An Anniversary Worth Celebrating

I opened my eyes, blinking out the sunlight flooding through the window. Where was I?

I glanced down my body, still fully clothed in last night's outfit, shoes included. When I moved, plastic crunched beneath me. A mattress, still it its wrapping, in a vacant room. My suitcase lay open on the floor next to me. I was definitely still drunk, if not just badly hungover. Memories started to dawn on me from the night before, when immediately I figured it out...

I was in New York!

I'd left Charlotte yesterday! The movers wouldn't be here until Tuesday. I'd bought the bed, and taken all five of my new roommates to my new coworker's bar in a getting-to-know-you effort.

I reached out for my cell phone, patting the bed around my legs, but no phone. I sat up, and met with a painful rushing in my head. My phone wasn't on the floor either. I stumbled over to my suitcase and tore through it, hoping in my drunken stupor I'd simply tossed it somewhere. No phone.

I began to realize that after the coat-check on our way out of the bar, I didn't remember much at all. How had we gotten home? It didn't seem as complicated as getting there. We'd taken a subway and a bus and then walked for what seemed like forever. No. There was no way I'd done that drunk. I left with Nan, I think. One of the two girls. The guys had separated earlier, and perhaps Baller stayed behind? Was there a cab?

More important was my presently missing cell phone. I was supposed to be at Penn Station at eleven to pick up DB, my then "bf" so to speak, who was coming in from Philadelphia to spend the weekend with me. I had no idea what time it was...as my phone was also my only clock. I checked my coat pockets, the floor, the windowsill...again, there wasn't much going on in here. It was gone. I started to panic. How would I find him in the train station?! We would be lost from each other and he would have to get back on a train and go home. I didn't know his number, because I don't know anyone's numbers anymore. A product of the cell-phones themselves. I was becomming hysterical. There had to be a clock in this apartment somewhere. I went into the living room, which was completely bare, minus a television and two lawn chairs. I took the heels off, and padded down the hallway into the kitchen. The microwave said 930. Thank God. I hadn't already missed him.

I showered, changed and navigated my way to Penn Station. It hadn't donned on me for some reason that I knew what time his train was coming in and from where... so I went to the gate and waited. When he came up the stairs, I'd never been so happy to see anyone in my life. As he hugged me, I rattled on about the missing phone, the crazy night, the strange roommates. He gave me his phone to call my parents and assured me I'd be ok. My mother was less than pleased with the story of my trials.

"You can't just get drunk and galavant around the city, Jennifer," she huffed. "You're going to get raped and killed if you don't start paying attention. You're lucky your cell phone is all that you lost." I had this coming. I gave her DB's number and told her he'd be here for the next two days. She could call him if she needed me, and I'd get a new phone in the morning. We bought coffees and got onto the subway.

How could I have been so careless? As the events of the night unfolded for me (through stories from the roommates and my own sobering memories) I realized I'd puked in a cab and kissed my coworker in the coat check at the bar. My phone was probably one of those two places. We spent the day trying to find him, to see if he'd found the phone. Eventually, that afternoon, the cab driver showed up at the bar with the phone, claiming that I owed him $100 on account of the puke. The coworker agreed, and told him to bring the phone inside. Apparently then, he threw $20 at the extortionist and threw him out the door. A nice gesture for someone I'd yet to spend a single day of work with.

That night, DB and I sat at dinner, and laughed about the ordeal.

"You'll be OK," he said. "You're going to get settled, and you'll learn how to be more careful." I wasn't as sure, but I smiled at his confidence in me. I realized, for the first time, that I had no idea what I was doing. The decisions leading up to the move had all happened so quickly, that I had no time at all to consider them. I was simply coming here. And so I came. And in a matter of 12hours I was already screwing it up. And then, also for the first time, I began to feel afraid.

That day was one year ago, now. This morning I woke up in the same room, now painted, decorated and furnished. So much has happened since that first day. So much has changed.

I never imagined that I'd last a year here...in this apartment, in this job. This anniversary marks the longest relationship I've ever had. The most serious commitments I've ever maintained. I've stayed in a city, in a lease, and in this office for an entire year. And for the first time in a very long time, I'm proud of myself. Picking up and moving is not the scary, impressive thing. It's so automatic, so based on necessity and what has to get done, that you don't have time to be afraid of it. There isn't an opportunity to examine what exactly it is that you're doing.

But living with that decision, through the bad times, and the scary fucked up things that can happen to you as a result of it... that's what is impressive. Because then, during the good times, of which there have been MANY for me this year, you get to smile to yourself. You get to sit back and realize that your life is better because you made it that way. Because of your choices, your life is exactly how you want it to be.

And that, is something worth celebrating.