Is it happening?

It’s my first week in New York City and it’s a perfect tough one. I am not sure whether it is the city being harsher than I have known her or it is me being tough on myself.

I am still in this small apartment in Manhattan, I am wide awake all night trying so hard to make mental voice notes of all the recognizable sounds. If I am torn between listening to me soul-cringing tinnitus if I switch off my hearing aids and listening to the soul crushing shouting of the neighbors and passerby with their voices and breaths stinking with cheap booze and wine if I switch my hearing aids on. To avoid the tough choice I had to make for myself, I chose to listen to something I know I’d miss before Spring arrives. I played some of the voice notes my mom ever had to send. I replayed and replayed her voice, over and over until I almost didn’t know her voice anymore. Perhaps it’s the same theory where if one tells another too many ‘I love you’s, it loses its meanings. Perhaps it’s a neurological procedure beyond my understanding since I have been training as an architect — where a repetitive array of something might strip it of its autonomous aesthetic. Perhaps it’s just also bullshit, because I have told my lover that I love them too many times and it did not change a damn thing until I worked hard to make this change.

I am lying in bed by the window, overlooking Union Square Park that looks ever so quiet on a Monday night. I could still feel the light in me going off as I ruminate voices, sounds and melodies. I am so not ready. At all. I have seen enough people change and I am not ready to change the rest myself. Also a part of me doesn’t want to know what I have been missing; I don’t want to feel stupid for spending quarter of my life missing out on things. What a terrible feeling to live with.