an end to wishing

It was hot today, but turned cool at night, finally a feeling of fall. Riding home from work in a cab, as I do when I work late enough, looking out at the life of Chelsea drifting past as we went down 7th Avenue, I had a strange realization: I was happy. Not because of anything in particular that had happened; it had been an ordinary day, now winding down. I felt happy in general, like it was the new background color of my life, the new normal. It wasn't only that I was happy, in a quiet sort of way, but it seemed that I had stopped being afraid of certain things and worrying about them. About getting older, for example. It was not happening less slowly but it had ceased to concern me. About suddenly losing everything, about life passing me by. I had not only stopped thinking about these things, but I had failed to observe when I had stopped, like an bruise you forget to notice until one day it's gone. I felt at ease. I tried to remember: When had I felt like this before in my life? In college, it seemed. Surely I had been happy and at ease at other times, other places, since then, but it had always been -- or so it seemed at that moment -- somehow tenuous, as if it could all vanish at any moment.
It almost seemed to me all this time I was waiting for something to happen, I thought, as I paid the cab driver and got out. And now it had happened.
Could it really be that simple? Does geography change a person?
I was happy like this in college, but I was young then, and frankly, an idiot. A person I hardly recognize now and find little in to admire. I was not crazy enough to think moving back to New York would erase the years and take me back to the person I was then.
But something else has happened. I can't say yet exactly what. I have nothing left to wish for, and somehow that doesn't scare me.