Manhattan or Manhattan Beach?
Navigating dead ends and coastlines
Last week, I was running along the Pacific Ocean in California. Manhattan Beach to be specific. Mid-morning on a Monday with clear blue skies, listening to a new playlist I put together titled “Fresh Air.” It was a moment of pure running euphoria. But I can’t lie — I booked the trip across the country as a way to escape my current mental state. Feeling a little lost and a little stuck, I thought California might give me a fresh outlook. And in the farthest place from New York I can get to on short notice, my spirits were beginning to lift. I was feeling refreshed, maybe even hopeful that I might get out of the funk that had plagued my days in February and March.
As I was making strides in my third mile, my eyes focused on a man (probably about 60 years old) walking towards me. His shirt caught my eye, and while 2,984 miles from home, I was stunned to read “BLOCK ISLAND” across his chest. I grew up spending my summers there — a small island off the coast of Rhode Island. Not the most well-known place to say the least, it’s more of a hidden gem.
So I yelled out to the guy, “Block Island! I’m from Rhode Island.” And he yelled back, “Right on!” raising his fist in the air.
And that was it. I kept running, but now with a reinvigorated sense of how small the world really is. I took a red-eye back to New York that night.
Rhode Island is only three hours by train from New York City, but mysteriously, somewhere within those three hours you can forget all your problems. And when reunited with the air, the silence at night, and the beach on a clear day, something shifts inside my brain.
Maybe I don’t forget my problems. But it makes me remember that the things I care about in New York don’t really matter as much as I think they do.
It’s a change in perspective. An updated vantage point. In a lot of ways, it feels like a return to real life. As if my entire life in the city is a vivid dream that I wake up from every once in a while. And now a strong iced coffee and a Jeep on route to the beach is all I need to have a good day. Where the biggest decision is the time I’ll wake up to have coffee with my dad, and which route I’ll choose that day for my run.
I like to use my three hour Amtrak ride as a way to strip away the hardened layers that New York requires and return to form as a true Rhode Islander.
Over the course of a week and a half, I spent five days in California, two days in New York, and four days in Rhode Island.
While still sleep deprived from my red-eye (I don’t sleep on planes), I slept 11 hours on my first night in RI. I dreamt that I ran into my old friends and had to explain to them why we aren’t friends anymore. That’s another thing about Rhode Island. It opens old wounds.
Sometimes home is a reminder of the things I left behind when I moved almost eight years ago. Many things brushed aside coming back to haunt me. But there’s only so long you can blame the past for your present problems. You can either be a victim of your own circumstances or you can decide to evolve and enjoy your own life.
Up until recently, I liked to pretend that my life pre-2017 did not exist. I wiped the slate clean and even started to forget moments in my life that should be easily recalled. But this year I decided I should reconcile with the past. You can’t actually erase 18 years of your life. You can push it into the back corner of your mind, you can hide it under things, but it will develop a stench eventually, and you will have to unearth the things you tried to eradicate.
After a few weeks of traveling, I’m back in New York and settling into a normal routine again. The dust is settling on my trips and I’m reevaluating my headspace yet again.
In some ways, I feel like I am hitting a wall. Not just one wall — walls from all sides. Each wall is a place I’ve been striving for success (and mostly succeeding). But for the first time in a while, it feels like I’m hitting a bunch of dead-ends. In short, I feel pissed off. And I’ve been feeling this way for a few months. It just continues to manifest in new ways. For a visual reference, I feel like a plant that has out-grown its pot.
It’s a little strange because I got everything I wanted I guess. Maybe I’m in a prison of comfort.
It’s my own responsibility to replant myself somewhere new, with new space and new opportunity to grow. I can stay stagnant and confined in a place of complacency. Or I can move.
The question is, where do I go?
Running is a good resource in these moments. There’s something about running that makes me feel like I am doing something with my life. Like I am moving forward in some capacity.
For a while I was struggling to hear the voice inside of myself. I felt like it was drowned out by the world around me. Recently on a Saturday afternoon, I laid down in my bed, put on my noise canceling headphones, and closed my eyes. Alone in my own studio apartment, I needed a little solitude. I think I might be overstimulated.
So I was thinking, maybe if I lay in my bed for a little while. Or in the sun. Maybe if I let the warmth seep into my skin, and I give my brain a moment to empty itself. Maybe if I take breath deep enough to reach the depths of my lungs. If I give myself a break from everything.
Maybe then my brain will come up with an original thought.
What I’m looking for is a feeling pulling me in a direction. Any direction. Rather than indecision and going in circles. I would perhaps like to be overcome with some emotion — something that pushes a button in my brain that creates some sort of creative epiphany or realization.
Maybe if I stared up at the sky for a while and got lost in the never ending vastness.
Lately I’ve been asking myself “is this what I really want? Or is this what people are telling me I want?” And let me tell you, it’s becoming harder to discern. What if I knew what I really wanted? Then I could chase it!
At the moment, I think I would enjoy diving into a pool and sinking down below the surface for a minute. Holding my breath and letting the water fill my ears and surround me. No sound — a quiet expanse where my thoughts are allowed space. If I could quiet my mind… could I hear the small, but true voice deep inside myself?Instead of being bombarded with everything all at once.
Maybe I should take a long shower and focus on the feeling of water on my skin. Sometimes I wish I had a radio that would choose one song for me, like it used to in my car from 7 years ago.
So, I ask myself, “What do you want?” And I patiently wait for a reply.