I went to Astoria on Sunday to visit a friend who then cancelled on me. And instead of going home sulking, I stayed.
A Sunday morning alone in Astoria Park turned out to be exactly what I needed and didn't know I needed. The N train dropped me at Astoria Boulevard and I walked down toward the water with no plan at all.
The Hell Gate Bridge just sits there over the East River, enormous and rust-red, minding its own business. I sat on a bench under it with a chai from a Greek bakery and a book I fully intended to read and did not read a single page of.
There's a difference between being lonely and being alone, and I've spent two years in this city learning it. When I first moved here, a Sunday morning alone would have crushed me. I would have scrolled my phone, texted five people, filled the silence with anything.
Now I let it be quiet.
Old Greek men were playing some card game at a nearby table, arguing with tremendous passion about something I couldn't understand. A kid was learning to ride a bike, falling, getting up, falling. Two runners nodded at each other like old friends.
Astoria feels like a real neighborhood, the kind where people have lived for forty years and know the baker's name. It reminded me of pockets of Ahmedabad where nobody's in a hurry, where the day just unspools.
I thought about how much of my life in New York is spent rushing to be somewhere with someone. And how rarely I just sit with myself and let it be enough.
My friend texted an apology. I told her honestly it worked out. The Sunday morning alone in Astoria Park gave me something the plan never would have.
I took the N home slow, watching Queens roll by from the elevated tracks, gold light everywhere.
Sometimes the cancelled plan is the whole gift.
Love,