Beating Boston

It took me all night. Literally, all night. I didn't sleep. My mother would have killed me. Or at least made me hot chocolate.

I stayed up that entire night, trying to piece together my logic. Why would I return to a place that I hated oh so much? My friends had stopped short of asking me that very question.

But before I met with Mike in a couple of days, I had to have an answer that went beyond, "Well, he asked me to come."

When the crisp, autumn sun finally started to poke through the curtains, I had a break through. When I'd lived in Boston before, my favorite part of day had been the sunrise. I would actually make an effort to get up to see it blossiming over the horizon. Even if I immediatley crawled back into my double bed, which I usually did, and pulled my red flowered bedspread over my head, which I usually did, the sunrise gave me hope that I could succeed in this practically foreign city.

I stood up, walked to the floor-length window, parted the curtains and stared out at the still-empty street.

The sunrise made me realize that I had returned to Boston, because this time I wanted to win. I didn't want to tuck my tail between my legs and scurry away, back to California where the sun shone and the snow never fell. I wanted to keep the confidence the sunrise gave me throughout each and every day.

Exhausted after my long night of apartment and soul searching, I shuffled back to bed, crawled under the delicately patterned duvet, pulled it over my head and slept.