On Thursday I took myself on a date. Deliberately. The F train to York St, a walk down to Brooklyn Bridge Park, and a spot on the grass with the Manhattan skyline going gold across the water.
I used to think doing things alone was a failure state. Like if you couldn't find someone to come with you, you'd been caught out.
Back home you're rarely alone. Someone is always coming, someone is always in the next room, my nani used to appear in the kitchen like she teleported. Aloneness had to be manufactured. Here it's the default setting, and it took me two years to stop reading it as rejection.
So at Brooklyn Bridge Park I sat with a samosa from a street cart and an iced coffee sweating in the July heat, and I watched couples take the same skyline photo forty times.
And I felt it. Not lonely. Alone. There's a difference I couldn't articulate until Thursday.
Lonely is when your own company feels like a punishment. Alone is when your own company feels like enough. Same grass, same sunset, completely different weather inside your chest.
A little girl near me was doing cartwheels while her dad clapped. The 4 train rumbled somewhere behind me. The water turned that impossible pink they never get right in the movies, not even Bollywood, and Bollywood tries so hard.
I didn't take a photo. I just watched it happen.
I think part of growing up in this city is learning that nobody is coming to save your Thursday evening. You have to decide it's worth showing up for on your own.
And it was. The skyline didn't care that I came solo. It shone anyway.
I'm learning to be my own good company. Slowly. Pink sky by pink sky.
Love,