i did it

on feeling like a grown woman, but still just a girl, after achieving a life goal.

I’m writing this from a tiny $400 couch that my husband built for me in my tiny, walk-up studio apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Joni Mitchell’s BBC Concert from 1970 is playing on my TV, she’s singing ‘California,’ and it reminds me of home—Laurel Canyon and Topanga and carsick roads and long days braiding and brushing my horse. One half of this place is a brick wall with pre-war nails mashed in at the top, and the shittiest baseboard installation I’ve ever seen at the bottom. The refrigerator is on the opposite wall of the kitchen, and my dishwasher is new but crooked. The floors are original, they creak and dip and make the apartment perpetually smell like pine. The bathroom has pretty marble tile and a wobbly sink. I can hear my neighbors laughing, singing, Zoom-meeting, and having sex when I just want to sleep. I’m sure they can hear my cat yowling at the door when I’m gone. Sometimes this apartment makes me feel like I’m living in a Sex and the City episode, except I can’t handle a heel taller than the tip of my finger and I’m too broke from being spread east to west to invest in designer anything. But I’ve had this place picked out for as long as I can remember.

Back when August felt like fall, 22-years ago to be specific, I came here with some of my family. When we were about to get into our JFK-bound taxi, I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and took the biggest breath of piss-stained air my little 11-year old lungs could hold. I remember my older cousin pulling on my arm and telling me to quit it. ‘I might not ever get to breathe this air again, hold on a second!,’ I whined at her. (I really said this and am still this dramatic). We’d nearly walked the entire city that trip, from the Bronx to The Battery. My stepmom had wanted us to try to see the entire island. At this point in my life I was already fixated on the idea of working at a beauty magazine far away from the rural Florida town I was growing up in, and was deep in my ‘A New York Minute’ era with the chunky blonde streaks to prove it. The entire time we walked around, I was imagining my future here, and in the earnest little kid way where I was very sure I would have it.

11-years later I was in college majoring in Magazine Journalism, too pregnant and too poor to fly in for the unpaid internship at Hearst. A girl in my writing class who I was forced-friends with landed it instead, in large part because of me—I’d taken her editor’s test for her just to feel close to the life she was getting, and she would have completely failed it otherwise. (If you’re reading this, by the way, you’re welcome). I remember then feeling like I really wouldn’t end up here, or anywhere. But I guess if you fixate on something long enough, it’s bound to finally come around.

I walk so much that my feet are perpetually blistered. I’m doing so many things that my brain no longer trails off and thinks about the go-wrong’s. For the first time in my adult life I’m living in the moment without needing a prompt aside from my own two legs to get me there. I have a running list of random things I’ve done that I later decide are part of my initiation to becoming a New Yorker. Like getting totally lost coming back from The Museum of the Dog and finding my train in Grand Central on a busy Saturday evening without using my phone for help. Stumbling (but actually) over a rat on the way home last week—while wearing flip-flops, of course. Crying (just once) in public. Helping a woman carry her groceries and baby-filled stroller up the steps of the subway.

I just happened to get here, really, despite a life of planning for it. In January I decided I was done working freelance; I was not getting paid by the brands I was working for in any sort of predicable way, and the stress of trying to lock down my next paycheck was destroying me, frankly. Trying to save for and spoil my son with inconsistent income was making me feel like I was losing. I’d been applying to jobs for months, then one day applied to my job. My dream job. I scoured the internet for the hiring manager’s email, got it, and told her directly that I wanted the role. I got told ‘no’ very politely, because there was no relocation budget. I said that I would have no problem moving on my own. She said ‘you’re gonna love the city,’ at the end of my first interview. I felt, and still do feel, like she really saw me. 2-more interviews and a month later, I was living here. I was tossed into stark independence and self-sufficiency in the way only New York City can throw you, something that I now realize has been vital to me. Living here is like having the steam wiped from my glasses, I can see and feel in a way I just wasn’t before.

Everything I’ve pined or worked for has happened completely adjacent to the life-plan I had laid out. Nothing has been smooth one single time. Everything has been chaotic and take-it-or-lose-it. The timing has never once been right, rather, simply presented. I have never been prepared for any good thing that’s ever happened to me, and every good thing has threatened another good thing’s position in my life. I make grown-woman choices while still feeling like just a girl, and I wonder if I will ever actually step into my power instead of just wearing it. Do any of us really ever get there? I am perpetually finding my way. My path has only ever been ‘act now or miss the timing you’re being given for this thing you’ve always wanted.’ You can’t really own that, or step into it. Maybe the ownership comes later, after we’re goal-fatigued. But at least now I can see clearly.