Certainly Uncertain

I can’t help but think of the train I missed back in August 2008. Like a projector repeating the same sequence of a black and white film, my mind is still standing on West 116th and Broadway with my hands holding on to pieces of paper with information for apartments and potential living arrangements. There I stare at the front gates of Columbia University, my head starts to set sail thinking of the new life about to manifest. I smile and begin to walk down the sidewalk towards 115th street.

Twenty months later, those wide eyes that once had their sites set for exploring the concrete jungle have nearly extinguished. Plans to move up to New York after my DC excursions never materialized and the one way plane ticket to the East, never lived up to it’s conceptual romantic inspiration. Rather, I placed my New York life on hold because of a call; a meeting I was promised that never occurred. I entrusted my future in the hands of a stranger who came knocking on a door that didn’t have a doorframe, hinges or walls to support it. Maybe I should’ve known better? After all, this wasn’t the first time I blindly believed promises made to me by a virtual stranger but it was certainly the last.

With mishaps and misadventures of the last year and a half, I watched as all my certainties and concrete beliefs became my uncertainties. I figured that maybe I needed to lose sight of myself in order to get back on track.

Although I haven’t yet reclaimed all the puzzle pieces or started traveling back on the track I was on, I’m establishing new rules for the pieces I choose to be apart of my final picture. As I sift through all my thoughts of uncertainties, I’ve discovered pieces of me that I thought had been sacrificed for good. Fortunately for me, these pieces are just the start I need. To some- less social, to myself-more selective of who I’m more willing to hangout with. To others- more reserved, to myself- less inclined to share my energy with those who could care less about me.