a million hours left to think of you

this will not be conclusive.

and yet everything has become exactly that: the conclusion of a life. and rife with all of the fixings of what goes into spending the last few days trying to tie together a thousand strings and avoid the dreaded "loose ends" that threaten to tap you on the shoulder just as you've turned around and started walking away.

it's been a long, strange, surreal week, with a lot of goodbyes, countless exclamations of how much fun i will have or how excited i am, some strange emotional turns, and of course, plenty of vodka. the one thing that's been entirely consistent in my last year or so in new york, to an absolute fault, is vodka.

i don't know what i want to say, and i'll know tomorrow, when i've left the city, when my job is long left in the dust, when all of my friends have stopped waving and moved on to the next task of the day. as i write this, my goodbyes are not completely over, my bags not completely packed, my time in new york not entirely bid adieu.

but i want to at least say this: i take it back. i take back what i said earlier this month, what i started all of this believing, what i insisted must be true in order to fully justify this turning upside down of my life. i take it back.

new york and i get each other. new york and i make perfect sense. new york and i can have a good life together. the costs are high, the jobs are competitive, the pace is fast, and the peace is scarce, but the people are incredible. the people are fucking brilliant.

this of course is what i knew would happen, what was meant to happen. i tossed out the idea, once i settled on australia, that as the countdown to australia started, i would fall in love. i of course thought it would be with one person, with some dreamboat who would show me what love really meant, and by august, would inadvertently reintroduce me to the heartbreaks involved in life's inevitabilities, the consequences of choices made, but i'm thrilled that that's not the case.

you have to understand, it's been top priority on my list since i was old enough to socialize; it's been at times a terrible struggle, marred by shyness and insecurities. it's soared at times and crashed and burned at others. but it's always at the forefront of my priorities: making friends. there were many times in my early new york life that i thought it simply would not happen, that new york was far too large and i had too few connections to fall in with anyone. bring on the random sexual partners, bring on the weekends alone, bring on that tricky vodka.

i know that i don't know what i really want to say yet, but i want to at least say this: i made friends. i made amazing, kind, brilliant, funny, incredible friends. these are the good people of new york. these people are what i fell in love with, and bear with me on this one, but the self-help books would be terribly disappointed if i did not mention also the great love affair i finally discovered with myself.

because it wasn't until i finally did that that i was able to truly connect with these people. no, i didn't have any actual relationships in new york. a few dates here and there, mostly a free dinner and some uninspired flirting. but with friends like these, i hardly noticed. i don't think the point (one of many points) of my living in new york was to have a relationship with anyone. (david and i ended only a week or so after i got here, and i think that was purposeful, we could not last together in this period of our lives.)

i was supposed to get down to the bare bones of the end of june in 2007, staying on sonam's couch, searching for an apartment with the clock ticking and a sense of desperation and exhaustion i hardly believed i could face. one night, after a day of apartment hunting and stumbling around the city, i was walking back to where sonam was staying on the upper east side. she was away for the weekend, and jay was working, and i didn't really know anyone else here. no one in this city was looking for me. i had nowhere to go. i had no home, no job, no boyfriend, and no idea what i was going to do or how this would all work out.

so i just walked, looking up at apartment buildings, jealous of the simple fact that there were people living behind the lighted windows, entirely absorbed by the idea of lives being lived out all around me. i felt entirely untouchable, untouched. disconnected. life brought me down to the minimum of my self.

so it is an absolute pleasure to now, in some time-defying way, reach back and comfort this former self in some way, and tell him that he will find a home, he will find a job, he won't need a boyfriend, and he will eventually soon be surrounded by friends. he will be completely connected. he will leave this city soon to brave a whole new challenge, and he won't believe it, but he'll be leaving behind an incredible life.

that's what i want to say.