New York Thoughts

I always wanted to be a good writer and a story teller. Travelling always gets me inspired  and fills me up with imagination and to go to place like New York, its vast height skyscrapers, beautiful neighborhoods and calm residences and the famous hustle and bustle of Times Square making an impression on me the first and second time I came here, with so much history, ( although it doesn't date that far back) it should have been perfect.
But it didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. Here in New York, everything is built on speed.
I wasn't aware of all the trouble one had to go through in order to feel comfortable in New York. You have to have a lot of patience and understanding in order to live here a couple of days.

The vacations of course, were not without its flaws. Whenever you go on a holiday,  going with a person depends entirely on how you feel about them. Whether it be your loved one, your friends or family, there's either going to be pure joy or pure sadness, or just mild frustration. Mine was the latter, combined with the second. I came to New York in order to appreciate it. But once I came here, with my mother and her boyfriend, things emerged as a negative, with constant tension and a couple of arguments. If a little thing happens, such as the zipper on your bag coming loose, or you decide to order a vodka and coke for lunch, they say something to you that you find offensive or upsetting. With my friends, however, they make you feel like it's no big deal.  If you find a group of people that you know you've had a brilliant time with, you're going to compare them with others.  And my experience in New York with my family and Olivier has not been a breath of roses. There are simply way too many sights to see. Therefore you have to go from one place to another just to take a picture. You move here and there, taken over by the crowd, and forces to move, walk and run, never stopping or sitting down somewhere, and you simply don't take in the juices and the tenderness of the city or the park. Everything is passing by you, like a life not lived, not full to the brim. And being with those kind of people, even if we don't say anything, just makes me feel trapped, like a caged bird.

I remember as a child, one of the most horribly sad pictures I ever saw. There was a game board, like Ludo,  with different pictures of a goose in different situations, laughing, dancing, eating or down a well. One of them struck me; A goose in prison, behind bars with her head sticking out, and crying a lot of tears. She seemed so miserable like that. Even though it only meant you missed one turn and the picture of the well was the worst one, where you got stuck in the well forever unless someone else landed on the picture and took your place, that image stayed with me forever.

It was representative of pure depression, loneliness and hopelessness. I sort of consider myself a pessimistic type, but I don't want  to be that way anymore. I wanted to be someone with a bubbly personality, not always complaining about all the bad ways people treat me. Why did I always go home in tears after being bullied? Why did I not toughen myself up? Not all females do. Girls and homosexuals are more likely to be bullied at school, because they are perceived as easy targets, and that they are too weak willed to fight back.
It's the same case in LGBT politics. Once gays and lesbians began to fight back and make themselves visible to the world, the conservatives began to get angry, and started reinforcing laws to push back LGBT people back in the closet. There are basically bullies in every domain.
The most important thing in life is how you view yourself.
I had the luck to be able to visit the Stonewall Inn while we were all out visiting Greenwich Village. The place is a historical sight for LGBT people, as it is the setting of the Stonewall Riots. Gays and lesbians, sick and tired of being harassed, bullied, beaten and thrown in jail for nothing, fought back against their oppressors and regained their rights, continuing throughout the decades and to this day. It was as I expected it to be, loud, full of great music and lively people. My mother was intimidated of course, not wanting to go to the bathroom. But the karaoke session and great singers, cheered her up a bit.

It was one of the few places where the people were actually nice. The attitudes in America are the worst I've seen. At the airport, in the buildings and in the shops, they overcharge and over exaggerate everything. The worst thing is that they not only put on a stone face and act arrogant and snobbish,  but they don't even tell you why you can't do the simplest things like sit down during a long wait to get up a building,  bring in a knife or getting into a club.
They are also the loudest people in the world. I basically count the fact that I (and my mother) have quiet voices so we have to speak up in loud places or as in the case of the last night in an Irish pub, extremely loud people. I don't think it was just because they were drunk, two or even all four of them simply had to talk and shout the loudest just because they absolutely had to be heard, like none of the other's opinion mattered.

While we in New York as well, we got to see a Broadway musical. In a way, it compensated for not seeing any celebrities while we were there, unless we saw a play, or the musical Evita with Ricky Martin. Rock of Ages was the musical my mother chose to see. It was probably the funniest musical ever. It was also really fulfilling, brilliantly performed and raunchy. When I saw the film version however, I was disappointed. It may as well have been another film about something else.
Before the show started, a strange women kept yelling at the top of her voice "No photography, EVER!" I knew full well there were no photos allowed, but she seemed to become particularly aggressive towards people every time she saw a camera. All she needed was a whip at her side...

I really did enjoy the bus rides around the city, with a tour guide speaking over the microphone giving us a detailed history about some of the buildings, parks and neighborhoods. One night time ride across both the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridge proved to be one of the most exiting experiences of the trip. The guides were sometimes just as interesting as the discovered history of the city. One person was completely obsessed with death; she mentioned John Lennon being shot at a building at least 5 times, exclaimed that Luther Van Dross funeral was the best ever, in a way that she could have been talking about a party, and when we passed the same college that Bill Cosby attended, she simply had to mention the fact that his son was killed in a mugging. lol

After watching some footage of the World Trade Center towers collapsing after two air planes crashed into them, I had forgotten how terribly shocking the whole thing was. I was at home and watching the news on CNN on that faithful day. I wasn't painfully present in the city as many were, and the unfortunate people who were in the towers and in the planes. They are now building a new tower, a very high one, to prove that they will not be brought down forever by the incident (optimistic Americans) and show two beams of light at night to commemorate the towers.

Every big trip this year changed me, like Paris, I discovered a different way to view myself, and to act around people. With mum and Olivier, I was totally in my eccentric element, although it does do me some good to act like a bitch sometimes. I act differently around different people in order to keep them satisfied. Because I'm not like Katherine Hepburn (first woman in Hollywood not to sugar coat her personality, which was strong and feisty, to appeal to the man trolling world) or bubbly like my friend Karrianne,  I have to invent my own planning to appeal to people. Because I have an intense fear of rejection, I simply don't want to lose friends or leave people, but I've gotten better at accepting myself.