My Year of Magical Thinking

I wanted to walk and lay all at once. Never did I want something as badly as I wanted to

sleep during those long, hot, drawn-out days at the end of June. I also wanted to run and write all

at once. Never did I want something as badly as I wanted the ability to keep a steady hand on the

pages of my journal, as my legs ran so fast on the green grass below me. I would stare at the

ceiling and watch as it turned into an intergalactic universe colored by an off-white shade by

Benjamin Moore, instead of the night sky and the light of the stars. It all seemed a somewhat

therapeutic and foolproof way to pass the time.

It had only been two months since I was home from college, but surely I knew I was

miserable. It wasn’t in my nature to be miserable, or so I thought, so I did what I always do and

proceeded on. The first week of being home was for unpacking. The second was for a week at

the lake to celebrate Memorial Day weekend. The third week was preparation for my birthday

the following week, and the week after that was for my birthday. I had a party in Connecticut

with a few friends from home and more from school, it was nice. The following week was for

relishing in the birthday wishes, cards, and meals with family members I hadn’t seen in some

time. And after that, so on and so forth of plans and more plans. There were bouts of reading and

journaling in between, and sporadic intensive workouts to ensure my face was thin enough to

complement my new haircut. Somewhere, however, through all the order of planning for what I

thought was a foolproof way to keep busy and my mind off of my reality of the suburbs of

New Jersey, I became sad for the first time in a long time, or so I thought.

It wasn’t a new feeling; it felt familiar. It was like the feeling of an ex pulling you back

into bed the morning after you accidentally answered a text from them the night before. The first

time I felt this feeling was just a few months into my third semester of college, the first however,

at my new school. I was beyond words to be there, and the people I met exceeded my

expectations by tenfold. I remember this feeling coming over me while I was walking just

outside of the New York Botanical Gardens. It was a Sunday along with being a cold winter

night and the sun was beginning to set. As I entered the warm building, the piercing cold from

the outside quickly turned to burning heat and I thought to myself, I could’ve walked forever. I

wasn’t exactly sure what I meant by that, and I still fully don’t, but I imagine the sublimity of it

allows room for inference and imagination. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling either and as I

undressed and crawled into bed, I knew whatever it was I was feeling this, “first time” or rather

realizing for this first time, was the opposite of how anyone who knew me would ever describe

me. I felt scared of myself.

Whatever happened following this night, I don’t exactly remember, but that I remember

clearly. I want to say the following day I sat amongst my friends and described this feeling of not

knowing myself. Tell you that they shared my horror and held me as I cried and cried, but that is

dramatic and something that I know did not happen. I may have made a small comment about it

at breakfast to which a response about the dosage of their various prescriptions was given in

reply, but that was all. My eyes may have lit up in envy, but again, I don’t remember. The feeling

went away. Wherever it was or whatever became of it was lost in all the things that had me

writing home with raving reviews of my time at school. The aura of New York was seeping out

of the vents of its buildings and onto its streets. It was in the air I was breathing, trapped in the

cavities of my lungs, and the most powerful drug I’d ever dare to take. I became distracted.

I was by no means from a small town. It is one of the largest in its county and within the

metropolitan area. I went to a high school even larger than my hometown with 1,400 students in

my graduating class, and it pleased me to say I knew every one of them. It came as no shock

when I decided to go to college in New York. My parents, both at different times in their lives,

worked and played there. I visited often, and I lived only 15 minutes outside of Manhattan.

Besides my mother’s worry about me trying fentanyl-laced coke and the tragic news headlines of

another stabbing in the Bronx that my grandmother would send me from time to time, I was so

looking forward to starting school in the city. It wasn’t a place I spent my life longing for like

people I met at school from coastal Connecticut; to me, being from the tristate, this feeling

seemed ridiculous and angsty of them. The city to me was more so of a Camelot that my parents

spent my childhood telling me fairy tales of from their time as a knight and Princess in Arthur’s

realm. A card my dad left for me after they dropped me off said something along these lines and

left clear instruction for me to go find “my own city,” my own version of Camelot, and for one of

the first times in my life, I unknowingly followed the complete and utter direction of my parent's

orders.

Everything was brand new. It amazed me how the city took on a completely new form

once I met it unjaded and unaccompanied. I experienced things I never knew I longed to

experience and only then realized that maybe the kids from coastal Connecticut were privy to

something that I was not. As the seasons changed as I lay on the beaches of Miami over spring

break and wrote off that initial feeling of sadness as seasonal depression, I questioned in the back

of my mind why if that was the case this was the first winter I had ever felt that way. And like

any other thought that whispers from the back of the mind, it was too complex to answer so I got

up and danced to music that was turned up so loud there was no room for any other thoughts

until suddenly, I lay staring at the off white intergalactic ceiling of my bedroom on one of those

long, hot, drawn-out days at the end of June.

As I lay, I think of the fig tree quote from Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar. I think of Joan

Didion and her year of magical thinking and how a writing professor of mine once told me, Joan

told her, “She wrote to know what she was thinking.” But that, in the grand scheme of things

when you are home in the suburbs of New Jersey, is all fluff and fairy tales from a faraway place

in a world like Camelot. I began to hyperventilate at this thought and wonder to myself, “Do we

all just live in stories that were seemingly similar to those I was told by my parents as a child?” I

calmed down and realized at that moment, I was just lying with nothing else to occupy my mind.

A thought like that of the one I had in Miami Beach. A thought that comes up roaring at you

from the back of your mind. I quickly looked for a speaker to play music and dance to, a train to

jump on, a season to hold this feeling of sadness accountable to, or a friend to grab food with. I

was home in the suburbs of New Jersey and this was a thought I would have to sit

with.

“You have changed since being away.” My mother said to me with an indiscernible

half-smile on her face. I had no idea how to interpret what she was saying to me, so I chose to

not interpret it at all. It was a statement said with such indifference it was almost frustrating, so I

sat with it. In doing so, I realized this was a feeling that had been with me all along. “I am more

myself than I have ever been before, but my sadness, I feel, may be coming from no longer

knowing myself. Discovery is frightening even when you know it is the right thing to do.” I

wrote this once I got home after my walk on that cold winter night as the sun began to set. To

think back on it all now, I do not feel ashamed or sad. I realize, even if it took a year of being on

my own to do so, this is, by nature, how I am and how I feel at times. I now think of it all as

quite magical.