New York

         I miss New York. I miss East Village Books and Dumpling Man. Moroccan cuisine, Japanese junk food stores, MOMA. Bubble tea and disease-carrying red-eared sliders. That's what I want right now. Some place with the potential to feel like home, and only the potential. Somewhere that could be familiar, but isn't stifling. Everything now feels the same, routine, purposeless. Stagnant. Even the things that thrill me, fill me with a sense of dread, are part of the routine, and it seems questionable whether they'll hold any true bearing or significance in my life. I want to go away, but I know I'll regret leaving in a hurry, so I try to hold on for as long as possible.
         Still, watching people rush along the streets of New York, I can't help but feel a sort of nostalgia. A sort of nostalgia for the future, if that makes any sense. I can't help but wonder if they want to go back, back to their younger years, when there was less responsibility and more promise. So I watch them rush about their busy lives, pitying them for all their lost youth, their days gone by, and wishing more than anything that I could be in their place. Basically, what this evolves into is a sort of guilt. Guilt for not appreciating everything others have done to ensure my happiness, guilt for feeling unwanted pity for total strangers, and worst of all, guilt for not enjoying these years the way I feel I should be doing, despite the efforts of everyone trying to make my life better than theirs. And I'm so unappreciative of their efforts, in fact, that sometimes I wouldn't mind skipping out on these years altogether.
         So I guess what all this amounts to is not so much a sense of nostalgia for the future, but a nostalgia for lost youth. Unwanted at the time, but once it's gone, it's gone forever. So I know in my head that I want to stay young, that life's better where I am, but somehow everything else in me wants to be somewhere else, somewhere with less guarantees, but more purpose. Because what I'm doing now isn't really living. I'm just waiting, too afraid of letting go and taking risks, all the while cursing my cowardice.