every time i ride the subway i get lost. i keep finding new and different ways to get lost. i exit the wrong way, end up on a street i didn't mean to, start walking in the wrong direction. i enter through the wrong entrance and have to turn around and walk out. i try to take a train that isn't running and have to go the opposite direction to pick up a train that i can take. it's exhausting to be wrong, to be confused, to be overwhelmed.
this is what i signed up for, after all. i needed to get out of the comfort of my own skin., of a place i knew like the back of my hand. i needed to shake up my perspective and do something new. i knew it was going to be different and i knew it was going to be hard. knowing it and living it are two different things, though. i keep telling myself, one day i will get this. one day i will know which exit to take, i will know where i am when i get outside, i will know where to stand and what is going on and watch knowingly as new people try to figure out the train. but what if that never happens?
as i rode the train from my apartment to gowanus last night to go to a reading by all of these people that i follow on the internet but have never seen in real life, i realized that maybe the point of new york isn't to get to a point where you know what you are doing. there's so much to do here and so much to see that maybe the point is to always be a little lost. if you're not a little lost, you aren't doing anything new. if if you aren't doing anything new, then maybe you no longer need new york?
