A BLOG POST ABOUT THINGS

So I’m on a plane from JFK to SLC right now. I want to write this blog post because writing End of the School Year posts is ritualistic for me at this point. I don’t really know what exactly I want to say this year, though, because for every year before it’s been like, “I’m moving from grade 10 to grade 11” or whatever. This year it’s like, “I got a new life.” I got a new life. 

A couple nights ago, it was about 3 am and I was on the phone with Tris gossiping and crying and understanding the whole world and I started to think about this life I’ve created over the course of this year. It’s strange to think back over the course of it because it’s so complete now. I know exactly what happens when I wake up every day. I have people, a weird family that even fills family roles in its own way, mother, father, sister, brother, brother-in-law. I even have that old uncle who uses his socks as a way of having controlled fun. We eat dinner together.

I think the weirdest thing about this school year is the way that school and life just blended together into one life, and in my mind it was just going to continue on into infinity just like this. As the school year’s come to a close I’ve been being the most pretentious ever and I’m constantly like, “Ugh, there’s this T.S. Elliot poem that ends ‘This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper,’ and that’s how I feel about ending of this school year.” Because it’s true. College is weird. I’m so used to K-12 at the end of the year how there’s always cupcakes and water balloons. In college, you just get to panic about your miserable life and how you really should’ve paid better attention in math class all semester long and then you don’t sleep for a week and everyone just has this insane mutual panic – and then it’s over. Not with a bang, but a whimper because you probably failed something and now there’s nothing you can do about it.

So I tried to create my own cupcakes and water balloons – but, like, metaphorically, because I can’t cook and also I don’t like getting wet. I tried SoulCycle for the first time and even though my butt is still sore, it was completely the best workout ever and I can’t wait to do it again as soon as I’m back in the fall. (Also if any of you want to get me their gear for my birthday, you should. You can buy it all online. They have the best tanks.) Last night at midnight, the gang went to French Roast and we sat around and ate hummus and reminisced and wrote an opera and talked about how we’re going to come back in ten years and be like, “Aw, remember when?” We’ll all be rich by then, also.

I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a part of me that feels like my life’s ending. Back in January, I wrote about how sometimes having two homes makes me feel like half a person, but that I also realized that I can have 100% of a life in New York and 100% of a life in Utah, which actually worked out great for me, except now it feels like 100% of me is dying. Having a life stretched across 2,000 miles, as much as I would love to say it it's so, to say I’ve got it all figured out just isn’t even possible. But I realize also that I’m coming home to another 100% life and I get to do my yoga training and see the few friends I have left and sleep in a bed that is actually the size for a real human and spend time with my family, and that’s going to be the best thing ever. I also realize that the best way to love New York is to leave it. But I’m really over the “not with a bang, but a whimper” analogy, because yesterday, last night, this morning, it all felt like a bang. Not even exaggerating, I think I cried fifteen different times yesterday, and every time it was something different. One minute I was sobbing because I didn’t want to leave and the next it was because I couldn’t wait to be home and the next it was because I was stressed about my French final and the next it was just because I still think New York is the most beautiful place in the entire world. I just love everyone and everything and everywhere so desperately, and, like, it hit me really hard. I think I freaked everyone out.

I also get really nostalgic before I leave a place. Everything feels important. It’s all like, “Aw, last time I’ll sleep in this bed, and last time I’ll eat Siagon Shack for three months, and last time I’ll have this stupid monkey shower curtain sticking to me while I try to shave my legs.” It’s sort of silly because I’m only leaving for three months, but I think that’s also part of the reason that the best way to love New York is to leave it. I start to love everything about it again, even the sticky heat and the weird smells and the way the water drips off the air conditioners outside buildings and for a second it’s like you’re getting rained on but with the grossest water ever but it’s great because everyone hates it together.

When I sat down to write this blog post I thought I’d write something like, “Oh, look what I’ve learned! Look how I’ve grown! I’m an adult!” But, like, as far as actual adulthood goes, I might have actually moved backward. I can’t drive, I can’t cook, I can’t take my high school friends seriously when they get engaged. There’s a huge part of me that wants to say, “New York changed me. My first year of college changed me.” And I definitely think a lot of people want me to feel that or be that or have that be a real thing, but when I think about the person I was this time last year, I’m really still the same. I have a higher caffeine tolerance, I wear more black, I am entirely disenchanted with Times Square. But I’m really still the same person at my core. I believe the same things. I want the same things. And I think that’s because I was always going to end up in New York. It’s always where I belonged, and it wasn’t going to sweep me off my feet and shape me into its image when that’s what I already was.

I have learned, though. How to be a person. How to navigate a city. How to be sad and still love everything in the world. A year ago, if you’d told me what I’d be today, I don’t know if I would’ve believed you. A part of me thinks I’d have wanted to know I had changed so much more, but a part of me, a bigger part, probably, knows I would’ve just been like, “Yeah. Of course."

So that’s my new life. And now I’m finishing this blog post on the floor of my bedroom in Utah and there are four suitcases and like fifteen boxes and I’ve been driving so much, even though I hate driving more than anything, but also I did yoga and I was safe and Hayley is coming to help me unpack boxes and Morgan is here and Tanner is here, and this isn’t my old life, and it isn’t a new new life, it’s just an extension of the new life, and I feel like that sentence made no sense at all, but here I am, and things are going to be good.

I’m finishing this blog post after four days of being home and I guess all I want to say now is that if I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t do anything different. Which is probably the coolest feeling in the entire world.

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." -John Steinbeck
Foreva,
Addy

The Math of Things: An Indulgent Blog Post

If you went back through my blog(s), I'd say that probably 90% of my posts say one of two things in the first paragraph: 1.) "I'm sorry that this isn't beautiful or calculated or lovely like I have lead you to believe my blog posts will be." This is, of course, always followed by something arguably beautiful/lovely and mostly certainly calculated, because despite how cluttery and ADD I am, I am also calculative to the point of being occasionally manipulative, and I'm pretty sure we all knew (and I think even I knew that you knew) what I was doing when I would apologize for "not writing pretty things." 2.) "I'm sorry for posting more poetry/something so long/something so ugly, but it's my blog." I wasn't really sorry. It is my blog.

About a year ago, my friend Avery wrote a very long, very sad, very inspiring, very enlightening post over on her blog where she basically did what I'm about to do, but, as always, Avery said it better: "...while I probably am a narcissist, I'm not such a delusional one that I actually expect you to read all [any] of this morbidly long, disaster post. It was more of a long overdue journal entry, a post for myself really. It's all the things I've been withholding from this neglected blog for the past...forever, all in one monstrous, rage-y, pointless post that I 100% forgive you not for paying attention to. However, I want you guys to know that I really love you, especially a few of you that I actually really really love, and that I'm okay, and also thanks for being whatever you are to me. Great. I just made the post another month longer. Whatever." That's pretty much the introduction this post needs. It's not for you. It's for me, like all the things I post with the new year. 

Some part of me thought I was going to get away with some simple, condensed, nice-looking New Year's post, but who was I kidding? I am a narcissist, and for that reason, there is some part of me that wants to publish this and say, "My readers and fans, read it and weep!" But mostly, I just want to write this blog post because for some reason, my mind works differently when I'm blogging than when I'm journaling because it sort of edits out the stuff that is 1,000,000% pointless (but still sort of leaves the stuff that is anything less than 1,000,000% pointless), because I guess I still think people are going to read it or something, and it just needs to be written. For me.

What I'm getting at is two things: 1.) I am not sorry, because I am going to force even this to be something semi-beautiful/lovely and, despite the fact that it is certainly, in many ways, less calculated than basically anything else I've ever posted, I am not sorry that even this post is something I have carefully calculated in my little brain. 2.) I'm not sorry for posting it, and I won't even pretend I am.

One last premise to all this is that if you only want to read one little part, read the last part that's called "On social media/final thoughts," because it's really what I'm getting at and something that I really do want people to know. Okay.

On having two homes/feminist theory/my family:

Ever since I came home for Thanksgiving, I have wanted to write a blog post that was "Thoughts on having two homes." I thought about it a lot and even sat down and tried to write it once, but it didn't work for some reason. This was because my thoughts on having two homes were extremely unclear and hazy and hard to polish up into a bloggity-blog-blog post. Mostly, they come down to a few different things:

1.) A thought I have had more than once while being home is, "I am so happy here that it scares me."

2.) A text I sent to one of my friends from NYC last week was, "You know that part in Orange is the New Black where she says, 'I'm scared that I'm not myself in here, and I'm scared that I am'? That's how I feel about being home."

I should confess before I move forward that the blog post I wanted to write didn't look like either of those things. It was going to be polished and slickery clean and something I could read over the pulpit.

Since I've been home for Christmas, I've had a lot of feelings. There's some part of me that wants to run around like the little wild child baby I was and hang out with all my supercool, ultrabeautiful friends and climb mountains and go to Velour and watch movies and wear cool clothes and perform slam poetry and be the best. On the other hand, there is some part of me that wants to do yoga when I wake up and not put on any makeup and only wear things that are comfortable and only leave the house to do yoga or to do things with my family. Because I have always been the type of person who tries to do absolutely everything, I have tried, with little success, to fulfill both parts of myself, and then the part of me that wanted to run Utah like I used to [think I did], got murdered by the part of me that didn't even really want to leave the house.

I got to talking to two of my very best friends in the history of the whole world, Avery Taylor and Emily Henson, and, as they often are when I talk to them, the mysteries of the universe were suddenly glaringly obvious to me, because, as we talked, though the nature of our relationship as Grrrrl Squad Queen Bee Wonder Baby Princesses has not changed at all, everything else has. Kaitlyn is gone. Avery and Emily have glamorous wonderful new friends who live in a house that they've named and they know people who play in bands and understand a whole new set of rules. I am not a part of those new glamorous wonderful new friends who live in a house that they've named and I do not know the people in the bands and I do not fully understand their whole new set of rules. As Avery and Emily and all of you and everyone else should know, this is not in any way Avery and Emily's fault. It just is.

Part of the shocking realization I had listening to them talk was that those people could be my friends. They could be my people and my rules, and above all, I could be happy with those people and friends and rules. There was a part of me that said, "I will leave Utah, and I will be happy." But I was happy here before, and I did leave Utah, and I am very happy in New York, but also, I could be happy with this world. It could be my world. And that could be more than okay.

But, of course, Avery and Emily's new friends are not my new friends. They have new people. They have new music. They have new secrets. They have things to discuss that I do not understand. On top of all that, nearly all of my friends that kept this place together have taken off, most of them on LDS missions, and then the spaces they filled have a way of shining so bright it might blind you (especially the space Kaitlyn Lindley occupied). But, of course, Avery and Emily's old friends are my old friends. We have so many of the same people. We have the same music and the same secrets and so many things to discuss. I have half of a life here.

The thing that cannot, by any means, be counted out is that I have SO MANY GLAMOROUS, WONDERFUL NEW FRIENDS. They live in apartments we have named. I live in an apartment/dorm I have named. I can see the Empire State Building out the window of said apartment/dorm. I have friends who run the fashion world and friends who will someday fund the theatre world and friends who take beautiful pictures and friends who talk me into sleeping on the sidewalk outside of the Rockefeller Center to see SNL and friends who take the train to church with me and friends who watch American Horror Story with me every Wednesday and feed me and let me take over their space.

I have a whole new set of rules. Elevator etiquette is a big thing in my life. Trains and parks and taxis and tip money and organic food and libraries and quiet hours and politics and snow days and avenue blocks dictate my life. I understand these things. It is my world. In many ways, I have a very lovely, very complete life in New York, but it is not 100% complete because there are still pieces of my soul in the corners of Kaitlyn Lindley's kitchen and Matt Colemere's couch and Katie Thueson's backyard and on Avery Taylor's dog and in the upstairs bedroom of Emily Henson's old house and Morgan Nelson's basement and the list goes on and on. In a devastating way, I only have a half-life in New York, too.

The worst part is that, especially when I am here, in Utah, that sense of having only a half-life feels glaringly evident, and, late at night, when I can't sleep, it leaves me feeling like a little bit of a half-person.

While we're here, I should say also that my family is very separate from this half-life phenomena. They have been the most beautiful thing and remain mostly unchanged, or at least unchanged enough between my twice-daily phone calls that I feel complete and full and whole with them. In fact, I have had many moments since I have been home and with my family when I have sort of taken a step back and looked at them and thought, "Here, I am content."

Point is, I was a little bit of a mess with the whole, "I am a half-person living two totally separate if equally beautiful lives and it's very much to handle, I am only a child." But, alas, I am no longer a child. As with most things, I started to freak out to Avery so much, and she reminded me of something interesting that I have been thinking about a lot lately, which is this:

There is this sort of feminist theory that says that, in a marriage, it isn't two halves equalling a whole, but rather two wholes coming together. It basically says that you aren't completed by another person, but instead you are already a complete being, as is your partner. When I discussed this idea with my parents, they even took it further to say that it's not 1/2 + 1/2 = 1, but it's also not 1 + 1 = 2, but rather 1 + 1 = 3. A good marriage, they told me, isn't about completion of one another or compromising, but rather about creating something new and better and beautiful. Marriage, instead of being two half things completing each other, should be two whole things creating something beautiful and making each other better.

In reference to my life, Avery basically told me that my problem was that I was looking at my life, and then to a greater extent my whole being, as a half-thing, when in fact, I am a whole thing. I am complete being, and the marriage of the pieces of my life is a little difficult sometimes because I was forcing them to complete each other instead of saying, "You are 100% of me and my life, and you are also 100% of me and my life." Because they are. Because Utah, in all its glory, is 100% of me, and New York, in all its wonder, is also 100% of me.

And those are my honest thoughts on having two homes.

On love/more on being a complete being all by yourself:

After this blog post (the one with the set of poems), I started fielding a lot of questions. Let me answer all of them here: Yes, the centerpiece love poem is definitely, to an extent, about a real, specific person. Yes, some of you probably know him. Yes, he has probably read the poem, and if he has, he definitely knows it is about him. Yes, this is okay with me. No, I will not tell you who it is. No, it is not completely true. No, he is not my boyfriend. No, he did not propose to me.

The poetry series was more of a way of exploring my ideas about myself and my future, and to use a love poem (which was, in many ways, a work of fiction) as a centerpiece for that seemed like a good way to hew together the ideas I was working with.

And although no one actually asked, let me tell you that, yes, I got 100.8% as a final grade in the creative writing class for which that poetry set was written.

But enough about that. What I really want to get at is this: No matter where you are in your life, like, mentally or geographically or whatever, love is hard.

There have been four times in my life when I have said that I was in love and truly believed it. Considering the fact that I am only 18 years old, this feels like a lot of times. The reason I tell you that, though, is to admit that, looking back, I can only stand by 1.5/4 of those times, and even then, objectively, I can't really even stand by 1/4 of them, so I think maybe the more appropriate ratio might just be .5/3. I am not a numbers person by any means, but this is an interesting thing to consider.

On a less sentimental note, I had a conversation with one of my favorite friends (her name is Hayley Walker) about soul mates the other day. To some degree, what she and I talked about is very similar to the idea that, in a good marriage, 1 + 1 = 3, but we also sort of talked about fate and if soul mates exist and here's what we came down to:

As idealistic and wonderful as it sounds, fate and soul mates do not exist. A fundamental belief of Mormonism, which both of us hold true, is that in this life, we have complete agency of choice. The idea that you have a soul mate not only takes away from the fact that you are complete soul all on your own (and you most definitely are) but it also takes away from your agency to choose. While there is for each of us "the one" in the sense that somewhere out there, the person you or I or Hayley or anybody will marry -- "the one" -- exists, but not as some predetermined, fate-driven being. Soul mates -- even beyond marriage, in friendships and families and business relationships -- basically come down to the fact that there people you will come across in this life who you kind of turn into your soul mate. This means that you could marry any number of people and be happy. This means you could do any number of things with your life and be happy. This means you are already a complete being, and this is great news.

While on the topic of love and as a bit of a side note, I would like to make a sort of bold move and say this: I am 100% for marriage equality. This is something I am sure many of you know about me and have known for a very long time, but I have never come out and said it on the interwebs. I wanted to bring this up because this blog post is long and honest and might even be long enough that anyone who would be mad at me for saying this isn't even reading this part, but also because it is something that is important to me. Quite frankly, most of my dearest friends are homosexual. To deny them the right to obtain one of the most basic of human desires, a marriage with someone they love, seems wrong. While I understand that there is a religious basis of this argument for many people I know here in Utah, and I can certainly (to an extent) respect that opinion, especially because includes to an extent my own beliefs and upbringing, I would just like to politely point out that this is a country founded on equality, and the separation of church and state also stands as an important pillar of the freedoms which make America great.

Because this section of this very long and messy blog post that you probably aren't actually reading has started to sound a little too metaphysical and poetic (with the 1 + 1 = 3 thing), let me rope us back down to earth to admit that this is all easier said than done. I know because my heart gets walked all over pretty often. Yeah, a lot of that is my fault. I fall for boys easily. I trust easily. My love language is physical touch. I tell you this because if nothing else, I know that love ["love"] (remember my .5/3 ratio?) is blind and usually ends badly. There is nothing you can do about it, so don't try to fight it. This knowledge will not, as it has not with me, save you from any pain. I am learning to be okay with this.

I will say this: Though I do not believe in love at first sight or soul mates or fate or any of that, as much as I so terribly want to, I do believe that God or the universe or whatever it is you believe controls all of this puts certain important people in your life. And I believe you can know from the moment you first see them that they will be important to you. In fact, one day, about a year ago, a certain red-headed boy walked into a library I was in. I saw him walk in and I said to the girl next to me (a girl, by the way, who is now studying at Harvard), "Who is that boy? I love him." And then I did not see him or even remember him for another 8 months, and now, a year later, he's one of my best friends in the entire world. And I still love him, so I guess I can't explain everything.

On social media/final thoughts/if you want to skim this blog post, this is the part you should really read:

I said to my mom just the other night, and I've even said it before on this blog back on a post where I reminisced about life a lot, that the whole point of social media is to make people think your life is awesome. "But everyone on twitter talks about how much their life sucks!" you cry. Yes, a lot of people on twitter talk about how their life sucks. I see 50 tweets a day that say something like, "You walked into my life and then walked out without telling me and left me to whither away without you." (For those of you not familiar with twitter, I am not exaggerating even a little bit.) Even tweets like these are some cry for attention and love and acceptance. You start to think that their life is more interesting than yours. We are the millennial generation. Welcome. What I'm getting at is that social media, including, if not especially my own use of social media, is to make people think your life is great and interesting and worthy of some prize and then because of that insane little facade we've all built, we all get very sad and worked up about how our lives are not as interesting or wonderful or worthy as everyone else's. I am acutely aware of this fact, and I start to feel upset about how my life is less awesome or interesting or noteworthy or pretty as anyone else's all the time.

I say this because while this has been a very, very, very selfish blog post (for which I am still not sorry) and it has been almost entirely for me, this is a part for you, because I love you.

I want you to know that my life is wonderful and full of cute boys and adventures and nice clothes and a truly incredible family and New York City and travel and wonder and fun, and while those things are certainly real things to me, those are the only parts of my life that you see on social media. Those are the only parts of my life that I put out there for the masses to view. I want you to know that the person on social media is the same person who cries because her life (and by her life I mean my life) feels stretched out and imbalanced sometimes and has a hard time going out sometimes and misses high school some days and misses coming home to her mom always and aches for the city when she's away from it and worries about grad school all the time and wonders if anyone will ever want to marry her sometimes. I want you to know this because I know I am not the only one who doesn't let you see those things. I want you to know this not because I want us to start using social media as a place to post videos of ourselves crying in bed at night, because that's just disgusting and no one wants to see that, but simply because I'm trying to rethink the way I view social media, because it's definitely not always proactive to my happiness and maybe you need to rethink the way you start to feel when you're stalking some girl on instagram. "Comparison is the thief of joy." 

I just want you to know that we're all the same at the end of the day. We are have good days and bad days. Your life is just as interesting and noteworthy and pretty and special and unique and prize-winning as mine or anyone else's in the whole world (except Beyoncé -- hers is better and that's just a fact).

So. Let me sum this whole thing up in a few final thoughts:

1.) Thank you for letting me have this blog post. It was good for me. If you read the whole thing, I am simultaneously pleased and flattered and saddened and shocked.

2.) Happiness is not climate-controlled, and it is not lessened by finding joy in many, many places.

3.) You are a complete being. You do not need anyone else to make you such.

4.) Fate isn't real.

5.) You aren't the only thing running this life, and not everything can be explained.

6.) Equality makes America great.

7.) Comparison is the thief of joy.

8.) I love you.

I guess that's sort of it. I guess now's the time when I push "publish" and feel a little more grounded because I have been honest with all of you and, even more importantly, honest with myself.

This has been a very long blog post.

I'm still not sorry for it. I still love all of you.

"Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row." -Catcher in the Rye

Always,

Addy

Writing Poems and Running the World

A thing I need to say is that I had writer's block for, like, a year and a half. Like, if you go back through old blog there are just months and months of me writing about how I couldn't write and I sometimes wanted to rip my hair out over it and sometimes I just wanted to sob and sob and sob forever.

So then I packed up and moved to New York and I think that that's when this whole headache finally stopped. I owe 50% of my thanks for that to the city and 50% to my creative writing class, which is sort of cheesy, but it's actually the best class that's ever existed and it basically forced me to get rid of writers block and made me write stories and forced me into this new era of poetry and the whole thing makes me feel like hugging everyone in the world and also I am super starving right now but I wanted to come home and write more than I wanted to go get food and that hasn't happened to me in a long time and I feel like kissing strangers and poetry blogging (which I am) and also like listening to Beyonce (which I also am).

Anyway. I have my final portfolio due in creative writing next week and the last thing I am working on for it is a series of poems about a lot of things but there's a little through-line of the shapes of words but mostly how I'm having these crazy epiphanies of being and existence and how I have this life that is so uniquely mine and it's not my parents' or my friends' or anything it's just this life I built that's all my own and the series is about how I'm dealing with that and the people and things inside of it and where I want it to go.

I wrote this piece of the series today. I'm sort of fascinated with the first drafts of my poems because they are some of the only places where I can look at them later and see my actual mind working because I don't really think when I write (it just happens) and I draw a lot of arrows and cross things out and it's like seeing my own brain, like, set down on the table. It looked like this at first:

And now it looks like this:

I'm just writing poetry about how fascinated I am with life because I'm at this point in my existence where I have always been happy, but I don't know if I have ever been as happy as I am right now at any other stage of my life and that's probably the best feeling in the world.

Happy Thursday.

"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd." -Flannery O'Connor

Over and out,

Addy

Colonialism/Cronuts: A Two Month Update

Full disclosure: I should be writing a paper about The Tempest and Montaigne's "On Cannibals" and then discussing what they say about colonialism but I can't focus, which might have something to do with the British boy I just saw in the elevator or fact that tomorrow is two months that I've been here. In New York, I mean. In some ways, two months sounds like infinity and there's no way I've been here that long, but in most ways I feel like I've been here my entire life and two months sounds like nothing.

Here. Have some pictures about this month (but prepare yourself because it's basically just selfies and puppies):

This woman on the train is me in 40ish years.

Someone on 12 burnt popcorn at 12 am and we all had to evacuate and the firetrucks came and Hayden is just a real fun time.

We went to the opera and then got pizza because we know how to do college. 

Playbills from my favorite day where I saw two shows in one day and it was the best, especially because Alex and Ernest and Michael surprised me with Big Fish and we all sobbed together.

 Favorite picture ever taken -- selfie on Madi's birthday fisheye during our birthday celebration for her.

 Selfie.

My other favorite picture ever with my favorite human Michael who Ernest knows from home who came to visit us and I immediately made him be my best friend of ever.

Selfie.

Seen on the way home from French class in Washington Square Park. (The happiness circle goes multi-lingual!)

 I leave my roommates alone for an hour and a half and this happens outside our door.

One of the best shows I've ever seen. (Plus my nails look great in this picture.)

Selfie -- WITH ZACHARY QUINTO.

Other favorite picture ever because we got yelled at by the security guard right as it was taken because the bench was closed (??).

MILEY CYRUS ON THE TODAY SHOW. YES.

And then my very best childhood friend came to visit me (so, selfie, obviously).

And we did Top of the Rock.

And ate Shake Shack.

And went to the 9/11 Memorial (which is one of my favorite places in the city).

And obsessed over a teeny police cart (not pictured: the taxi on fire).

And obsessed over Matilda.

And ate at my favorite restaurant.

And... selfie.

And accidentally took an express train to Harlem (my fault (not pictured: the express train we also accidentally took to Brooklyn (my fault also))).

And we did eventually make it to Central Park.

Where we took some more selfies.

And got this snapchat from my dad.

And went to the Statue of Liberty.

And went to the sketchiest/best restaurant in the world down in Chinatown...

...with some of my favorite humans. 

And got up at 5:30 am for cronuts.

And it was so worth it.

 And then Harli went home and Anis Mojgani performed, so I went, obviously, and I cried, obviously.

And then my dad went to Thailand without mentioning it to me and that is hilarious and weird.

And I have a birthmark-like scar from that time I fell while running and scraped up my whole body and a homeless man rubbed Neosporin on my shoulder and it is my favorite scar.

And then my mom came to visit (so we took some selfies).

And went for a waterfront run.

And went shopping.

Outfit-I-Was-Proud-Of Selfie.

And saw Pippin, because as you know, it is my favorite.

And went to the greenmarket in Union Square.

And I took some dog pictures because I have been obsessed with dogs lately and I'm convinced Alex and I need to buy a puppy.

And did some laundry at Tian Tian which was the best ever.

And took some selfies on the train.

And I screamed over more dogs.

That feels like a sort of rushed, odd photo tour of this most recent month of my life. Mostly, I just feel like I just want to say that I'm happy. New York makes me calm in an insane way (except for when I get stuck walking behind slow people and start to hyperventilate). Alex has basically filled all the roles as my family -- he manages to be my mother, brother, husband, and son all at the same time, and I would probably actually be dead without him (especially considering how many times he has stopped me from crossing the street and getting hit). Alys is the best roommate I could ever ask for because she makes me laugh and helps me understand politics and sports and talks about theater with me and cries with me and has the cutest giggle and is actually the best, nicest, loveliest person alive. Abby and Luca and Tris and Adam are the actual best, most talented humans, and I die over the fact that I know them. Having Harli here one weekend and my mom here the next was the absolute best. It was so good to have a little taste of home. Avery and Tanner keep me sane when I need a little Utah in my life, but I wish they'd just move out here already and live with me and Alex and Alys and our dog or something.

But seriously. I am happier than I've ever been. And that's something that's hard for me to describe in words and also hard to explain on the internet because it feels very personal and complicated, but also it's not, really. I wake up every day and I look out the window at the Empire State and I like mornings here because I'm here and I like nights here because I'm here and I have all these beautiful, talented people in my life who understand what I meant my entire life when I said that I just had to get here, just had to go to NYU, just had to follow my heart, as cliche as it is, and I just... I just feel so happy. My life is here. And it always was, I guess.

"When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about." -Haruki Murakami

Yours forever,

Addy Sue