Cold Little Boxes

Essay Written 11/7/07


This is not a kind city. Its coldness will swallow you whole and its vastness will overwhelm even the most tireless traveler. There is so much to see, so much to do it’s almost too much. So much so that most days you don’t even want to try.

Most days I just want to curl up in a ball and forget I ever decided to move here. Why did I move here? I didn’t realize that bohemia was already dead when I took the leap. I didn’t understand how hard it is to meet people here, to find time to create here, to live a life here. Most days I’m too exhausted from working a full day to create, learn and grow. I find myself running out of time.

Fall is officially gone. The days are getting shorter, the nights colder. Already I have cabin fever and already I feel claustrophobic. I don’t think I can stand lying idle between four walls everyday and moving from box to box another day for fear of getting attacked by snow, by sleet and by fear.

Sometimes I dream about different choices. I wish instead I had moved to the country where things are slow and easy going. But I am young and I am free and I thought this was where I needed to be. I don’t know what I need but I do have idea of what I want for my life. And looking around at all of this void, I know this is not it. I am stifled, thoughtless and bored. I am tired all the time from the mundane quality of my life.

And I see this same struggle within my friends. We look at each other and see so much of what we want but have no idea of how to get there. We don’t know how to find the people we lost after college. We thought it would be different.

I thought it would all be different.