“We are so lucky.”
This had become our little catchphrase of the week. The best friend was visiting me for the first time in my new city.
It all started with the unseasonably warm weather; 60 degrees in the middle of February. Two California girls running around Manhattan in mini skirts and crop tops and leather jackets. Each day we woke up to blue starched skies like a blessing above the shiny skyline.
Luck continued to stumble upon us. Ushering us to cut lines at fashion week. Easily securing tables at trendy restaurants. Finding pristine vintage right off the rack.
We laid in our hotel bed giggling like teenagers.
“We are so lucky.”
Our voices chiming together as we did our makeup under the hot bulbs of the bathroom mirror.
Hope did something to me face. It had been sometime, seeing that confidence shift in the blues of my eyes. I felt more beautiful with the rumblings of possibility. I indulged in orange wine and spaghetti alle vongole. I found myself smiling at strangers on the subway. My phone pinging with flirtations from the male prospects of that week. Emails arriving with jobs and money and security I never expected.
Maybe the internet’s buzziest motto, “lucky girl syndrome”, was the real deal?
I had grown accustom to some form of delusional thinking. It was a means to my survival after the utter dissolution of what I thought my life was to be-
“I do not chase, I attract. What belongs to me will come to me.”
“I everything I want, I get, because that’s just the way it is”.
“Things are always working out in my favor.”
The algorithm fed into this messaging. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Manifestations. Mindsets. Rewire the subconscious brain. Affirmations. Gratitude journals. Visualization. Karma!
Doubt was a woman’s worse enemy.
‘We are so lucky!’
Until I wasn’t.
And by now, disappoint was not only my enemy but my familiar friend. He slept next to me at night when my brain fixated on the ‘what could have beens’.
March greeted me with gray skies, and the eerie feeling that I was in some perpetual liminal holding.
I got rejected from my dream Upper West Side apartment, despite envisioning my fresh start so clearly within its walls. My heart was racing as I looked through the bay windows down at the traffic on West End Ave. I wrote a letter to the landlord. I hustled to get my application in first. This was my apartment- I knew it.
But it wasn’t.
“We are so lucky!”
But am I?
It is strange to imagine, that I was suppose to be someone’s wife right now. That there is another plot line, where I wore the white satin dress. And my mother carefully pinned a lace veil in my hair. He stood at the end of the aisle under the shade of palm trees, wearing a tux like Humphrey Bogart.
Maybe I was lucky? The day of my supposed wedding date it rained all day in Palm Springs. Was it an omen of the marriage that never happened? Or just global warming causing the heavens to torrentially open onto the desert?
The old me would have rather been chosen than to be lucky.
I am growing tired of imagining circumstances that never come to fruition. It takes stamina to be a said ‘lucky girl’.
I still see the pity painted on people’s face when they learn of my story. It pangs me in the same place as rejection. I want to shake them! I am not dead! My life isn’t over!
That is when I do swallow the positivity pills. Because all I want to be is a winner. And the best revenge will be to build the most fucking-glorious-inspiring-movie-magic kind of life for myself. Better things ARE on the way!
No pressure.
I want to straddle the line between delusion and reality. The all or nothing, black and white thinking shrinks down any humanity that lies within my stories. I need to cry and feel all the failures, in order to move forward. A dose of cynicism feels natural, it feels healthy. Leaves space for the all the shades in disappointment.
And resilience is where hope can be cultivated.
Grays skies against the silver linings and shiny skylines.
I might not be lucky, but I am alive-
Katie, You are a beautiful writer! So amazed at your endurance and strength. You are getting through this with Grace! Blessings on the Apartment hunting and the amazing life you are creating in NY. ❤️ Continue to feel those lucky moments, even when you feel unlucky, the next lucky moment will arrive right around the corner, giving you the opportunity to celebrate the blessing given. You are Alive!