I broke my promise to stop Yelping for one last trip around the block. I wrote a love letter to Yaffa Café, and the memory of a New York that was slowly fading from my view.
Breaking up is hard to do, as anyone who has ever been in love will tell you. Letting go is even harder. But if I am sure of anything from my whole affair with New York City, it is that the story is never over. It keeps going as long as you let it. Life will knock you down and let you see stars and make your heart play tricks on you. It will bring you people who will change your life and take you to dinner in places that will incite a Pavlovian response in you just by thinking of them.
Eventually the day came, and I found myself at JFK with my life crammed haphazardly into two gigantic bags. Over my shoulder, I carried an empty guitar case filled to the brim with tee shirts, and in my hand I carried my cat in his little box. I peered in to look at him—his eyes were glazed over in a drug-induced haze that the vet had prescribed him for travel. I felt the same: hazy and confused as to the road that lay ahead. He let out a timid meow.
“I know,” I said to him. “I’m scared, too.”
I took him into the restroom with me and set him on the counter by all the sinks. Packing myself into a tiny bathroom stall with my gigantic bag, I fished around in the front pocket of my guitar case. I pulled out the first small orange pill bottle that contained my prescription. I took a deep breath and dumped the entirety of its contents into the toilet. I did the same with the rest of my pills. They settled in the bottom of the bowl, and I flushed them down. A smile, pure and true, streaked its way across my face for the first time in what felt like forever.
The only thing left to do is let go.
Move on.
Find your love, whatever or wherever it may be.
Remember where you came from, but more importantly, where you are about to go.
The Yelp Page 14