When I was a ballerina, I always imagined I was a #7. Like if there were 20 dancers in my class, I was only 7th best. Even though I was praised by my teachers and ballet mistress for working the hardest out of all of my peers, even though I worked out in between rehearsals (at the gym on the treadmill, lifting weights, stretching in the sauna), even though I read ridiculous training books like “Mind Gym” that taught me how to visualize my performance while I was drifting off into sleep every night, even though I listened to ballet-specific rehearsal and audition meditations, even though I prided myself at always trying combinations first, I still only saw myself as a #7.

Like out of 20 dancers, if #1 was the best, I didn’t even make the top 5.

Being #7 has had devastating implications on my love life, my work life, my family life.

I recently had the fortune of being in the midst of a promotion negotiation, which at the onset, caused me almost debilitating distress. Even though I had worked my ass for a year at this company, effectively performing the roles and responsibilities of 4 different jobs; even though I was working with the exec team on special projects; even though I was the most knowledgable member on my team; even though I well-deserved it, I felt like I didn’t.

Alright, now I’m going to tell you something that will make me sound like a Class A Brat. I’m going to sound like a snobby valley girl who grew up in California (wait…). I’m going to sound like one of those people with white girl problems – like how I have to buy the Lexus IS 250 instead of the high-powered 350 model with the little pick-up-and-go when I lightly tap on the gas. Like how I can only afford to go to the latest fad fitness class where Kelly Rippa and Jake Gyllenhaal go 2x this week, instead of 5. Meanwhile, thousands of Sudanese children are suffering without food and water in refugee camps in Ethiopia. Meanwhile, thousands of Congolese women are daily being used as capital in a war fought by sexual terrorists – where women are raped with shotguns and forced to eat their siblings’ feces.

All of that said, when I was offered my promotion I felt a sinking, a dreading, a pit in my stomach the size the former planet Pluto. See, I was supposed to have this biig meeting with my boss where I was going to present a brief history of responsibilities of the past year, describe new roles I have taken on, and then persuade why I deserved the promotion.

But none of that happened.

My boss just offered me my promotion without even getting to fight my way into it. And it made me feel like a colossal failure. Like the worst #7 there ever was.

After a few days moping around, feeling sorry for myself, I did the math.

Being #7 was a story I fabricated along my long and rocky road to ballet success, becoming a writer and eventually moving to New York. It was a thought in my own mind that no one else could see.

And as a thought, it didn’t even exist.

Being a #7 with this new perspective is not synonymous with being #1, though. I have made very deliberate choices over the past 5 years since I quit ballet to not be #1. Because I know what trying to be #1 takes out of me and what it makes me do. I choose to live a different life. For me. Not for being #1.

I’ve never been a favorite number kinda girl. Taylor Swift loves 13; my good friend loves the year 1999, but I haven’t ever felt an emotional connection to a number. It’s never really made sense to me have an emotional connection with a number. But I was contemplating the #7 the other day, how comfortable I felt being #7, how OK I was with being #7, how beautiful I felt as #7, how valued I felt as #7, how much I loved myself as #7.

When I walked past this door…

And I thought it was fate telling me that my new favorite number should be 7.

So here’s to being our own #7s, the best #7s we can be, without compromising our true selves or selling ourselves out to be #1. Because the truth really is, we wouldn’t be where we are if we were truly a #7. We wouldn’t have a kick ass job at a sports agency, get offered a promotion without asking for it, produce our own EP and a bad ass album release party; we wouldn’t be working at our dream job with a hefty graduate diploma to back it up; we wouldn’t be the mother, the wife, the sister, the daughter we are; we wouldn’t have a heart-wrenchingly beautiful manuscript that has been requested by all the best agents in New York; we wouldn’t be a director responsible for the lives of hundreds of kids every summer; we wouldn’t be the best friends that we are without just being #7.

Here’s to you and to me and to us being the best #7s we can be.

I love you #7.

<3 B

Soundtrack: Be Careful of My Heart – Tracy Chapman

I told him, “I love you.”

He squeezed my hand.

And it hurt.

“It takes me a long time,” he said, more to the ceiling than me.

I knew he wasn’t going to say it back.

That’s the part when I usually run.

I run because it’s easy. I run because Greg Behrend told me that he just isn’t that into me anyway. Because Carrie Bradshaw told me I’m fabulous, beautiful and a man better be damn lucky to love me. Blair Woldorf told me that I have to run, not walk, from men who can’t say those three words, eight letters. I run because Bridget Jone’s wrote in her diary that I must not fantasize about wankers who are emotionally unavailable, and I ought to go for the guys who say what they’re thinking and like me just as I am (even with the vulgar mother, the smoking like a chimney and verbal diarrhea.) Taylor Swift told me when I’m scared, being fearless is when you’re terrified and you jump anyway.

But I didn’t jump. Not right away anyway.

“Bethany, I want you to meet my friend John,” my closest girlfriend introduced me one night at party in Vermont. I looked across the dimly lit college library, temporarily transformed into a literary themed graduation party in the fashion of high-school prom circa 1992, and my eyes locked with John’s. I knew him already. My best friend from kindergarten whom I had lost touch with. My husband in my last life, or perhaps two before that. There was a kindness in his eyes, a familiarity that held the closeness of best friends, only we had just met. In betwixt the dougie and the pop’n lock with a half a dozen 40somethings all seeking temporary relief from the pressure of real world life – where husbands, children, jobs and bills vibrate the deep tension creative types feel when they’re forced to put the cyan back in the drawer and make dinner – John and I found ourselves side by side in two plastic chairs.

“How was your flight?”

“Eck, it was actually pretty bumpy getting up here with all the weather. The lady next to me almost threw up on me,” John answered.

Our first conversation wasn’t magical. There were no fireworks. There was no flutter in my chest. I wasn’t nervous. How could I be – you’re never nervous around your best friend. You’re just you.

Everyone else had slipped into the night, into their beds, some half drunk, others simply exhausted from the last Michael Jackson mashup that caused the whole dance floor to erupt in a flash Thriller mob, but we were left on the couch in the college dorm lounge where everyone stayed for 2 weeks every semester. Sitting side by side, feet kicked up on the coffee table and swirling our white zin in red plastic cups, we were catching up on everything we had missed so far.

Sometime past 4am, John looked at me and said, “I just want to hold your hand.”

Over the next 9 months, we met each other in cities all across the country (since he lived in Austin and I was in New York City) – Cold Spring, NY; Mystic, CT; New York City; Austin; San Francisco; Manchester, NH; Atlanta; Brattleboro, VT. We’d sip coffee on the front porches of quiet bed and breakfasts and talk about how our kids would grow old, and we would still be sitting around drinking coffee and making each other laugh.

If I’m honest with myself, I knew I loved him the moment our eyes met across his friend’s red-yarned Pipi Longstockings sticking out of the side of her head like spokes.

But I knew he was scared, so I waited. And waited.

Until the weight on my heart was so overbearing, crashing and pounding like the waves on the shore, one after the other with no relief.

My dad told me when I was little that I don’t deserve love. He told me that I was incapable of giving it. Love was only possible if it were coming from outside of me, if I was lucky enough. My dad was a pastor, so I guess he felt like he had to tell me that. He was paid to tell people that. He believes it. I wish he didn’t, but I can’t change that about him, I can’t look down on him for it or be mad at him.

All of my unlucky boyfriends before I met John had to deal with the messy and inconvenient fact that I believed love was this big mystical and magical forever thing outside myself that came with consequences if it didn’t reach beyond the infinity.

The depth of compassion, overwhelming kindness and utter respect for even the deepest, blackest part of his soul that I felt for John was what my dad told me all my life I was incapable of mustering up in my own black and dingy soul.

But I knew he was wrong. My dad was wrong. And my friends were wrong when they said a man should always say I love you first.

I told John, “I love you” the night of my brother’s wedding in the Georgia mountains. After a perfect autumn afternoon at a winery, overlooking rolling hillsides of meticulously strung grape vines, and a night of dancing, when John half-whispered, half-yelled in my ear ”If we ever got married, we’d be the best f*cking dancing couple ever,” I told him I loved him. And he rolled over and fell asleep.

“I don’t see how you can stay with him, what he’s doing, being with you, knowing you love him, and how he’s scared of his own shadow…it’s f*d up,” my close friend told me one day over the phone. She was right. It was wrong. It was wrong to stay with him when he didn’t love me.

After a long and messy break up, that lasted weeks of breaking up and getting back together, John finally told me he loved me. He wrote me a long, detailed letter of everything he loved about me.

“You have a good—no great—heart.  Not just forgiving, but also caring and compassionate.  I see it with me, I see it with the way you worry about an injured bird on the city sidewalk or the woman begging for money outside your apartment or when you are playing without abandon with Sofi and Spencer.  You are courageous and spiritual.  I never said it, but I really liked you asking me to pray with you for your friend. You make me laugh, you laugh at my jokes, and you are silly.  And you aren’t afraid to laugh.  And I love the way you laugh.  And the way you smile when you are truly happy. You are not just pretty, you are beautiful.  And hot.  And extraordinarily sexy.  I’ve been in relationships where the physical attraction dies pretty quickly, or comes and goes.  But that has never happened with you.  I’ve always been extremely attracted to you.  Even when we’re just holding hands.”

John and I aren’t supposed to be together in this life, but he came to me at the perfect time. John came to me when I thought all my love was gone.

He taught me something it took my whole life to learn – that there is a swelling, crescendoing opus of compassion in the human heart, even when we imagine that no one could love the dark and blackness that sometimes run rampant in our wild hearts.

“‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ First single. *beep* brilliant. Perhaps the most *beep*brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That’s what everyone wants. Not 24/7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche or a ******** or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can’t hide. Every single successful song of the past fifty years can be traced back to ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding. Trust me. I’ve thought a lot about this.” ~ Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist, what John texted me one afternoon a month after we met (again)

and to all of you reading this who are not my ex boyfriend, I wanted to clear the air and get something straight with you.

It occurred to me recently that I’ve done some ex bashing here. I’ve shared a lot of things that aren’t shared except in trusted, intimate conversations between girlfriends, usually over a cocktail.

And I wanted you to know I don’t actually hate any of my ex boyfriends.

I’m not telling you this because I feel guilty for ex bashing or the many sh*tty things I’ve done in the past – even the mean, spiteful things I should be ashamed of.  I know I’m not perfect. Far from it. And I suppose it probably says something about me, more than I’d like it to, that I find satisfaction in making a mess of things – my relationships and myself – just to find myself back in the place where I started.

But that’s not why I’m writing now.

I’m telling you all this because I believe that when you love someone, they should know it. Even if you don’t love them in a romantic way anymore.

I’m telling you this because over the past year I have seen many, many hateful things, and I’m hoping that by making a little love in my tiny corner of the world, it will spread the Mother Earth, Hippie-Love I love so much.

So, if it were socially acceptable, and if didn’t make anyone ever wonder what would have happened if it would have worked out, here’s what I’d say to each of my ex boyfriends if I had the chance:

Hey,

I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I wanted to let you know that I’ve been thinking about you. Not in a let’s get back together kinda way, but in a you used to be my best friend kinda way and I kinda miss that.

I don’t want to go down memory lane and argue about who said what, or who hurt whom. Those roads never go anywhere.

I’ve been thinking about what you’ve been up to, how your job’s been and how school is going. I’m so proud of you for finishing school, working towards your dreams, not giving up, never losing sight of your path and all of the beautiful plans you have for your life. As much as my journey was an inspiration to you, your dreams have been a constant encouragement to me.

I’ve been in New York City for a year, almost to the date. We talked about me moving to New York a lot. It was a sore spot for us; it made us fight a lot. And whether you said it or not, you always knew New York was on my heart and that I’d move here one day. So many years I talked about, dreamed of moving here. It was only a matter of time. And if I moved to New York, you knew that meant I’d leave you.

I remember telling you, “I don’t care what I have to do or who I hurt, I’m moving to New York.”

I’m here now. It’s been almost 10 years trying to get here. And I’ve hurt a lot of people.

I’ve never regretted a thing in my life, but I’m not sure it’s been worth it. Moving here.

I’m not writing you to tell you I wish I’d never fought with you over moving to New York or whether you were coming with me or not.

I guess I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for pushing me to get here, not just to New York, but to this very spot I find myself standing now. You taught me to run up hills, to jump off cliffs and climb bridges. You taught me to dance in parking lots just for fun. You taught me how to stand, even when I wanted to run. You taught me I don’t have to be afraid that you won’t ever call me back,  that my life won’t fall apart if you don’t love me the way I love you and that I don’t have to be afraid of getting my heart broken. You taught me not to be afraid when the crying won’t stop or when the night gets so black. You taught me that I don’t have to choose the darkness, but I when I do that’s okay, too. You taught me that I can be a b*tch sometimes and that hissy fits are not cute. Even when I’m hungry. Or can’t stand those stupid ambulances that chase each other, one after the other, down Park Avenue. You taught me that running away from you is not self-preservation, but self-destruction. But mostly, you taught me, that despite all of those things, I can’t be afraid of myself.

I wanted to say thank you and I love you.

You are an amazing man and I’m so blessed to have had you in my life, if only for a short time. And even if we never speak again, or only talk every once in a while, you will always be on my heart and I will always be wishing you well, wishing you your heart’s desires and wishing you happiness.

All of my best (because you’ve already seen my worst : ),

Bethany

P.S. I wrote this to you a long time ago, but was afraid of sending it because it might mess things up with my current boyfriend. That he’d see this as a breakup letter to him. I was waiting until things were a little clearer with him. But I guess I’ve learned that relationships are about as clear as mud. I hope all is well with you and your current girlfriend.

I deactivated my Facebook account.

I know. Social media suicide.

There was a time when I could not imagine what I would do if I lost everything on Facebook. All of my friendly banter back and forth between my camp girls, the amazing Kanye videos friends posted to my Wall, my Bookshelf, the awesome quotes I found for my About Me, that funny group I created when my car got stolen and all I cared about was losing my blue silk dress from Banana Republic and how everyone joined in support posting “I’m so sorry”s and “Here’s to the lost dress!”s. That time like 30 people posted on my status when I wrote “My Cockroach Killing is Strong!”

I contemplated many of these things when I hit that button that would wipe my existence forever from the social media sphere. Or at least until the next time I decided to login again.

What’s probably even worse, is that I work in digital and social media marketing. So I kinda have to be on Facebook and all the social channels to know what’s going on, so that I can make informed decisions about my company’s brands.

I’m a little nervous about friends in the business finding out I’ve disappeared into a cyberspace black hole.

But here’s why I did it.

1. Because all my other friends are doing it (I know. Same excuse as the time I drank vodka out of a water bottle in first period.)

2. Because I’m sick of hyper-targeted, direct marketing (No, Google, I don’t want you in my wallet, and I don’t want you on my phone dictating my consumer behaviors to me. I just want to eat a damn hot dog when I feel like it; not when you say they’re 50% off.)

3. Because I’m sick of hyper-active consumerism (No, I don’t need to consume that much useless data, every day, all day long, I don’t need a plastic bag for that one thing I bought at the drug store and I don’t need chopsticks every time I get take out sushi.)

In a city with 9 million people in it, it’s blatantly obvious the impact I have on my environment just by living in it. So I’m trying not to impact it in a way that is outwardly harmful.

I eat everything from grocery bought and homemade meals. I carry my groceries home in a reusable bag. I only buy as much as I can carry, walking 20 blocks to and from the store. I don’t take a taxi and I don’t take public transportation.

I walk to and from work (30 blocks and 4 avenues each way) every day.

I compost my green waste in a cute little white bucket on my fire escape and use the tomatoes and basil from my fire escape garden for meals.

I sound like one of those tree-hugging, California hippies, right? Well, I am.

I recently read an article in New York Magazine about the Hipster. See, contrary to popular belief, the Hipster didn’t surface in the underground in the early 2000′s like everyone thought. The Hipster is actually the predecessor to the Hippie. Back in the 50′s the Hipster was this cool, anti-consumer with Thoreau airs and a back-to-the-land attitude. The Hipster stood for taking care of the earth, Pocahontas-style, and wanted to put the brakes on the mass industrialization that threatened to destroy the human value in our products. The Hippie is actually the derogatory nickname pop culture dubbed the free-loving, tree-hugging Hipsters.

When the Hipsters resurfaced in 1999, with their greasy hair and grungy music, they lost their map to Fern Gully and traded it in for florescent sunglasses circa 1980 and tee shirts that boasted next Sunday’s church potluck theme. They were back-to-the-suburb-ers, for cool’s sake, not for the suburb’s. They were back to the Walkman, but not because they despised the mass production of the iPod, but because no one else was doing it. And it seemed cool.

Single-handedly, the Hipster retroactively brought back consumerism like it was 1969. The Hipster went on the hunt for the next cool thing. And the next one. And the next one. And the next one. And the next one.

And that’s why I hate Facebook. Because all the cool kids said I should join it and they said they thought it was cool. Then the cool companies got on there and told all their cool company friends to get on there and then everyone was on there. And then everyone had two, three, four Facebook accounts and posted 642 (meaningless) posts a day, which aggregated to the Top 350 Trending threads, which I checked every morning when I got up and the last thing I did before I went to sleep.

And I just wondered why. Why am I consuming this social data just to consume it? What value is it adding to my life? Can I interact with my friends any place other than Facebook? What would I do all day long if I weren’t posting pictures of my latest painting or what I cooked for dinner?

Well, I suppose I would spend more time in my fire escape garden. And probably clean my apartment. And maybe talk to my roommate. And call my parents more often. And think about that woman I pass every day on the way to work who wears a white, over-sized men’s tee shirt that she has pulled over her knees while she’s looking down at the ground and I’m trying not to read the scribbled handwriting on her weathered cardboard plea.

And I suppose if I spent less time on Facebook, I’d figure out a way I could help her out that would be more meaningful than leaving her my pocket change every morning.

And that is why I committed social media suicide.

P.S. Check out these mad caterpillars that over took my garden this morning! Had to pick’em off one by one before they demolished my tomatoes! (They’re the little fury things you see all over the place.)

Hi all!
As I am not on Facebook anymore, I just wanted to let you know I survived Hurricane (what became Tropical Storm) Irene safe and well.

I am pretty lucky. I live in the middle of Manhattan, on a high level street, in an apartment squashed between 4 other apartment buildings, surrounded by several high rise luxury buildings, across the street from NYU hospital and down the way from Bellevue city hospital.

That did not stop me, however, from contemplating evacuation, calling friends and family to see if and where I could crash on a couch for the weekend, and following Mayor Bloomberg’s advice to stock up with a week’s worth of food and water, and a drawer full of flashlights. Along with nine million other (frantic) New Yorkers.

It was actually pretty scary on Friday as we woke up to evacuation alerts in NYC and the surrounding areas, especially after having just experienced an earthquake on Wednesday afternoon. The stores were packed. There was a line out the door, down the block and around the corner just to get into Trader Joe’s. Not to check out, to get in.

Many stores ran out of food on Friday. Most were closed Saturday and Sunday.

All public transportation in and out of the city shut down on Saturday at noon, all flights were grounded in and out of the major airports and MTA warned that many of the bridges would be closed.

It wasn’t mass hysteria, but people were very scared.
I saw mothers lining the curbs, holding the hands of their children, with infants on their backs, hailing cabs with little more than 1 bag.

I saw people on the street crying.

The homeless sought refuge in the city’s evacuation centers, along with other evacuees in Lower East Side and the East Village.

While most of Manhattan did not experience damage, if it had, say, experienced something like Hurricane Katrina, the results would have been catastrophic.

I think there are many people who were just shrugging their shoulders this morning thinking, what was all the hype about? And I would say to them that precautions, as the Mayor and the nyc government took this weekend, were very necessary. Natural disasters and evacuations are no joke in a city this big, on an island this small, with this many people. If there were a mass evacuation, there is a very real possibility that many people would be killed, just in the evacuation process. If you’ve ever been in Times Square during New Year’s Eve (I did last year), you’d know this.

As it stands, many of my coworkers in Queens were evacuated and got news that their cars floated into the street this weekend. Other coworkers on the island haven’t had power in days. Friends in Brooklyn were evacuated and are now (as the roads have finally opened back up) coming home to flooded and wind damaged homes. Friends in Vermont and many states in New England experienced much worse.

Many of you I have already communicated with and thanked for your thoughts and well wishes this weekend. Your thoughts and prayers were very appreciated. Please be praying and thinking of those who have lost their family members, their homes, their cars, and experienced damage in the northeast.

Hoping you are well,

Bethany

I’ve tried writing book reviews, product reviews and music reviews on MVIS in the past, and it’s never been super successful. It’s probably because you come to this blog because I write what I think, I spill my guts and don’t apologize for it (most of the time) and because I make you think. Most people don’t come to me for my deep and inspiring thoughts on lip gloss or my favorite shoes. I’m okay with that.

photo by Kasey Keown

Nonetheless, a dear friend of mine, Christina Belknap, singer / songwriter of Eudora June, asked me to review her upcoming EP release, Siren Song.

I met Christina 3 years ago at my favorite Starbucks across from Georgia State. We were both undergrads in the English department. A friend of mine from Atlanta Ballet was a prof in the department and emailed asking if I’d meet with a student of hers who was a talented writer and was looking into the magazine industry.

That’s one thing I love about Atlanta – girls stick together. There is not a single woman I met, CEO to EA, who would turn down a cup of coffee, whether it was for writing, business or relationship advice.

Ever since that first latte, Christina has been a kindred spirit. She is a beast and a force to be reckoned with. She doesn’t apologize for what she wants, who she wants to be and she does not stop running.

Christina’s a runner like me. She runs hard and fast, every moment toward who she is becoming…a better writer, a stronger woman, a deeper artist, a bigger thinker, a more grounded person. It’s women like Christina that make me keep running when I want to stop.

But sometimes being a runner means you also run from the things that intimidate you, make you uncomfortable and scare you. Being a runner is a lifestyle, not just a technique for getting what you want.

I ran away from Atlanta because I thought I needed to prove to myself I could do something none of my friends or peers were doing.

photo by Kasey Keown

I ran away from ballet because no matter how hard I tried to be perfect, if my parents didn’t know the right people, it didn’t matter how many meals I skipped or pirouettes I turned.

I ran away from California because I thought the woman I was supposed to become was on the other greener grass.

I ran away from many good relationships because I couldn’t face who I was when I was with that person. I ran away because I had these ideas that good relationships are supposed to look like my parents relationship. Or, rather, not like theirs.

I’m trying to run away from a relationship right now that is good for me. That is actually pretty perfect.

But I can’t run away from the demons inside me. They weren’t in Atlanta or in that jerk I dated when I was 20. They were in me.

The song that’s been stuck on repeat on my iPod the last week has been Eudora June’s “Runaway.”

I love this song so much, in fact, that the next people who write a comment below, I will buy the song for you on iTunes. I love the song that much. This isn’t an endorsement from the artist, or a marketing giveaway gimmick. I just know that when a song speaks to you, you have to share it with your friends. If you’re a dreamer, if you’ve ever run toward something good, or away from it, tell me and I’ll buy you the song.

Lets keep together runners. <3

(If you’d like to see Christina next week, Eudora June celebrates EP release party: June 23; 9pm, Atlanta. Deets here.)

(And keep up with runners like you at EJ’s FB, Twitter and website.)

Siren Song, released June 23, 2011, by Eudora June (Christina Belknap, singer / songwriter)

P.S. all other songs on the upcoming EP are AMAZING. Download the rest of the tracks on iTunes when they come out

“”Siren Song” is not only the realization of a lifelong ambition and my artist debut, but it is a statement. It is a declaration that you can survive anything, get your soul all bashed up, black & blue, and from that wreckage create something beautiful…and real. What “Siren Song” is all about, and what I had to do to create it, was not covering anything up, but rather rip my experiences wide open so I could tell a story.

My hope is that people really feel the music, like, deep down in their guts. Because that’s where I go to create it. A lot of people might have told me this endeavor was way crazy, the time put in, the money spent and the expectations.But I am here a year later – and “Siren Song” is realized – that in itself is an act of bravery, and one that I hope inspires others to go a little crazy, too.”

– Christina Belknap, singer / songwriter, Eudora June

photo by Kasey Keown

Today I celebrate living in NYC for exactly 1 year. Anniversaries in NYC are kind of a big deal because so many people come and go, staying on couches, running up bar tabs and then they disappear back to where they came from. You start to get respect the longer you stay in NYC.

Before I moved, people told me I would have this moment one day where it would just hit me. I hate New York, they would tell me I would think.

Never, I said. I never imagined it. That’s because my friends and family and strangers and whoever I told I was moving, told me that I’d get sick of the subway and the weather.

But here’s what I wished they had told me.

7 Things I Didn’t Know About Living in NYC.

People yell. All the time. Everywhere. On their cell phones. At the guy across the street. At bikers and cabbies who drive recklessly. At little girls who are just writing in their journal on the subway.

It’s loud. The sirens never stop. The screaming never stops. Just the other day, I’m sitting at my desk. It’s 10am and I hear death-curdling screams rising up to the 16th floor of my building from Fifth Avenue. There’s a summer concert outside the CBS studio. How lovely.

People get in fights. I was on the way to JFK a few weeks ago, when I’m running down the subway steps at Union Square and see 10 or 15 guys huddling around the turn-style. Great, there’s a line just to get into the subway, I thought. It was 4pm on a Thursday. Not a prime traffic hour on the subway. I get closer to the turn-style to see that the guys aren’t actually going through it, but jumping some high school kid. Blood is running out of his eyes. There’s black sh*t all over his face. Like he’d been kicked in the face. And everyone else is just swiping their metro cards through the adjacent turn-style.

It’s violent. You could be walking along one day on your lunch, enjoying the sunshine (you haven’t seen in 6 months), and thinking to yourself, I wonder what I’m going to do this weekend, it may be 70 degrees, you hope. When a school bus catches on fire to your left. Everyone starts backing away. Someone’s yelling, “It’s going to explode.” Two teenage girls come out of no-where, they’re screaming and running. The whole front of the school bus is engulfed in flames by now. You’re trying to get out of there, but everyone’s stopping to watch. You finally make it across the street to almost be stampeded by a pack of social-savvy teens with their flip cams and smart phones ready to record the whole thing. You look back and you see 100s of kids, phones up in the air, and black smoke billowing up out of Union Square.

People really get mugged. Just last night my friend and I are walking home from the bar, it’s not late, maybe 11pm. We’re in midtown. Pretty safe area. All of a sudden some guy comes running up from behind and swipes my friend’s purse. Without even skipping a beat, I go chasing after him, in stilettos, mind you, screaming, Stop that mother @#$*!! Some random guy starts chasing after alongside me. A cabbie a block back is standing with my friend saying, I gotchyur back, and he’s calling the cops on his cell. We catch up to the crook, get the purse back and both the crook and my sidekick disappear back into the night.

You never see the sun. I live on the East side. When I leave for work in the morning, there are two (yes, I’ve counted) sun patches that touch the sidewalk (meaning direct sunlight on my body). When I come home after work, the sun is on the West side. The only time I feel direct sunlight (meaning, not reflecting off a building or shining on the 16th floor of a building down the block), is on the weekends in Tribecca or when I go to Austin.

People Art. All over the place. One night I was sitting at Columbus Circle eating dinner, watching skateboarders ollie off the steps and the traffic surge up 8th Avenue. All of a sudden, to my left a gospel choir breaks out, swaying and clapping like they do. Three whole rows of African American kids are hitting the high Cs, trilling to the high heavens. And as quickly as they appeared, they were gone again. Impromptu gospel choirs happen in NY.

I wish someone had told me that the cost of having three, 24-hour drug stores a block from my apartment, a pizza place that doesn’t close up shop until 7am downstairs and a $20 wash and fold two doors down would come at the price of rarely seeing the sun, always seeing violence, and never having a quiet moment alone to just sit and think.

My dad says the best invention ever made was the human brain’s Forgeterator.

“You see,” my dad would say, “the forgetorator is supposed to make you forget your stories – the ones that have shaped you, for better or worse; the ones that make you think sad things and make you afraid to live.”

I have a lot of stories.

I have the one where my high school sweetheart promised he’d marry me, but after packing up my bags, and my heart, and moving across the country to be with him, he said wasn’t ready to marry me. Ever.

I have the one where I finally let my heart love again only to find out new Mr. Right said he was moving. To Australia. And never coming back.

Then there’s the time I was a ballerina since I was 3 and finally had to call it quits because ballet had left me. With an eating disorder and an obsessive compulsive, perfectionism tic.

Oh, yeah. There’s the one where if the guy I’m dating doesn’t call me back or text me back in what seems like a reasonable time (usually judged by my gut, could be anywhere from 10 – 15 minutes to 2 hours), then he’s just not that into me.

I have the story where when I was 6 years old, even though I have 5 big strong brothers who always said they’d protect me, one of my brother’s best friends came inside me.

And as hard as I try to forget, there’s that one time where I’ve always wanted to move to NYC, and I did. With (-)$500 and one suitcase. Just to find out that, despite all my dreaming and running and trying, I hated it.

Sometimes you don’t forget.

It’s like you can’t because your stories are you.

They’ve dictated who you decide to date and who you don’t. They made you decide to dump that loser who used to tell you that he wasn’t going to call you back because you needed to learn that he did like you even if he didn’t want to talk to you on the phone and that he was just doing it to help you. But even worse, your stories made you decide to date him in the first place.

Your stories made you pick and choose your beautiful friends, and dictate when you decide you won’t take anymore.

Your stories are you.

Sometimes I ask my dad, “How can I forget them?”

I saw a little girl and an old woman get in a fight on the subway yesterday. Not a fist fight, thankfully, but a knock-down, drag-out verbal altercation.

I was on my way home from work at the Union Square subway station – a busy, crowded stop where it feels more like a stampede of speedy gazelles than a dignified city metro. And on top of it being a rough crowd, it had been a long, rainy, muggy, ugly day and everyone was cranky.

The altercation went like this.

“There is no room, for you here, lady” the girl said bridging a 6 inch inch gap between herself and the edge of the bench.

The woman shimmied into the gap, shoving the girl back over.

“You are disrespectful and rude and I don’t know who taught you to talk like that” the woman growled.

“I was sitting here first.”

“I paid for this seat, too.”

“You only pay 2.25 if there is a seat. And there isn’t.”

I was sitting next to the girl, who had peaceably been writing in her journal and listening to her iPod, before the woman got onto the car.

After the few minute exchange of bitter words and hateful stares, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I shoved my iPod buds into my ears, whirled the volume up as loud as I could, got up to make more room for the old woman and tried to ignore the venomous ardor that lingered in the car like a putrid lutefisk sandwich.

I guess it wouldn’t have been as bad, if I hadn’t felt like there were a little girl and an old woman fighting inside of me for the last few months.

I’m not into crystals or anything, but sometimes I do these Buddha-belly-rubbing-like visualization exercises where I imagine the inner characters of my life talking to me.

There’s a little girl inside of me who is crying. She’s been hurt and ignored.

There’s also an old woman inside of me yelling at my little girl – punishing her for wanting to go run and play, for not considering consequences and for being so stupid as to think that the kids around the block don’t like her when they can’t come out and play. Sometimes my old woman, who wants to protect the little girl, punishes her by starving her. Or excessive-exercise. Or cruel accusations like, if you don’t stop acting like this, you’re going to end up powerless, alone and miserable.

Grow up, she says sometimes.

Because I think I may not be the only one who has this fight inside, I wanted to share a letter I wrote to my little girl.

Dear Little Girl,

I wanted you to know something. I know sometimes you like to do your own thing.

You like to go out and play by yourself and sing at the top of your lungs (sometimes Disney songs, sometimes ones you just make up) in the middle of Grandpa’s back pasture, and

You’re not really into playing hide-and-go-seek-with-guns with your brothers because you’d rather talk to your cats on the front porch, and

You have more fun playing make-believe princess kittens with that pink plastic castle in your room.

And I know sometimes it’s really hard to ask your friends to be in your musicals with you or to pitch their crayon-colored, Lion King coloring book submissions to the art show you’re organizing for next week.

And that it’s really hard to call your best friend just to see if she wants to come over and climb trees – because, what if she says no?

But I want you to know something.

If she does say no, it’s not because she doesn’t like you. Or because there’s something wrong with wanting to climb trees all afternoon or changing your mind and wanting to sing “run-hop-skip-jump” at the top of your lungs, in a pitchy, screechy timbre through Grandpa’s overgrown wheat pasture. It’s not because you don’t have good ideas or because you aren’t funny (you are). It’s not because you’re a girl (and girls are dumb). It’s not because you’re not a good friend. And it is not because you deserve to be alone.

It’s really just because your friends are busy. Or they might not be able to come out and play today. Or because they got in a fight with their brother and now they’re grounded and embarrassed to tell you they got in trouble. It might even be because your friend’s mom doesn’t want to go out for the rest of the day.

But it is not, I promise you, because there is something wrong with you or because your friend doesn’t like you.

I know it’s been hard over the years not to think that when you ask your crush out for pizza and he can’t go, or if he doesn’t call back right away that he doesn’t like you. I know that sometimes you think you’ll end up alone because you can’t have everything and you’d rather live a life of fun and adventure than try to convince the boys you like to come along with you. I know it’s easier to push away those immense, swallow you whole feelings you have for that boy you have a crush on. And it seems like there’s less risk of him saying no if you pretend you don’t like him or that you want to get pizza after football practice or ice cream after prom.

But I also want you to know this.

You are a beautiful little girl. You’ve got an imagination the size of Texas. And you’re fearless (in a Taylor Swift meets Eve Ensler kinda way). You love adventure, things that are scary and you have a great singing voice. You’re a funny, happy girl and the way you love laughing is a treasure you should always keep close to your heart. You have an absolutely unique and beautiful way of seeing the world. You think big thoughts and are very introspective. You love things in a big, deep, intense way that makes you shake in your boots, your stomach get a little achy and your toes tingle. And you are absolutely precious.

Please don’t ever, ever think that you’re not.

I hope you don’t get sad anymore and that you always remember how precious you are. And that if you ever forget, you have an absolutely wonderful group of friends who will want to hold your hand until you’re not scared anymore.

Love,

Me

P.S. To my friends who are precious and beautiful and funny and strong and have great big voices. Thank you for wanting to hold my hand, for running through fields with me and for being brave enough to show me how big my life can be by living the big adventure of yours.

In no particular order or importance, to my precious friends – who I love in a big, shake me in my boots kinda way. (last two photographs -  credits to Sarah Ashlyn Magboo)

When my high school sweetheart-turned-hoped-for-fiance broke my heart a few years ago, I resolved that I had been given a second chance at a big life. The life he had offered promised to teach me contentment, comfort and satisfaction with a complacent existence full of simple little wonders.

But when I got the chance to get the heck out of dodge (which was Sacramento at the time, my birth place and a town where, no offense, not much is going on), I took it. I was given the chance to go and be a big me. I could move to Atlanta or NYC or Paris, if I wanted. I could go out with my friends all the time and let what ever guys I wanted flirt with me at the bar or on the subway or on the street.

When I packed my bags and headed back East, I made this promise to myself:

I had to be strong from now on because I would be on this adventure alone.

So I’ve spent the last 4 years doing all those things I knew I wouldn’t have been able to do if I had married my high school sweetheart. I finished school with a great degree. I launched my own business. I got my work published in national magazines. I moved to NYC. I even fell love again.

But now that I’ve done all those things I promised myself I would do, all I have in my life is the things that I’ve done. My life is a series of checklists, dream boards, goal sheets and Ta-Da Lists.

I’ve become a stronger woman, but I haven’t become a better woman.

In fact, being strong made me do things that I hate.

It made me starve myself.

It made me turn away people who love me.

It made me stop calling my mom because she doesn’t understand me anymore.

It made me put up the F U Wall before I can let anyone even pretend they care about me.

It made me pretend that I don’t think that amazing guy I met last weekend is, in fact, amazing, and despite my wanting to ignore his txts, I think he is pretty perfect.

It made me tell men who have deeply cared about me that me and my big life and my big dreams come first. (Words that have literally come out of my mouth: “I will do what ever it takes to get to NYC; I don’t care what I have to do or who I hurt in the process.”)

Being strong made me get in a big fight with my best friend. It made me hate her because if I’m strong it means I don’t back down when I need to speak up for myself. And that if I don’t speak up for myself to my best friend, will I ever do it when it truly matters?

It makes me think that if only I had stayed, figured out some way to make it work with my high school sweetheart, that I wouldn’t feel like a person who has just done big things. It would have made me feel like I spent my life loving someone — something everyone says is the pinnacle of the human experience.

Being strong makes me cry every day.

Being strong has made me weak.

I believe in the power of the written, spoken and heard word. I believe that there is a delicate relationship between language and reality. I believe that when you tell yourself something every day, you begin to believe it.

While I was telling myself I was strong, all these years, I was outwardly becoming a woman who could do anything in the world. She could get up in front of an entire theater with nothing but tights and a leotard and dance her heart out. She could think big thoughts and not be afraid of telling anyone. She could sell her ideas, launch a business and be profitable in the first 6 months; a feat that most first time business owners rarely achieve. She could commit herself to a relationship with a man who everyone thought was perfect for her. She could pack up her bags with no money and set up a beautiful new life in NYC. She could do anything but love herself.

In the middle of becoming brave and courageous, I lost me somewhere.

I just keep thinking of the moment when the Mad Hatter turns to Alice and says (after discussing her visits to Wonderland as a child and how she used to know she was the “right” Alice),

“You used to be much more muchier. You’ve lost your muchiness.”

In trying to be strong, I’ve lost my muchness.

I don’t remember what it’s like to love someone; I’ve forgotten what it’s like to get that head-over-heels feeling. And I, cannot for the life of me, remember if I’m even capable of feeling a big, deep, amazing, beautiful love anymore.

I’ve forgotten how to listen to my friends talk about their day and actually care about what they’re saying. I’ve forgotten to write cards and emails and txts to my best girlfriends just to say hi. I don’t ask people how they’re doing anymore; and I don’t make eye contact with anyone.

But maybe this is what it means to be strong. Maybe you’re not sure what it looks like, how it makes you feel or what it’s going to make you do, but you’re not scared to say that you don’t know.

Maybe you don’t know where it’s going to take you or who it’s going to make you become. And no matter how much it hurts and you want to give up and pretend that you’ll never become that person you’re supposed to become and you want to compromise with destiny that you won’t show up for your own life…

Maybe being strong is just showing up in your own life and you just keep trying to figure it out.

“Being Fearless isn’t being 100% unafraid, it’s being TERRIFIED, but you jump anyway.” — Taylor Swift