What I Know About Crying

The regular rolling thunder of living beneath a train stop is one that can't be overstated. It starts low, shaking everything around it, as a hum fills your shoebox apartment, drowning out the neighbors arguments, the clanging of the pipes, and eternal honking that each take turns sountracking mornings and nights alike.

How long can you possibly spend in this place? How much time passed between promised rent payments, oft delayed like Kanye albums, and the soulless drudge of trying to get from point A to disappointment B, narrowly avoiding the crazy person of the hour and poop trains.

Poop trains, are carts that lure in unsuspecting New York visitors and the uninitiated to face their demons and others in smell form. It happens so quick, just like moving to the big city. One minute, you're on the platform, seeing the crowded cars come to a stop, and you spy one empty one, you and the guy next to you, rush in just as the doors are about to close.

You both breathe a side of relief until you look around and see the reality of the city, this train cart has become a mobile hell hotel for the unappreciated, tossed aside, and internally crumbling, legs large and tattered wet clothes clinging to stained crotches, sparse teeth grumbling. Before you can ruminate on it, the door closes, and the smell, oh the smell singes and reaches down your throat to your stomach.

So, you panic and rush to go between cars whilst moving, another no-no but the other guy is in tow. You find another car, and maybe even manage to find a seat, the other passengers look at you like they see and can smell your freshness and anxiety.

How did it come to this? Six dollars in your pocket. Aimlessly riding the train to apply for jobs when you wouldn't even hire yourself. Don't ask the question, "What am I even doing". It does no good, and before you know it, the anxiety has turned into full blown panic.

You think back on home. Down south it was always warm, comfortable, even if just a bit too uptight at times. The job, a waiter, making decent coin smiling at people who spend more on a two hour meal than you make in a ten hour shift. It wasn't all bad. The comraderie, the alcohol, the something-something fueled 4am promises to do something, to do anything more.

"Im going to own a business one day", you say, and they encourage you, or ask questions in between sniffing. At least that's what you think it is, or hope it is, no patronizing.

"Its never going to happen" someone says, and you see its the woman you've been dating for years. And she laughs because the idea is funny to her, and they laugh because they agree, and you laugh because its polite. Work sours, the relationship showers, untruths are told, and things get emotionally charged.

"I will do it. I will make a business. I don't need this", and you leave the next day for New York. Then, suddenly you're back on the train, headed to Washington Square, praying for a miracle. Youre alone, out of money, and afraid.

So, you get a $1 slice, and sit and think, and sit and think, and watch happy people walk with bags, and nice clothes, and prospects and you hate yourself a little more inside.

You remember all of those days, spent memorizing business books, notebooks scrawled with words for days, your mother worried you were schizophrenic like in that one movie she saw. No mom, I'm not schizophrenic, I'm a visionary, you say, only half believing it.

Then, you're not in the park anymore, you're back on the train. Then, you're not on the train, a couple weeks passes and things are somehow worse. But, you did find a job online that pays enough you can at least eat, but you no longer have a place, and you ask your friends from high school to stay with them. They're your friends but you don't know them that well, but their best friend is one of your best friends so they let you crash.

You make a website. You start finding people to listen to you. A bit of money comes in. You botch the first project. You knew nothing all along.

You freak out. You drink for a week straight. Then, you try again. You read more, you practice more, you fight and creatively attack as much as you can until finally, you're able to afford rent, food, clothes, normal people things.

Then, time passes, and you're in love. You live with her, you follow her to Atlanta. Her roommate hates you, you get kicked out, and she comes with you. Then, she follows you to Montreal, then to Budapest, Portland, Amsterdam, Atlanta again, Costa Rica, the list goes on. She feels like peace and war together, paradoxes fill your life but the complexity gives you meaning. Adventures compile and the love and faith wipes out the previous pain of feeling unappreciated, self conscious, a failure.

Each month, you cry a bit still, not alot, at least not like you're used to. Your listeners, have turned to clients, money woes have turned to being afraid to lose money woes, fear of the future woes have more light to them.

And you still cry, because somehow, you lasted.