I spent Sunday alone in Fort Tryon Park and I want to tell you it wasn't sad, because it genuinely wasn't.
I took the A all the way up to 190th Street, which feels like leaving the city without leaving the city. You step out of the elevator — yes, an elevator, this station is deep — and suddenly there are trees that have clearly been here longer than the idea of New York.
For years I thought being alone on a weekend meant something had gone wrong. In Ahmedabad you're never alone. There's always a cousin, an aunty, a neighbor who appears with mithai and opinions. I came here partly to be alone and then spent two years terrified of it.
But Sunday alone in Fort Tryon Park felt like a reunion with someone I'd been avoiding. Me.
I sat on a bench overlooking the Hudson with a samosa from a place near the station gone slightly cold in my bag, and I watched the Palisades go rusty on the Jersey side. An old couple walked past speaking Russian. A kid lost his balloon and didn't cry, just watched it go, which honestly felt like a whole philosophy.
I didn't scroll. I didn't text anyone that I was there. I just existed, which is harder than it sounds.
There's a Gulzar line I think about, something about how the heart is a strange locality, full of empty houses. A Sunday alone in Fort Tryon Park filled a few of those houses back up. Not with people. With me.
I wandered up to the Cloisters garden even though I didn't go inside. The herbs were still green. Someone was sketching. I thought about how I used to need a witness for everything to feel real, and how lately I don't.
I took the A back down as the light went amber, and I wasn't lonely once. I was just a woman who'd had a lovely day with herself, which took me 24 years to learn how to do.
Go somewhere alone this week. See who shows up.
Love,