So This Is Christmas

Days pass. The white snow collects dirt and seeps gray into canvas shoes. I look in the mirror and imagine my hair turning darker, adapting to the season. I blend in. If I didn't have a ticket home, would I ever be able to amass the energy to leave, again? The idyllic Christmas wrapped up and tomorrow I board the train heading west, heading back in time, arriving at the platform of the city of my childhood. Everything comfortable, everything recognizable. In space no one can hear you scream.

My sister and I do not believe in Holiday Stress. But we do like slipping little somethings under the tree and sharing the wrapped delights with each other. I give her trinkets of Manhattan flea markets and hope they will live up to her vintage label gown closet. This year, she gave me one of the best presents yet: a reminder of things I already knew, and her honest affirmation that she knew them too.

I return to New York two weeks from tonight. Any way I can make enough money to pay the rent, I should do it. But beyond that, I need no claims to a career, I need not live up to anyone's expectations of what would be the proper course to follow. I went to New York to write, and I can not justify not doing just that. To give it a proper chance. To leap fearlessly and see if I can land on my feet. The thing is, if I don't, I know I have people ready to take my hand and pull me up. People who will not be saying I told you so, because they didn't. What they did was mill in the stands, cheering me on.

If I come back here, months from now, a broken soul with darkening hair, forced to take that straight and wide path and the nine-to-five, then I will do it. I may even do it gladly. Because at least I will have leapt. At least I will have given myself this chance. The word has been in me for so long. There is no other way. And there never was.

Or, as Peter once said:
Write, write, and write.