Journal Entry – 26JUN2018 – 10001

Blog posts have been few and far between lately, which is not going so well in terms of building my readership.  I’m still settling into my new job, dealing with a crazy commute, and taking 8 upper level credits for the summer semester.  Things are a bit crazy.

Right in line with that motif, I’m sitting at a coffee shop at 9th and W15th in lower Manhattan.  I’m here for a week working on a project for my employer.  Walking 18 blocks to work feels like a welcome break to the more than hour and a half one-way commute I have back in Seattle.

New York is my home state, where everything that caused my traumas happened.  There is always a sense of homecoming combined with a trembling, fearful reminiscence crossing the invisible line into NY.

I’ve come a long way from those traumas and changed in more ways than I could ever recount.  This is evidenced by my reunion with a childhood friend.  A few years ago my anger and wounds were so overwhelming I don’t think I could even have reached out to him.

J is M and C’s son.  C is my godfather, he knew my father very well and they were close friends.  I knew J and his brother on and off throughout my childhood.  M and my father even dated for a while.

I haven’t seen J in at least 20 years, we’ve settled on 25 as a convenient number because neither of us has an accurate memory on the matter.  Once work finalised last minute that I was actually coming to Manhattan I reached out and asked J if he’d like to meet.

In a quintessentially NY way, we met on the subway platform: 28th st station, #1 train.  Though I’m not from the city, spending all of my younger years in the more rural parts of the state, there is still a strange familiarity about the place.  These are my people and I understand them.  Despite having been in the west coast for most of a decade I still don’t blend well and my New York shows through, often to the consternation of the more passive and less boisterous species of human that inhabits the Pacific Northwest.

J was a smooth-faced kid the last time I saw him; today he’s a bearded man in his 40s with a lovely wife and a career working backstage on Broadway that he loves.  We hugged on the platform (all your clichéd jokes are inferred) and headed uptown.

It was really great to see him because even though he was there and part of my life “when it all happened” I’ve resolved enough of my wounds that the dark parts of my past did not intrude on the evening.  I was just sitting with a childhood friend and enjoying the time catching up without any painful overtones.

I took a pic of us together and texted his mother who responded in typical fashion with a WTF and a joke.  J’s brother also made the same joke when he got the pic.  Genetics: it’s a real thing, yo.

It’s been a relief and a wonder to be able to be here and “just be” without dragging decades worth of baggage along with me.  I feel lighter today with the confirmation that things are getting better and for having reconnected with an old friend.  I’m learning the art of being happy, of being who I truly am and choose to be, of not letting my pain define me.

It’s fucking glorious.