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

The Crisis: What Do I Stand For?

Wow, time's a bitch. It felt like just yesterday I posted here, yet it's telling me I haven't written a blog post since December 2011.

It also feels like just yesterday I moved into my dorm room freshman year of college. I remember how nervous I was, how I couldn't believe I had made it to university. A good one at that, on a partial academic scholarship. See, I'm the first in my family to accomplish this, so it means a lot. It wasn't written in the stars for someone like me, but somehow it was.

And on the first night, after my family left from helping me get nestled in, I sat outside my dorm on a bench. I sat there at 3am alone, listening to the Beatles and looking up at the sky, taking in every single element around me. The cool August night air, the drunken chatter of eager incoming freshman, and the bustle of Broad Street mixing magically with the music in my headphones.

That was the first and last time I got to savor it. I had no idea how quickly the next few years would pass by. All I knew was how badly I needed to experience this: college. A sort of halfway house between living under my mother's suffocating thumb and the big, bad real world that eventually awaited me.

What I didn't know was how real that world would be. You think you've got the timeline of your life all figured out and then you realize one day that it's never been yours to determine. Sure, you can be the master of your fate, but only to a certain degree. Someone else has mapped out your life for you and you have no choice but to take the blows as it comes. Your part is to figure out how to react to the blows. I just graduated college. Three months ago. Cum Laude. With a job lined up. I was on top of the world, right?

Not exactly. I had never been more miserable or cried more in my life. This was it. I was supposed to be ecstatic. Everything was supposed to be different; I would move to New York City and become the woman I've always wanted to be. All my hard work would pay off. Everything would fall into place. Everyone seemed to agree: my family, friends, colleagues and professors. With all I've accomplished, they said, there was no way I wouldn't have my dream job and be living large. Well, I'm jobless on my sister's couch, still freelancing and still looking for a full-time job.

But I'm okay with that.

Let me go back and explain. I was offered a spot in a prestigious teaching program in New York City and took it, feeling lucky just to have been given the opportunity. I thought I would teach, freelance on the side, leave the program eventually and begin working full-time at a magazine in New York. See, ever since I was a kid, when I first stepped foot in this country, I dreamed of New York City, but never made it past Silver Spring, Maryland until I got halfway there at Temple.

But the teaching program proved to be more effort than I was willing to give it and, after many heart-to-hearts and tears and anxiety, contemplation and meditation, I quit before the first day. It was nearly mid-June and I had just joined the job hunt. The more time passed, the more anxious I became to find a job. There was no way I was going back to living under my mother's aforementioned suffocating thumb.

Watching my friends and peers get full time jobs, although I'm happy for them, I do not envy them. Many of them have fallen victim to the trap: mundane jobs that could mean less to them, jobs they undertake to avoid the stigma of "unemployed" and to pay back the student loans that got them in their position in the first place.

College is over now. Our bubble is burst and we're left trying to figure out how to adjust to the alien sensations that are surrounding us. No longer will our best friends be just down the hall or down the street. Gone are the days of seemingly endless resources and helping hands right around the corner. We've spread out all over the country, all over the world, and some of us are in new scary places alone.

But I hope we all eventually find what makes us happy and refuse to settle for anything less. I hope we always remember what we stand for and the legacy we want to pass on to future generations. And I hope we never forget the remarkably gratifying outcomes that can arise from working hard and keeping your fingers crossed.

I realize that I'm doing the right thing for me. I could choose to work with some big Fortune 500 company and be slotted into some generic position, but I won't. I'm staying true to myself and going after places that I want to be at. I may be shooting for the stars and it may prolong my search, but to me, the stars have never seemed that far away, anyway. Just a hop, skip and a leap of faith.

I Swear I Always Fall for Your Type

       Drake said it best in his sleeper hit, "Same Mistakes" aka "Fall for Your Type." Love is difficult because you want it so bad that you fall into certain traps. Some people settle. Let it be known in this moment that I am not one of those people. But I suppose I can understand why that is. In the pursuit of love, we tend create our ideal scenarios in our heads and expect things to play out in real life exactly the way they do in our fantasies. These people focus more on the circumstances of falling in love than the person they fall for.

      The other group of people do the exact opposite. We fall victim to is narrowly defining a "type." This is the guy/girl that fits all of our, usually vapid and pointless, criteria. We take pieces of different people and construct this "ideal" person, and we refuse to settle for anything less. Or we prioritize all the wrong qualities to begin with. We'd rather have him look like Ryan Gosling than be a complete gentleman. I'm no better. I'm a Libra and therefore consumed by my vanity. As much as I hate to admit it, looks mean so much to me. And it's not just the guy's looks but how he wears it, how he carries it.

      While my definition of good-looking is not one-dimensional, I do have a tendency to, every now and then, want what every other girl wants. This guy will be the heartthrob, the guy that girls do stupid shit for. The guy that knows how hot he is but will never actually admit that he does, thus leading you to think that he's so humble and sweet. But you can't hold on to this guy. He'll never belong to you. He doesn't belong to anyone. So after he's swept through your life like a hurricane and left his mark, you're left shaking your head, thinking to yourself exactly what Drake says in his song. But you do it all over again, don't you? Stop.

Now Playing...The One and Only Nina Simone

     This song does things to me. It gives me chills. Ms. Simone using her signature scatting and feeling the music harder than any artist ever could. She was unconventionally gorgeous, she had a strong baritone voice, and she had soul. And I really wish Mia Michaels would choreograph a dance to this song.





"I don't care if you don't want me, I'm yours right now." Tell me that wasn't the most cherry thing you've heard all day. Ta ta.

Till Then My Windows Ache

(Photo Courtesy of Brian Uhreen.)

I adore Neruda. Everything about his poetry suggests to me he was filled with the purest love a man ever dared to experience. And he was extraordinarily gifted at expressing it in words. Everyone gushes about Love Sonnet XVII, and, though I love it, I have become increasingly agitated that no one pays the other sonnets any mind. Because I, too, feel lovelorn at the moment, I will share with you a gem. One of my many favorites from Neruda. Enjoy.

Matilde, where are you? Down there I noticed,

under my necktie and just above the heart,

a certain pang of grief between the ribs,

you were gone that quickly.

I needed the light of your energy,

I looked around, devouring hope.

I watched the void without you that is like a house,

nothing left but tragic windows.

Out of sheer taciturnity the ceiling listens

to the fall of the ancient leafless rain,

to feathers, to whatever the night imprisoned:

so I wait for you like a lonely house

till you will see me again and live in me.

Till then my windows ache.

 

 

~Pablo Neruda