The Fall: A Poem

Do you know what it's like to fall in love with something you essentially know nothing about? Like, you've already made up your mind in your head of what it will be like, so you've fooled yourself into thinking that's what it actually? I do that all the time.

I fall in love with things and people the way I want them to be. Before I've even experienced them for myself. Most of the time, I'm setting myself up for bitter disappointment upon the discovery that the fantasy does not synchronize with the reality. I was worried about that same disappointment setting in when I first moved to NYC three months ago.

Ever since I first moved to this country at age five, I coveted New York City. The Big Apple. The City of Dreams. My parents had visited NYC together before we officially made the big move and I was hoping they'd trake me straight there. They didn't. They took me to Maryland. But I never lost my passion for the city. I swore that I'd make it there one day.

New York City now isn't what it used to be. That's what people say. It used to be uninhibited. Audacious. Bombastic. And now it's lost its fire. Famously, in a Sex and the City Scene made epic by Kristen Johnston, she plays life-of-the-party-girl Lexi Featherston, who hasn't stopped even after the party is over. No one wants to do cocaine anymore. No one is fun anymore. "New York is over," she says, cigarette in hand, before falling to her death.

I'm sure NYC was an amazing place before recessions, AIDS and the Internet but it still possesses some of the very things that made it what it was: diversity, eccentricity, the ability to make things happen for yourself and pursue your dreams on a bigger scale than you'd be able to in Nowheresville, MD. And after nearly a decade of wanting it, I finally made it happen and it was the most terrifying thing ever.

I had been so eager to reach this goal that I hadn't thought about whether or not it was something that I still really wanted or was worth it. That didn't hit me until I was here, sitting along in a strange room and contemplating for the first time what I had done. But at the end of it all, I know my biggest regret would have been not taking this risk at all in the first place. These are the moments that make the most enchanting stories. Cheers to refusing to play it safe. Oh, and then I scribbled this poem onto some rusty piece of paper.

The Fall

Something uncontrollable stirred inside me,
like I was a teapot.
Water or hot lava perhaps
bubbled to the surface
and emanated furiously from my eyes, stinging.
Tears I had not cried in years.

Everything hit me all at once.
That I had accomplished what I set out to.
That everything would change from now on.
That I had to change with it or risk
being left behind.
That the kindness of people had led me
to this moment.
And that I was completely alone.

My comfort had been an enemy to my success,
so my discomfort would have to serve as its companion.
There is nothing so terrifying as uncertainty.
That leap of faith is no longer frightening
because of what lies below,
but because of the fact that
you can't retract once you've taken it.
There is nothing left but the landing.

So taken aback was I by the intensity
of my emotion that I forgot to be
thankful that I could feel again.
That I was bold enough to risk the pain
of crashing.
And so, if my landing is rough, I hope I have
the strength left in me to do it all over again.
And if my landing is smooth, I hope
to never forget the rush of the fall.

-Maryline