for the best, and buying any small thing along the way to make me feel better. A snack, a tea, usually a new pair of flats or a scarf. I took photos, I sang song to myself. I would get lost on purpose. I told myself that loneliness was an adventure. I found out towards the end of our trip I often wandered to what was considered the "bad" part of town. That was my first true experience of feeling insignificance and hopelessness in such a way. I coped and it ended. I rarely remember that part of the trip, until now.

Delaware hurt me so.
I had such incredibly high hopes and fell so far down. Friends, please don't move anywhere during the month of February, nothing good can happen in February. As I've stated too many times, I have trouble making friends. It was so much worse when I was 19. I filled my days then with trips to Goodwill and the antique shop, baking lots of anything, bubble tea dates at T'Licious, wandering in and out of the boutique shops I could never afford. I held as many jobs and worked as often as I possibly could, excusing my inability to have friends on my hectic work schedule. And this is not to say that I suffered a constant loneliness. I had lovely, dear friends who were so good to me and brought such joy into my life. But that's the thing about loneliness. On the nights I couldn't find those friends, even if it was just to have a Netflix marathon night, I shrunk.

It is no secret that New York has not been my friend. Maybe it is a lesser secret that I haven't tried as hard as I could to make it so. Every day there is somewhere that I can be, something that I could do. I have a slight amount of friends now that I could call to twice as often as I do. But I do not have it in me to attend things alone. All I do is remember that I am alone. That I couldn't procure on other human to interact with. Yes, I could go to the Met at look at something new each day. Yes, I could sit on a park bench in Central Park and watch the world happen before my eyes. And when I have the stamina, I will. Being lonely is exhausting.

Sometimes, it is so perfect to have a tea and a book and shade by a tree. And I love those days and those moments. But I love those days and moments because the rest of my life is filled. Filled with a variety of things and people that make my heart want to explode and so moments of being alone are not equated with moments of being lonely.

You don't have to remind me how dramatic this all is. I'm well aware.

With all of this said, I know that how I feel isn't real. Well, it is real to me, but it isn't what is real. People continually come to my rescue and lavish love on me in a variety of ways. I am comforted, listened to, and prayed for. I know that this is true and I am sure that as soon as the sun is shining again and I don't have to stay within 5 inches of a space hearter I will remember this more. I am sure that as soon as I have a healthy career and can feel proud of myself that I will remember this more. I am sure that as soon as I have a community, an apartment, roommates, and lifestyle, a culture, I will remember this more. But until then, it is extremely difficult. And so I write blog posts that will make me cringe later. I write blog posts that I don't know- and can't know who reads. I won't know that if the next time you see me or not you'll have read this and pity me. Or want to be my friend. Or cringe for me because it is so awkward to spill your guts to the blank world of the internet.

I do know that this will save me for tonight. To say how I feel and be unashamed of it (for now). To send out this post, knowing that it will be read and therefore I will connect with someone. That someone will read this and feel the exact same way, and tell me and we will know that we are alone together.