Life be like
Realizations in New York City, but not about New York City
I’ll start by saying: okay, and whatever, and even ugh. Eat my pointed indifference. I cannot seem to swallow it.
And furthermore, I’ll expand by saying: I get it. The whole deal, it’s not lost on me no matter how I try to outsmart it. New York City!!! Don’t make me say it again. There’s the energy, I felt it and so I have to say it. The weaving and bobbing, the people all throbbing like an adrenaline pulse, the little trap doors in the sidewalk dropping down into nightmarish potential. Each passing moment a tiny vignette of lives thriving on the madness of my fleeting observation. Inspiration abound. To be moved by it, well I had to. Stand still and get pushed aside.
But I have to insist that my latest epiphany—though birthed from my time in the city, spontaneously like Athena from the head of Zeus—was not the result of this restless energy. At times, I felt the energy sought actually to grind me, specifically, to dust, to incapacitate my ability to see with clarity. I spent much of my weekend thoroughly annoyed by the sheer sprawl of the city, a hundred crossing paths, the cheapest expensive drink waiting on each corner, let’s go here and I’d never go there.
What happened: Some stuff aligned. Some people saw me–like, my whole skeleton lit up by jagged streaks of lightning, the contours of my entire self visible for a few gorgeous moments. Clarity. Perhaps even the point, i.e. of life. Already it evades me, but I felt it in a stinking, indulgent city, the exact sort of place revelations like this are foretold to happen. I’m thoroughly annoyed about the whole thing. Why am I smiling?
Kat has this incredibly stupid bit she’s got going pretty strong right now. It’s really simple. Someone points out a cool rock or something and she’ll say ‘rock be like.’ Or some coffee spills on the floor and she goes ‘coffee be like.’ You get the gist. I don’t think I can quite explain to you how funny it is and mostly it’s in the sudden and sporadic way it falls from her mouth. When I try it out myself, it just doesn’t hit the same. Walking down one of the many numbered streets of the grid-locked city, I break a period of silence to say ‘sidewalk be like.’ Faint smiles, I guess. It’s sort of funny because we can almost hear it in her voice instead. Kat repeats it, ‘sidewalk be like’ and I’m doubled over, I’m losing it. She says it as if it is a universal truth. Sidewalk be like what?? Well, take a look. You have to look at it. Sidewalk be like that.
It’s so stupid and it reminds me why I love Kat so dearly. She really cares very little about how the things she says are received. When I tell a joke or whip up a bit on the spot it’s often very calculated with the intent of entertaining and stirring up some laughs. I wanna make others smile for my own satisfaction. When Kat says ‘oatmeal be like’ there is no goal in her mind but satiating the urge of the bit. It’s pure.
I find it very important to have some sort of running bit going on within your personal lexicon at all times but it should never be forced. These are things that slip into your vocabulary by osmosis or by total accident and on principle you can’t notice the pattern of it until your speech is 100% fucked. Right now, I’m stuck in this binary thing that no one else finds funny, not even me, really. Basically, when something good happens, I say ‘perfect life, peace and love on planet Earth’ something along those lines, and when something bad happens, ‘worst life, 1000 years of malaise and destruction, eternal misery.’
It’s silly and generally pretty reminiscent of some old habits of sinking into dread and hopelessness at the first sign of something going wrong. Worst life indeed. But there’s also this surprising measure of balance on the other end. I can’t really name another time in my life that I so directly called out and affirmed when something in my life is going well. Simple stuff too. I’m downing a dense plate of Thai food after a long day on my feet and suddenly: perfect life, I’m going to live forever. For every happy hour martini purchased, the receipt says HAPPY seven big HAPPY’s, uproarious fun, my gorgeous friends all laughing. Perfect life. And, to my surprise, I’ve been noticing the good a lot more than I ever have before, it firmly permeates. Leaving work a few minutes early is a perfect life. The sun stinging my eyes in the evening is a perfect life. His arm touching mine for a breath is a perfect life.
The more I notice the sweet stuff that shapes the contours of my life, the sweeter it all seems to get. And yet, it sort of begs the uneasy question: has there always been good dancing at the edge of my vision waiting to be noticed? When did I start running from my own life? How much have I missed?
I’m sorry. I see you now.
JJ suggests he would grab a pack of cigarettes next door and we could smoke on the sidewalk. Outside some fever dream bar after 2 in the morning, I haven’t stayed out this late since I stopped drinking but I don’t feel myself unraveling into dirty frayed rope at my feet. I feel rooted to the ground and reproachful of or uninterested in any potential chaos. I allot myself one cigarette per year and I haven’t cashed that in yet so I said why not. It’s New York City, baby, I’m giving in a little to that energy before I rebuke it once more.
We’re taking indulgent drags, blowing smoke, reveling in the novelty of nicotine. I could get addicted but I won’t. JJ asks about my sobriety, how long and how’s it going, etc. “I really admire it,” he says. “I find it so impressive.”
I roll my shoulders. Always settling into my own skin. “It’s…hard but good. I keep saying it again and again, but I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t gotten sober,” is what I tell him. It’s difficult to explain. What I mean isn’t that I would be dead or gone if I hadn’t gotten sober but that this person, the one who is level and calm having spent a night hopping bar to bar without the need for a single drink, he just wouldn’t exist.
James who drinks would take a weekend in New York and drive a thousand metal stakes into his heart all the way into the dark. James who is real and now, he takes a drag and smiles. He’s feeling a little bit in love.
I quit drinking at the end of January 2023, just a month or two before my relationship began its external unraveling. A few months dry, my partner experienced a severe mental health crisis that required every ounce of responsibility I could muster and I found somehow I possessed it. Nine months in I had to end my relationship, spent three more months sharing an apartment post break-up, dry dry dry. One year into sobriety, I swallowed a thick metaphorical pill and started sharing my writing online, a decision that has forced me to open up again and again, let more stuff in and plenty more out. It’s…bigger than I can put words to.
What I mean when I say “I wouldn’t be here,” is that I would still be the James from before January 30th, 2023. I’d still be a wall. I’d still be a thing that others struggle to crack apart. The good stuff would be lining the edges of my vision, begging to be seen, and I’d unequivocally ignore it. I’d still be hooked on the bad stuff to keep me feeling bad. I’d still hate myself. Hate, the imperative.
“I’ve noticed the difference,” Meg says, hugging her cardigan. “You’re much more grounded now.”
I nod like a churchgoer catching the spirit. “Grounded,” I say. “Like, leveled out.” I can’t add much more or I might start screaming. To be seen like that, to know that all of this hasn’t been just an excruciating excavation of all my innards that no one else has observed. The change is tangible. I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t love, wouldn’t be loved the same. I’m proud of myself, I hope that’s okay. Stub my cigarette out with a beat up sneaker, cool calm snaking through my chest. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else as any different version of myself, so I’m in New York City and I’m grateful because my friends remind me to be. They show me why.
But I really do have to double down and insist this isn’t about New York, New York anyway. She’s a backdrop for a feeling I’ve been fostering for over a year now that really just happened to come to fruition on her grossly hallowed streets. And even then, the fruiting body of this epiphany paid little if any attention to the setting.
What mattered: I sank into closeness with all of these people I’ve known for ten years now. It feels strange to acknowledge the purity of the love so late in the game, but that’s sort of the essential nutrient I’ve been missing for so long: a piercing clarity. I’m reestablishing the sort of person I’ve become in sobriety and ultimately that means reaffirming these friendships through this phase change.
What I’ve found: I’m still accepted, I’m still loved. I see so clearly that I have chosen the people I want to be surrounded by.
And I’ve chosen correctly. Or–I’ve chosen the way that I’ve chosen, without having made a choice at all but instinctually sinking with ease into love rather than rejecting it, and to imagine any other reality would be a disservice to this love.
Life be like that.
Life be like perfect until worse until perfect again
Life be like oh, what a mess, what’s a boy to do with all this god forsaken mess of his own making
Life be like stay in the mud. this is ease this is easy
Life be like there must be more than this
Life be like there could be more than this
Life be like I want more than this
Life be like I’m ripping up the carpet. I’m stripping back to the bare essentials. I’m starting over again like I won’t have to start over again and again down the long line of forever
Life be like only time will tell if I did this all right
Life be like well, I think I did it wrong, but things are different. growth is uncomfortable. am I growing? I feel like a rock
Life be like I guess it’s all just pushing the rock. maybe I could do this for a while. maybe I’ll get stronger
Life be like years slip away, time sheds like skin that brings me closer to the center of myself, which peels away into unknowing infinity
Life be like oh. I see. ha
Life be like love be like exorcism be like bouts of insanity be like fleeting peace be like new york city be like dragging on a cigarette be like laughing through my grin be like kissing under streetlights be like swallowing my pride to tell you I love you be like all of it over and over again until I’m me once more.
Perfect life. Worse life. Nothing the same, everything moving.
Life be like…well, it can’t be explained, can it? Take a look. You have to look at it. It’s right in front of you. Life be like that.
jw
The initial begrudging acknowledgement of happiness is so relateable
this made me all excited about life but then a lil emotional and i wish i had something better to say but i just really enjoyed reading this