Somehow, I'm in New York

I am writing this from my new studio apartment in New York City.

Not my moldy apartment in Los Angeles that was making me sick.

I am writing as an employed person, a person who has a job again, my dream job.

The job I am meant to do.

The last time I was here, I was visiting a man. A man who didn’t see me.

I am closer to me now.

My sister is safe.

My dog is safe. (She’s coming in less than two weeks!)

I am safe.

I have always wanted to live in New York. I wanted a writers’ room to bring me here, a temporary job, so I wouldn’t have to move my sister, too.

It’s the type of dream that only a few people in my life knew about. It felt too big, too far away, too private, to share.

And now, it’s real.

It’s really real.

Somehow, I am in New York.

Everything has changed.

Last night as I was walking home, an older woman with a cane stopped me.

“That is a beautiful bag, she said. “Where did you get it?”

“Mexico City,” I replied.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” she laughed. “I’m not going there!”

The bag isn’t trendy. It’s not cool or fancy or even practical. It’s red with colorful birds.

“It makes me happy!” I told her.

“I can see why,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

I remember the street corner I bought it on, the woman who sold it to me, who fashioned a little key chain on it, for free.

It reminds me of the bag I carried through Barcelona as a twenty-something. A twenty-something who had no business being in Barcelona. No money to be in Barcelona. And yet, I was.

And here I am now, in New York.

Somehow, I am here. Exactly where I am meant to be.