United States of Depression

This time last year (at time of writing, 8.10pm) I was very much close to tears, trying to navigate my way out of unfriendly JFK airport alone -- with no internet, and baggage I could barely pull along (both the luggage sort and emotional sort) without having to stop every so often for a rest.

As bloody cliched as it sounds, that semi-spontaneously booked grad trip, also my first visit to the United States of America, changed parts of me forever. And one year on, I still feel an unexplainable sense of wistfulness towards that place.

It's upsetting, because the America I dreamed of my entire life, which I finally met in person and fell more and more in love with the longer I stayed on, isn't the same America of today. Or maybe it is. Maybe it always was, and all that it needed was a just little push for a domino unravelling of fucked up events. Maybe the American Dream is pretty much just what it is -- a dream.

But for what it's worth, I was the happiest I had ever been in a long time there. And despite being in a rather good and happy place in my life right now, I daresay I wish I could relive that entire trip again. Every. single. part. of. it.

More often than I realise, and more often that I should, I transport myself back there through the tumultuous showreel in my mind. But as reality would have it, all I have with me are a few hundred pictures, slowly-fading memories, and a year-old Snapple bottlecap.

Sometimes I still find myself on Google Maps, zooming in and out on New York City's sprawling grids, trying to search for a piece of my soul.

I left (part of) my heart in New York and I wonder if I'll ever get it back.