“Well, still, pretty good year.”
Last week I decided to find some of the pianos stationed around New York as a part of the “Play Me, I’m Yours” exhibit. I met Andrea at my last stop: McCarren Park. Playing the piano was an old man accompanied by his friend on the drums.
“I really thought there’d be some hipsters rockin’ out on this one,” I commented to Andrea. “Oh, and I thought you’d like to know that I haven’t washed my hair in a week and two days.”
“You are a hipster, you know,” she told me.
“How so?” I asked.
“Uh, what you’re wearing,” (I looked down at my ankle-high pixie boots, jean shorts, and thrift store tank top), “you don’t have a real job, you don’t wash your hair, and you’re sitting in McCarren Park on a weekday afternoon,” she stated.
The day before she had texted me a picture of some birds.
Sometimes birds don’t die, she wrote, Sometimes they chill on stoops like cool awesome people would if they had stoops. I mean me.
Awww, I replied, But also. I wish they were dead. God. I’m cruel. Kill them and send me a photo?
You are the worst person in the world, she texted back.
In other news, on July 14th, 2010, Keep My Words will turn one-year old.
It was around this time two years ago that this guy broke my heart.
And it was about one year ago that I decided to break my own heart before this guy did.
Then this year, only a little over a month ago, another boy broke my heart.
Independence Day is painfully literal for me.
independence – (noun) freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others.
All three of them had new girlfriends less than a month after our dissevering. The latter two ended up with skinnier, more-tattooed, and I’m sure less-cynical versions of me after claiming to be too commitment-phobic to dare call me their “girlfriend.”
Right now, I am uncomfortably content. Part of me thinks I’m better off alone, and part of me thinks I just haven’t met the right person. But it’s fine. I want to meet a good man as much as I want to win the lottery – it could happen, and it could make me gloriously happy, but it’s not necessary. And it certainly doesn’t happen for everyone.
I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. Possibilities are everywhere. With each second, I am changing. Those boys don’t even know me anymore. You don’t even know me anymore, nor do I.
Yet there’s enjoyment in constantly becoming reacquainted with myself.
Andrea’s birds (above), Piano at Thompkins Square Park (below)
Piano at Astor Place (below)
Piano at Greeley Square Park (below)
Piano at McCarren Park (below)
