The Big Easy Empty

I’ve had an unusual week and I’m at Dutch angles. I allowed myself to let go of my own values and that’s dangerous territory to venture in to, the result of which has been the materialisation of a Big Empty Nothing in the pit of my stomach.
I’ve found it hard to focus. It’s been tough to eat. I’ve talked too much. I missed by ex-boyfriend. I washed down high-strength codeine with wine at 3 o’clock on my lunch break. I didn’t do the cryptic crossword. I cried all the way home on the train. I called myself mean names and thought bad things about myself.

But, during the same week:
I was chased down the stairs at the theatre by a boy twice in once night. An actor. A lead actor. Of a Big Production from a Well Respected Theatre Company.
Another boy-man, a drummer, in a band, that I’ve secretly liked for a long time, caught my eye and smiled at me, more than once, in the laneway, and started to come into my shop (before I got scared and turned away and looked busy. But next time I may act normal).
And a man-boy has wanted to spend time with me and walked me to my car and offered to spend more time with me in the near future.
And yet another boy drew a picture for me and helped me make a decision and sent me a nice text when I was sad and asked to eat food with me at a place where you pay to do so.
And I have an audition for a TV show tomorrow.

So, why do things work this way? Why do good things bunch themselves together like sixteen-year-old girls and then disappear for months on end? And why do some other things, which start out as really, incredibly good, suddenly decide to become really, really not so good and altogether quite unpleasant? And where is that lovely balance between the two?

But I must say that despite the Big Empty that’s nested down in my stomach, a part of me has actually silently enjoyed the frustration of this past week. A part of me that says, “This may feel bad, but savour it. It means you are alive”.
So me and my Big Empty are, for now, learning to cohabitate. And when it eventually decides to pack its swag and leave town, I will not reminisce about it altogether unkindly.

Feed Me with Lights

At the age of 25 I left the city in which I'd grown up, knowing that I would never return. In the years that have passed from then to now, I have never once ached for it so intensely and completely as I do for New York.

It is an all-consuming, palpable yearning not dissimilar from the pain of a broken heart.
It buzzes in my chest and knocks the breath out of me.

What kind of magic does this city command that it has so utterly taken over my soul?