The potential for love

It only just recently occurred to me that I will be spending very little time in Brooklyn over the foreseeable future. The realization is settling in my bones like delayed calcification: a sort of inverse inertia that pulls in both directions. I want to stay and I want to go.

I have been here before. So many times, it makes me want to cry. My 20s and 30s were spent moving: apartments, countries, continents, over and over again. I had forgotten what it felt like. It turns out intercontinental relocation, even temporary, is like riding a bicycle: once you start the first movement, the next one is automatic, inexorable. I can’t decide if that’s comforting or really really not.

For me, it feels like a quivering. Anticipation and dread rolled into one. The excitement of a new and unknown place. The weight of the packing and planning and letting go. And while packing and planning are logistically annoying, letting go is what I truly struggle with. If you don’t know me very well, let’s just say I’m a typical Taurus: astrologically prone to holding on for slightly too long.

Of course, I am not planning to leave for good — the days of leaving and not knowing if I will ever come back to a place are gone. Brooklyn has been my home for longer than any other place, and I have grown attached to this kind of belonging.

But from the perch of knowing that all we have is the present, even a day is a long time. I am overwhelmed with questions that feel equal parts futile and essential: who to hug one last time before I go, who to call, who to inform. The futility wins out. After all, New York being New York, I don’t see most people much more than once every 6 months, even friends I would consider beloved and close.

So as I breathe this morning, I hold onto this moment as true, and the potential for love it contains as real.