Certainty?

So here I lay, propped up with an ice pack on my back, pillow under my thighs with a look of panic and pain across my shimmering face. Boy have I really overdone it this time. Along with my new ambitions for spring come a new energetic attitude... a new me! Well, at least that was my attitude a day or so ago. Now I'm laying here in the aftermath, paying for those extra 5.5 miles and ab-tastic marathons I thought I could so quickly shove my meager little inept body into.

And as I lay, with nothing much to do but scan a book so large it makes me want to hurl it out the window and write my own plot, I begin to wander... day dream.

A friend asked me today, "A.Joy, don't you ever wonder what it would be like if you had ended up somewhere else? Not that you've 'ended up' anywhere, I mean we are only 26 years old and have so much ahead of us, but don't you wonder what it would be like, what YOU'D be like, if you had picked a different place to live? Settled after college in a completely new place? Where you'd be in your career, friends, life, etc.?"

This question got me thinking... "No M-Roy. I never think that. For me, this is my clean slate. This is where I was always meant to be. This place is mine, and there is nowhere else I'd rather be." It was one of the only things I've ever said with conviction and certainty and meaning.

4LC was in town yesterday. I was right not to take his plans too seriously last week. He came Sunday but didn't make it into Manhattan until yesterday... and only stayed long enough for a quick glance at the Empire State before heading back home. We didn't see eachother.

Not that I'm complaining... It would have been rushed, and awkward, and I wouldn't have wanted it that way. That is not the way I have it playing out in my head, although part of the reason that I'd even want to see him again is to see what would happen... How I'd/he'd feel. But anyway, he let me know that he thinks it's in the bag. He believes he will be back, soon, and for a more permanent amount of time.

I'm not going to lie here... It freaks me out. I've never thought of him coming back to the place that I call my own so certainly and have it now mean that it is his too. I've never pictured him residing in the same city and walking the same crowded streets, breathing the same urban air under such drasticly changed circumstances. It had just never crossed my mind that I'd have to share it all again...

It's funny how life throws you off course... I thought I had it figured out. Had ME figured out... Had my place and my world sorted. I guess that even when you think you can be so certain, so sure, there is always a chance that you will wind up puzzled, outlook hazy... and a stabbing pain right in your back!

Regaining the Strength...

So I know I've been MIA recently... I don't know why, but for some reason it's been impossible for me to finish a post... End a train of thought... Put a period at the end of a sentence...

This will be about my fifth attempt in the past two weeks to write something worth reading... or at least write something worth posting... At least.

I got a call yesterday from 4LC. I haven't heard from him in a while, not that I've contacted him lately either. He told me that this time it was true. He was coming to the city for two days this week for interviews at new firms.

He has spoken these words to me before. Told me a few times in the past year and six months that he was coming back to New York. That he would be leaving the confines of the north-north east to brave the big metropolis and come into contact with familiar stomping grounds, old feelings... his past... Me.

And each time I believed him, having mixed feelings and anticipating his arrival. Trying to figure out what it would be like to see him again and witness what was to be my true emotions when coming into his contact.

I've felt as though everything is so up in the air, that it could only take a meeting to help decifer what it is I am truly experiencing where he is concerned... That if I saw him just one more time, I would have the answer.

Yet each time that I heard that he was coming into town, I would muster up the courage and preparation only to find that it was mostly musings, and not concrete plans to be counted on at all. It began to only remind me of past feelings of disdain, and it soon became easy for me to brush it all aside and regain focus on the happenings back in my current world, here in Manhattan.

But this time he sounded different. Like the wheels were already in motion for him to not only visit New York this week, but that he would be coming back... Returning. Living. Here. Again.

After getting off the phone with him I began to think long and hard about this, and how it could affect my life if he were to return. Surprisingly, this was not anything I had ever considered before... That he would ever return to the place that had once left him shaken, empty and so unsure. Truthfully, when I think about it, it now begins to make perfect sense.

When I find a weakness within myself, I do all that I can to combat it, in full force until it becomes a strength. Why not, then, would 4LC not want to come back and prove his worth, a million times over, and show this city what he's really made of. Find his comfort zone in a place that once shook him to the core and challenged his every fiber. That is, if he's not just once again musing of such intentions.

Am I intending for these writings to be a challenge? Honestly no, I never intended my words to come off that way... I am merely rambling... My thoughts placed out before me... For something to read... And maybe, here or there, a few finished sentences.