New York State of Mind

This past weekend felt like a sort of homecoming the likes of which I haven’t experienced since my time in France.

As I’ve spent the past week recovering with lots of sleep, I’ve been trying to find the words for all I experienced, all I saw, all I felt, but no words seem to do it justice. I’ve rewritten this blog post half a dozen times already, and still I don’t know if I can capture all I want to say.

But I’ll try. Because that’s what I do…

And I want to preserve this feeling and these memories as best I can.

Last weekend, I traveled up to New York City to spend the weekend with a close friend who flew in from Chicago. I had wanted to do something special for my birthday—something to really celebrate this year, to remind myself that there can be joy in the midst of all the pain from this past summer, that life is waiting for me on the other side of this illness. A well-timed editing job gave me the financial means to plan something bigger, and although I thought about a day at the beach or a mini-vacation in the Poconos, I knew calm and relaxing wasn’t what I needed.

I needed vibrancy.

I needed electrifying.

I needed to feel like I was alive again.

And if there’s one place to feel alive, it’s in the city that never sleeps.