Absence

I have become slightly overwhelmed in the last 24 hours by how much I miss my friends, New York, and Playwrights. I almost cannot comprehend it. It really really hit me yesterday what a profound absence there is in my life right now.

As I have probably said, perhaps numerous times, to anyone who is likely to be reading this, I am terrible at saying goodbye and leaving. I always have been. From the time I was little and we would go visit my grandparents, I would cry - hysterically - every time we left, probably up until I was in junior high. Granted, my grandparents didn't live ten minutes away; they live 100's of miles away and we only saw them a few times a year, but still, my brother never cried, and I don't think it's particularly normal for a ten-year-old to cry when her grandma leaves after visiting for a week. Well, as the years have gone by, I've gotten better at leaving, and certainly at not crying (Playwrights strongly excepted). Still, I feel a pang any time I leave a place I'm attached to when I know I won't be back for a while, including my house even when I'm on my way back to New York.

Leaving this year was harder than ever, because I've formed more friendships and more meaningful relationships than I've probably ever had in my life. And, simultaneously, I have continuously fewer and fewer friends back home as people move, or stay at school or fall out of touch. My last six days in New York I hardly slept at all because I was staying out every night spending as much time with friends as possible. I didn't want to sleep through anything when I knew I could sleep later in the week (and then I did sleep, more in the last two weeks than pretty much ever in my life). I actually only felt a little sad as we drove out of Chinatown on that Tuesday night after I saw Medea. Most of the sadness had come in waves over the last couple weeks, as I sat in final classes and appreciated the conversations I had there that just didn't seem to happen elsewhere, or the spontaneous genius/hilarious things that Playwrights people say when you least expect it. Though you should always expect it.

The Thursday night before I left, after the opening of Gemma's show and after I got food with my mom and grandma, I spontaneously decided to go to a housewarming party of sorts at my friends' apartment on the Lower East Side. After almost getting severely lost in Chinatown (I nearly ended up on the Manhattan Bridge), I arrived, sometime around 12:30 I think. I had a great, chill time with a bunch of dear friends and could not have been happier to be on a bed squashed between the two residents of the apartment. Much merriness ensued until around 2 or so when a "vaguely hispanic" (Will's words, not mine) woman came and was incredibly antagonistic towards Will who handled it really well before shutting the door in her face and then worrying that the police were coming. Anyway, just before this, I had settled into a conversation with Matt, a yellow group kid and really the only one I didn't know very well, which was the instigation of our conversation. We decided to keep talking and ventured out to the mysterious LES subway in the middle of the night, slightly buzzed and incredibly sleep deprived, and made it back to his dorm where we walked in on his roommate and some girl. So we went to the on campus Starbucks; bless it for being open 24 hours during finals time. Then we sat, and talked, for another four-plus hours until it was fully light out. We talked about school, New York, Playwrights, coffee, and Harry Potter. And finally, when we decided we should probably go to bed since people were getting up, I walked him back to his dorm on the west side of the Park and then hopped a subway and a bus home to settle into bed around 7:30 for about two hours sleep.

The point of this story is simply that these amazing things happen with Playwrights kids, because we just get it. There's something about us that seems to allow most of us to connect to each other really quickly and deeply. Matt and I keep in touch constantly now (and bond over severe Starbucks deprivation, since we actually have to pay for it back home). The majority of Playwrights people have got this thing - I don't think you can articulate what exactly it is; it's kind of magic in that way; but it's something that gives us a spark. Or rather, we had some spark that brought us to this place where crazy, magical things happen and art is born. And I have seen that birthing a theatre piece can create as strong a bond as anything else. I have never had a bond with anyone like I have with my best friend, and I wouldn't trade that for anything at all in the world. When I don't know or understand anything else, and when I hate pretty much everything (which is rare, nowadays, but still.) I know that she loves me and that she and I will truly always be there for each other, and that means the world to me. Truly.

On a separate but related note, there shall soon be a blog post in which I argue with myself about whether it is noble or foolish to continue to love someone who does not return the blessing.