Sometimes I think leaving New York was the best choice I ever made; still others I’m convinced it’s the worst.
There was a time not long ago in moments but forever ago in my mind when I believed I would stay in New York forever. I lived in SoHo then, in a NYU dorm just a few blocks from the best shops on Broadway, and would walk up Mercer Street on my way to class. Even while living it I had the very distinct feeling that the experience was special, that only a handful of kids in the universe would be able to brag later in life that their daily walk to class consisted of glimpsing celebrities smoking outside the Mercer Hotel or spying models trying on size 00 dresses in Phillip Lim. I developed a cultivated cockiness also adopted by my fellow NYU friends but easily recognized and despised by everyone at home. I wore a lot of jewelry and smoked a lot of cigarettes and dressed always as if I’d just had sex, my rumpled demeanor screaming: I live in New York now, [insert well-practiced exasperated sigh/eye roll combo and flick of cigarette ash], I am special. I was an asshole but so was everyone around me so ok cool whatever! Even if they were angry or mean it seemed like everyone in New York was alive all the time. Even while sleeping they moved and breathed in a way that crystallized their undeniable aliveness. I wanted to be just like them.
Once when I was younger and my mother was very upset she clutched at her chest and said, “Sometimes I forget how to breathe properly.” And her chest was swelling shallowly and I didn’t really understand what she meant, so I put my small hand on her heart and nothing happened and we were both very quiet for a long time. Later when boys began to notice me and I started testing the feel of curse words in my mouth I began to develop that same pressure on my heart, like someone was standing on my chest and I had to mentally will myself to take deep breaths. When my mother first told me, I did not understand that someone could be so sad and distracted by their sadness that they would have to be very conscious about their breathing, counting nine seconds in between each breath, pressing a palm to the heart to relieve the weight. But after my first boyfriend crumpled my love in his hand like an old receipt and my parents started living in different zip codes and my Grandmother had a stroke right in front of me I understood the weight and did everything I could to run from it. It always caught up anyway.
A lot of people I love have suffered recently and I know that it’s not my fault but as someone who has never really had anyone close to her die, I feel responsible somehow. Maybe I have gone rotten and am infecting the good people around me. I know that it’s ridiculous and even egotistical to think my actions have this sort of consequence, but I guess because I don’t believe in god I don’t have anyone to blame so it just seems easier to point the finger at myself.
I need to write about everything that has happened recently, how I now know the acrid, yellow color skin turns when the liver ebbs to jaundice, how I have spent more time in the hospital these past few days, surrounded by tubes and biohazard bins and beeping machines and the scent of half-alive bodies than I have ever in my life. I need to write about the distressing way my best friend’s mouth is turned down at the corners, how cruel a sun-dappled day feels when someone you love has wires strung from their veins and their hair a dry matted knot clinging to the neck. I need to write about these things but I don’t know how.
I have never had someone close to me die, so sickness is something I am unpracticed in dealing with. Once when I was 15, my Grandmother had a seizure in front of me in the hospital and I had to run to the nurse’s station and shout, “She is having a seizure!!!” and they just stood there rubbing their palms together, unsure of what to do. We moved her to a different hospital shortly afterward. That is the closest I’ve been.