This perfect paradise is now my home. Every day I try to let that soak in even though it seems to defy all sorts of logic. I'm a city girl, after all. A jaded New Yorker. Ok, I'm originally from a small college-town in Massachusetts but had an instant love affair with the Big Apple starting at age thirteen when I started spending summers training at the Dance Theater of Harlem and Alvin Ailey School of Dance.
When I think about it, making the seemingly impulsive decision to drop everything, uproot my life, and start from scratch somewhere new is kinda my M.O. As much as I squawk about my need to feel grounded, moving to Turks & Caicos marks the third time in my adult life that I’ve done just that. So I had to ask myself “Am I just a spiritual wimp?”
Okay, so that was a purely irrational and emotional decision. Move back to NYC in 30 days or less? Or, was the Universe conspiring in my favor? Because, no sooner than I had hung up the phone with my BFF, “It” (the Universe) sent me a message via MySpace! An audition announcement for a show in NEW YORK CITY by the same director I had worked with 8 years ago. Yes, the same director of the show I was performing in when I met my EX and fell in love!
Say WHAT? I’d been bamboozled... hoodwinked! Six years deep into a marriage and an AA neophyte, my ex decides that “married life is not for him.” After I uprooted my life in NYC to move to (in my opinion) a culture-less LA to support his entertainment career. I mean, it only made sense at the time.
I remember sitting in an off-beat coffee shop/bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It was a funky little dive where you had the option of coffee and vegan cupcakes OR live alternative music and beer until 4am. Only in NY. And there I sat amongst a crowd that I didn’t exactly fit into. They all appeared to be twenty-something aspiring musicians or artists; complete with their own “individual” style that tended toward a variation of edgy black clothing, tattoos and piercings.
