Oh, To Be Loved... oh, to be liked.

I'm not trying to waste my twenties on random men, not one of them is smarter than all my friends

I might've been born again, I'm ready to feel like I don't have the answers / There's peace in the madness over our heads, let it carry me away

I invented a new religion recently -- it's the smell of peach soju and the flash of a digital camera. It's sharing beds like children, our heads tapped together and our arms fighting for room under the blankets. We buy thank you notes in bookstores and forget to deliver them. We play Hinge and play dumb. I get called a cunt as I City Bike through Central Park, but it's only because I'm aggressively determined to beat children and their families in a self-contained, self-constructed, self-imagined race down the hills. I win with my hand in the air, the wind on my face, and Lorde on my phone, taking the wrong turn over and over again until it becomes right. We have no boundaries except the one that encircles us all and protects us from the world. 

There's a Dickensian extremeness to this lifestyle -- we sleep four hours across four days, but I've never felt more enlivened. We eat nothing but sugar and cheese, nothing but steak, or nothing at all. We bake our bodies on rocks that feel like sunlight ovens, sitting in absolute silence and superlative peace. Some girls hand us Polaroid cameras that their boyfriends are now too tired to hold, and we laugh at how absurd and comfortable they must be to throw away that which they can no longer carry; except, it's not a metaphor and it doesn't have to be. Other girls walk in on us shirtless on the rooftop and rush out, convinced that we're having sex even though we are too exhausted and disgusting to even consider it. We are not what they understand of us and we don't have to be. 

I just love this city, I whisper into the streetlights and sirens, and you burst out laughing, Asian flush making your cheeks bioluminescent. I wish I was as free, as pretty, as loved, but I'm only stupid and young for now. The duality of New York is that it is half muscle, half poison, and so soon that becomes the duality of us, too. This day could be beautiful, and I'd still find sadness in it. This night could be tragic, and I'd still wander around in it. This tightrope could be fatal and we'd still be in this limbo, struggling to live in the city where supposedly everyone does. Does self reflection happen in fancy restaurants? With fries in the bike basket? On scenic routes? In musty train rides? We find it in matching mint greens and at the bottom of bottles, in dog parks and conversations we won't remember tomorrow. Apple Pay and a twin bed -- what else does one need? Soju therapy and female friendship -- what else could one want? I'm the happiest I've ever been, and, I believe, for the first time, not the happiest I'll ever be.