this day too shall pass

So I've survived Friday.  I feel like I've just barely survived a hurricane.  I woke up Friday morning with my apartment turned upside down and exhausted.  But like most storms, the most beauty and light usually follows.  It just so happened that Friday was also the day that grades were due.  After I had a talk with my 1st period class and once I submitted my grades for the third quarter life started to feel back on track.  

I laughed.  I ran in the rain.  I sang.  I ate a good lunch.  I left early.  And I went to the English teacher's sanctuary- the bookstore.  There's something about standing in the middle of thousands of books that exhilarates me.  To my right there's Proust the neuroscientist, to my left is the Twilight series with a gaggle of teenage girls, behind me is a writer speaking about his latest labor of love and in front of me is a Jane Austen display.  When I was a little girl I used books to teleport me to other dimensions and worlds.  As an adult, I teach literature, but I often forget to also get my own fix.  

Yesterday I bought two Anne Faidman books (Ex Libris and Rereadings) and The Hottentot Venus by Barbara Chase-Riboud.  Now that I'm not as emotionally drained and fatigued I'm able to think somewhat clearly.  I miss writing, I miss reading, I miss Friday nights with the girls, I miss going to the salon on a regular basis, I miss shopping and getting dressed up, I miss me.  I need to constantly channel who I am in order to avoid getting swept away in turbulence that life brings with it.  

My boyfriend met up with me at the bookstore once he got off work.  We walked along side Riverside park gazing at the beautiful old historic Upper West side mansions and brownstones, talking, and examining the dogs that we came across (in the process of getting a dog).  On our walk we came across a statue that I have never seen before in the neighborhood and that stood out between the old European buildings.  It was a statue of a Chinese person that survived the atomic bomb attacks in Hiroshima and was shipped to New York in 1955 as a symbol of strength, endurance, and world peace.  

I saw myself in that statue, and the possible future that I can have because I survived some of the biggest challenges in my life.  I still don't know what I will do, but for now I need to stay in New York and sort myself out.  I need to stop running away when things get tough and learn from the uncomfortable times and the hard times.