Sobriety: The Rewrite

My experience back in NYC for the first time since I got sober.

I walked out of my Bowery hotel and onto Canal Street, put in my ear buds, and turned up my favorite New York walking song, “The Only Living Boy in New York.” Paul Simon sings of being left behind, clamoring to feel like he’s enough with his weather report news and goofy grin, declaring through a haunting crescendo, “Here I Am.” I love this song.

I moved to New York when I was 28 years old, a different version of myself. She had dreamy eyes, a new career as a fashion model, a pretty gnarly eating disorder, a Soho apartment, an all-black wardrobe, an Ipod mini, a medicine cabinet full of pharmaceuticals, and a drinking and drug habit she could keep at bay until crisis struck. She romanticized her pain, reveled in it even, soaking up the sounds of the city she’d dreamed of being part of since she was a little girl watching movies. In the movies everyone’s dreams came true in New York. Everybody became somebody. She was patiently awaiting her turn, sure it was a phone call or audition away. The days got tiring though, and the “in-betweens” bordered on unbearable. She felt invisible, too easily undetected. The city, that shiny beacon on the hill, slowly shifted into a cloak of dark anonymity. Slipping in and out of dive bars in the middle of the day, sulking away in a dimly lit corner, fantasizing about staying in the darkness forever. It became too easy. The city she thought was made for becoming was better made for disappearing. So, that’s what she did.

When I left New York a few years later, disappointed and disillusioned, I remember feeling like I wasn’t done with her yet, that New York City wasn’t done with me. Over the next several years I’d visit, never admitting to the company I kept how painful it was to be among her towering silver and not belong to it. I’d drink my way through my favorite neighborhoods and catch the flight back home, wherever that was at the time, longing to forget how good it felt the day I first stepped off the train and made her my own. I wrote poems and books about her, songs and eulogies, all filled with the kind of jealous anger a person only reserves for the one that got away.

I went on to have plenty of fuzzy love affairs with other cities, some fleeting, some enduring, and ended up right where I belonged at the beginning of 2020-back home in Tennessee. Sobriety knocked and I answered. The joy returned like a long-lost childhood toy and I spent the next four years piecing my life back together, forgiving all the ways I’d mucked up the past. As a sober person I went back to reclaim some of the places that had become living, breathing characters in my former life. By oceans on both coasts, among the mountains and valleys and desert, I took my pen and began the rewrite. Only one had alluded me.

The weather in New York last week felt like fall, a brief respite from a summer heatwave, a welcoming breeze in the air. I felt my feet hit the city sidewalk with anticipation, hopeful for what the week would bring. I meandered through her parks and tasted her culinary delights. I sang like a maniac in a Korean karaoke lounge and met up with old and new friends. I walked by my old apartment building on Thompson Street, still painted white but with a new door. I stood beneath the fire escape and looked up at the place I spent so many nights, alone and high, staring out at the city that never seemed to let me in. I felt so much gratitude in that moment. I had only compassion and thanks to give to her, the girl I was then. Thanks for not giving up. Thanks for not staying too late. Thanks for keeping the dream alive even when it got hard (and it would get very hard.)

I thought of my mom and her visit to see me there. We sat on that same fire escape, having some of the best conversations of our lives together. I absorbed only the beauty of that place as I stood beneath the black iron ladder that led up to my past life. I imagined my mother in another life, one more like mine, where she might have this same experience. I pictured her sitting by the window, reading a book, sipping tea, content with the beat of the street. I saw a middle-aged woman on the subway, sitting across from me, her hair a lot like Mom’s. She was wearing plain brown boots and a gray cardigan sweater. There was a slight smirk on her face, like she knew something no one else did, and she probably did.

I walked around the same old corners, passed by the same old haunts but with new eyes and new perspective. I had a desire to reflect, not reactivate. There was no pull to slip away, to disappear into the void. I only felt a desire to be present, to be here. To observe not absorb. To recall not rejoin. It was a rewrite, same character, new book.

As I floated toward the West Village, Simon and Garfunkel dueling it out in my head, I realized that everything had worked out just as it was supposed to. The story is endlessly unfolding, never revealing more than we need to face the current moment but always enough. What is for us will never evade us, what is not cannot be caught. I returned to Tennessee renewed, relieved. That place that I love so much, the one that loved me hard and tested me harder, will always be there. She still knows my name. She’s forgiven my past and holds space for my future. We’ve finally turned the page.

As I sign off tonight I’ll leave you with this: You can rewrite your story as many times as necessary to get it right, there is no limit on drafts or revision. When you run into a dead end or find yourself in a somber soliloquy, don’t panic. Take a deep breath, open a blank page, and begin again.

When all else fails put on some Simon and Garfunkel and recite it over and over….here I am.