This is me, at age 23, exactly five years ago this month, in Newport Beach, California, where I lived with my then-fiancé.
The photo was taken by him. I don’t talk about that time in my life much, because, well, it’s a painful subject.
It strikes me that I look so young in this photo … like a baby, really. Probably because I was. So naive, so unbelievably clueless about how I would make a life for myself.
I had just graduated from college a few months before, and I spent the summer in Chicago while M (not his real name, obviously) studied for the bar from my parents’ guest bedroom. In August we drove across the country in his Jeep to our new place in Newport Beach, where he had a great job as an associate in a law firm. What would I do while he concerned himself with his lawyer-y duties? Start my writing career from my new “office” in our second bedroom, of course. I figured that I could write from anywhere - and (bonus!) I’d always wanted to live in a beautiful climate. Especially after growing up in Chicago, a winter in Newport Beach sounded like heaven.
So M would go off to work every day, leaving me alone in our sunny apartment, which I had lovingly decorated with IKEA, in our sleepy gated community.
The novelty of living in a gorgeous location wore off in about four days. I knew no one. I had no friends. I felt isolated, alienated, completely cut off from the rest of the world. I have never been so lonely and lost in my entire adult life.
Every day I would look out at the beautiful weather, in my pretty home, and go sit in my painstakingly organized office, staring at my computer, and I would die a little.
I kept thinking, “Is this it? Is this going to be my life?” He was so good to me, such a good man, a great human being, and so kind. I kept asking myself why I couldn’t be happy with that - what was wrong with me that he wasn’t enough?
But the truth is, there wasn’t anything wrong with me. It wasn’t his fault, but neither he - nor Newport Beach - were the right fit. I needed something else. And I sure as hell wasn’t ready to get married.
I visited New York frequently during the year I was engaged. I had never really been before my senior year of college (as hard as that is for me to believe), but M took me there for the first time that March (2004). And yes, on that very first visit, I posed for a photo in Times Square. Someday I’ll have to find it … I’m wearing a pink coat and pointing up at the sign as if to say, “See? I’m DEFINITELY A TOURIST.” And I was.
I remember being simultaneously overwhelmed by and drawn to the city. There was just … something about it. I suppose that’s how most NY neophytes feel, right?
I wish I could say that was the end of the story, but of course, the biggest lessons in our lives don’t often come from “clean breaks.” These endings tend to have jagged edges which hurt, and conflicting, confusing - often contradictory - emotions attached to them.
So it was with this. The truth is, I fell in love with someone else.
The details are relatively unimportant - he was twelve years older, and I’d never met anyone like him, with his energy, his worldliness, his genuine joy for life. Our love was very, very sudden (I honestly knew the first time I laid eyes on him), but it was real. As the months went past and I grew increasingly despondent back in California, he was sometimes the only source of light. The overlap wasn’t a large one - two months, as I recall - but it was painful.
I struggled with my decision, but I knew I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t do it.
I broke it off with my fiancé that October, and I shipped all of my things to New York - with no job and very few friends - by early November, 2004.
I moved into a little rundown apartment on 23rd and Park with two roommates I met off of Craigslist (one of whom, Krystal, I’m still close with), and proceeded to try to start my life again. It was the opposite of easy, that’s for damn sure … but as difficult as things were, as many rejections as I got, I never gave up. I know that much of my strength in those first really tough years came from Alex’s unconditional love. His belief in me gave rise to my own self-confidence - and saw me through the next two and a half years.
If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here today.
When I look at this photograph, I see a young girl so naive, I almost don’t know her. Part of me wants to protect her from what awaits her. Because for as much joy as I’ve experienced in the last five years, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to go through some of it again.
I’m certain, five years hence, I’ll look back at photographs from this year and think the same thing.
File under: Life, That’s.
