Unexpected Joys

This month marks a ten year anniversary in my life.  For it was in 2005 in early November when I quit my job, left my apartment, my friends, and my boyfriend in Boston, packed up a U-Haul, and moved myself and my two cats to an apartment in New York City.

Ten years! I can hardly believe it.

If you've been reading this blog since its infancy or knew me personally way back when, you will likely recall the stories and endless thoughts and questions around going or not going, of leaping with nothing but the unknown in front of me, or shutting the proverbial New York door and staying.  Ultimately, I leapt, of course.  I know, without question, (because they told me) that a lot of people thought I was crazy or dumb or selfish to make the move that I did.

And if I'm being honest, for a very long time I wondered those very same things about myself.

But oh, thank goodness for that leap during that long-ago November. 

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As I get older, I have come to realize that there are - if we are very lucky - occasionally a few golden and perfect moments where we are able to look at a decision we made and know up and down, top to bottom, that it was the right one.

At this point I have been lucky enough to be able to pinpoint approximately five of those moments in my life.

Moving to New York City was, without questions, one of the very best of them.

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Oh I remember it was difficult.  Challenging. Impossible at times.  And I haven't forgotten the heartache that ultimately became a part of that move. And of course, as we all know, I did move back to Boston.

But how much of my life would be different if I had never gone? If I had never stretched my wings and did something that I wanted to do completely for myself?

This is also not to say my life would have turned out poorly had I never moved to New York.  I imagine it would have been a fine and good life.  But it wouldn't have been the life I saw in my mind's eye, the one I wanted to create for myself, the one I knew I had to live.

The one I am living now.

I leapt.

It was hard.

It was really, really hard.

Oh, but it was also so wonderful.  There were so many moments of wonderful that I would not trade for anything.

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I was young.

Sometimes I think about how very, very, young I was.

I would do a million things differently if I were to do it all over again had I the wisdom and knowledge I have been fortunate enough to collect over the years.

And yet.

Every year, as October winds down, the leaves fall fast and we move into November, I think about that girl I was ten years ago - that little girl who boxed up her things, ignored the naysayers and went - no matter that she was scared to death - anyways because she knew in the deepest part of her heart it was what she should do.  What she had to do. 

I am so proud of her, even now, ten years out.

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Last spring, I  took a walk down the tree-lined mall that divides Commonwealth Avenue.  It is a lovely little strip of  a park that runs along Comm Ave, brownstones on either side, with benches and various statues of long forgotten dignitaries and statesmen dotted throughout the path.  Pausing along my stroll, I noticed a plaque on a nearby bench.  It was from a mother to her child, dated sometime in the early aughts, and the inscription simply read: "May your life be crowded with unexpected joys." 

How could I have ever known ten years ago, as I sat in a brand new apartment, surrounded by unpacked boxes, alone in New York all of the wild, wonderful, and completely unexpected joys that would await?

It's been so blessedly and wonderfully crowded.