Well it finally happened. I started to wonder if I had made a mistake moving away from everyone I knew and loved, and the feeling of loneliness sunk in hard during Memorial Day weekend. It wasn’t just a bored loneliness either. No, it was that empty, sinking feeling that washes over you like a crashing wave while the undertow pulls at your feet. It hit me when I woke up on Saturday morning. I had no job to go to. My roommates were gone for a week. I had no errands to run. No meetings to attend. No fires to put out. No people to take care of. I had only the morning news, a cup of coffee, and absolutely no one and nothing in need of me or my attention.
I wasn’t even sure what I was feeling that day, so I didn’t know how to stop it, and it only grew until Monday morning. It was Memorial Day and I wanted to head into the city to check out Battery Park’s Memorial Day remembrance ceremony and the end of Fleet Week. After that I wandered into FiDi (the financial district – wall st, federal hall, etc) and walked into a chaotic crowd of people surrounding The Charging Bull. As I walked around the crowd I seemingly locked eyes with The Fearless Girl and holy Hell can she give a cold dead stare. Get it? Because she’s a statue? Ok, moving along with it then.
As fast as the feeling had hit me on Saturday, my loneliness escaped me in that instant. I realized that over the years I had been basing my worth on how needed I was. Is it wrong to want to feel needed? No way, but I don’t want to consider my worth based on anything or anyone other than myself. Standing there, taking a selfie with a statue, it hit me: maybe that’s what this is all about for me – removing what everyone else needs from me, then figuring out and truly giving myself what I need. Living an authentic life built entirely around what makes me happy. Doing things that give me purpose and meaning.
So I embraced it and I’m living that truth – it’s not emptiness or loneliness, it’s fearless.
It’s the first kiss.
It’s flawless,really something.
It’s fearless.
And I don’t know how it gets better than this.