Boy meets girl, girl falls in love, blah-blah-blah.
Let me be clear with you from the beginning. This is not that kind of story.
My name is Cait, and I live in the great city of New York. Okay, so maybe I've only lived here for a week and a half...
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After a few more days of avoiding Val's questions and barely keeping myself from answering more of Andrew's texts, I finally forced myself to leave Brooklyn and the familiar stretch I'd been haunting exclusively for the past six months - my apartment, work, and Prospect Park - in favor of Manhattan. I felt like I was suffocating, like the weight of life was pressing against my ribcage and - with every single second - the pain increased tenfold.
The bitter November wind nipped at my cheeks, so I stuffed my hands into my pockets and pulled my jacket closer. Within a few minutes of walking, my nose and cheeks were already turned cherry red. I'd left my hair down to protect my ears, but the wind turned it into a tangled mess of curls with every step.
Cutting across the street, I turned right to walk into Riverside Park on the Upper West Side off 72nd Street. The four-mile stretch of park was squeezed between the Hudson River and Riverside Drive, and - while it wasn't the park all the tourists visited in New York - I absolutely loved it. It was one of the prettiest parks in New York City, especially considering it wasn't always swarmed with tourists, and I liked that I could walk in a straight line up the greenway without worrying about where I was going. I could shut off my brain, enjoying everything around me, and just...exist.
At the front of the park, right at the corner of Riverside and 72nd, there was a statue of Eleanor Roosevelt that I loved. Perched on a boulder, the bronze statue showed the former First Lady deep in thought. The woman was one of my heroes.
She was always outspoken, firmly believing that a woman didn't need to be meek, and - while her husband Franklin Delano Roosevelt would always been remembered for his presidency - Eleanor was certainly memorable in her own way. She fought for women's rights, social reform, and human rights. I learned in my freshman year at college that she was a United Nations delegate and one of the most avid supporters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first global agreement on human rights that formed a baseline of countless international laws, and - ever since - I'd started collecting her books.
One of her quotes floated into my head as I stared at the monument.
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face," she once said. "You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'"
I knew she was right. I knew that there had to be a solution, but my fear kept me from thinking rationally. All I could think about was the potential for destruction - not in my own life, but for others - and I wanted to do everything possible to keep that from happening.
Regardless, I couldn't keep doing what I've been doing. I couldn't drink to hide my problems, no matter how much I craved the way it numbed my pain and helped me forget everything, because I needed to face them. I needed to get my life in check, whether or not I was able to fix this mess, because I couldn't afford to lose everything I'd worked so hard to gain. My job, my future...it's time to get my shit together. Life isn't lived by hiding away from the world, it demands facing your fears with determination to get back up once you fall down. You can't always win, but you can always try again.
