Two Lucky

In the past week I’ve had many recurrent dreams of Rusty. I don’t remember most of them, the specifics, the where the why I forget; it is the emotion I feel - my loss, our loss - I feel the strongest. Yet it is also the most evanescent, like a whiff of his scent in the apartment. It fades the harder I try to capture it.

In my young life I have two great love affairs. One is Rusty; the other is this city. In a way New York will always be the backdrop of my life. Here I found myself. Here I found Rusty. Now Rusty’s gone, and soon I will be too from here. This apartment, this life - I can’t help but wonder if my New York story will pick up again after I leave it. The city will still be here in five years, but when and if I come back to it, will it still be the same? Will I still be the same?

Change is a curious act of life. We spend so much time trying to control what happens to us - where we live, the work we do, the men and women we date - but more often than not, the real, the most difficult changes are the ones that come at us from out of the blue. It’s hard enough that we all have to try and navigate through life without a road map; we try and watch our step, but there is the inevitable wrong turn, or a sudden deadend that makes this journey so unwieldy. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you have a traveling partner to help you find your way. You can even start over. But sometimes you don’t, and you can’t.

Despite all our effort, Rusty and I fell short on a future. I’ve lost him forever, and the life we envisioned for ourselves will never come to be. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel this ache, this ghost inside me. The change is irrevocable.

And yet I am sure this is neither a wrong turn, nor a deadend. I have felt lost, but only in moments of weakness. The challenge is to keep moving forward. Though the road ahead is unmarked territory, I am unequivocal I was on the right path, and continue to be. After all, in place of my loss Rusty has left me a beautiful legacy of love - one born of the same effort, and though he isn’t with me anymore, his love is the only road map I will ever need.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 4:45 am and is filed under New York. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.