Riverside

I need to link to neverhappen.com's photo today because I've looked at it several times since it went up. It's a superb photo of the Brisbane skyline at dusk, and I keep trying to fall into the serenity of the water and the promise of each lighted window. It's reminding me of a moment in my life that I'm very grateful has passed but I'm also very grateful that I had. When I was in college, in those early tortured years alone, when I was coming out and a rural Southern girl in a New England city and everything felt absurdly uncertain as it only can when you're 18, I used to sit in a park near my college campus and look out at the skyline on cold evenings. I'd breathe into my scarf and feel my breath accumulate in little wet pools on the wool and try to choose one window, one light and imagine what was going on behind it. And then I'd pan out, eyeballs imitating camera, and be comforted by what seemed like the possibility of the light and the dark and the thousands of lives behind the glowing bulbs. I figured that amongst all those lights there was someone more miserable than I was and someone happier than I could imagine being and that anything was possible. I could end up behind any window. It could be worse. It could be better. But mostly, sitting there looking over my new home, I knew that for a while longer, I could be.