I love Coney Island forever and ever and that is enough

When I landed in New York, it was barely morning and it was bitter cold, maybe 8 or 9 degrees in the sun. I took a deep breath and prepared to step out of the airport into the most frigid air I had experienced since moving to California over a year ago. Now matter how cold it felt, it wouldn't matter, couldn't matter. I was a girl on a mission. I wanted, no, needed to get to Coney Island that very day, even if it meant freezing my ass off.

You probably think I'm a total freak for this, but oddly enough I wasn't alone. My friends drove up from CT for the sole purpose of visiting Coney Island with me in the dead middle of freezing winter. Not because we thought it would be warm, not because we thought it would be fun, not even because we wanted an excuse to drink four loko on the subway (although we did do that, too.) We visited Coney Island because we needed to pay our respects.
To us, Coney Island is much, much more than a trashy amusement park set on the water on the outskirts of the world's most fabulous city, although even if it were just that, it would still be pretty spectacular. Our connection with Coney Island goes back to the summer of 2007, when it became the setting for a day, perhaps a moment, perhaps the moment of our young lives. I've tried to explain it and I've tried to retell it countless times, but I never quite succeed in conveying the immensity of what occurred that day and why it keeps pulling us back, even on the coldest day of winter. Still, I'll try again.
I can't tell you what was happening for anyone else at that time, but I can tell you what was happening for me, and me, I was heartbroken. And in that heartbreak, the world seemed intensified so that even the smallest everyday occurrences felt unbearable. Work was awful, going out was awful. Fuck, breathing was awful. I woke up in tears nearly every day, devastated to remember that the circumstances that had driven me to such heartbreak were still true. I would stumble downstairs hysterical and my roommates, utterly bewildered and alienated by the intensity of my grief, despite their best efforts to be supportive would look at me in total loss. What could they possibly do for me?
Still, I did not give up. I tried to go out and force myself to have fun on numerous occasions. I even came sort of close a few times, but usually, whatever substance I was using to forget about my grief would turn on me and end up reminding me how bad I wanted to call, wanted to beg, wanted to do all those things you're not supposed to do when nursing a broken heart. That is, until we went to Coney Island.
It was summer, so it was Siren Fest. We Are Scientists and M.I.A.- for free!!!! Seriously, though, that doesn't even matter, because it wasn't the music and it wasn't the crowd, it was just the day. We listened to all the right songs on the way to the train station, faced the exact correct number of calamities to make it feel like an adventure (including taking the subway in the wrong direction and ending up in Harlem), and somehow ended up dancing underneath a roller coaster while sipping Jack Daniels through a straw on the most gorgeous of gorgeous summer days. It was the type of perfect day that's just too perfect to even imagine or fantasize about.

Now, I had perfect days before that one and I've had perfect days since, but the way that particular day appeared, in the midst of crushing heartbreak, has always seemed like a small miracle to me. The friends I was with on that day were not recovering from a wounded heart as I was, but I know it felt miraculous to them, too. It was as if, for one moment whatever we were dealing with at the time, be it heartbreak or something else entirely, just faded in the shadow of an idea; that the world was a big and beautiful place, that it was possible for someplace like Coney Island to even exist and that it was possible for us to exist there along with it.

After that day, I began handling things differently. Instead of dwelling constantly in the heartbreak of my past, I thought instead of what I liked. I made mental lists, as I began to remember I like sushi, I like vintage dresses and soon I found myself fully recovered, planting gardens full of vegetables and getting shitfaced at paella parties. My freinds displayed similar behaviour. We all seemed to feel more in touch with our own preferences, who we were, what we liked, most importantly, what made us happy. It's an easy equation; no matter how down I feel, thinking about dancing with my friends underneath The Cyclone at Coney Island always makes me happy.
That day left an imprint on my heart. A map for how to get back there. Now, when I am feeling upset, I look back to that day. No matter how tumultuous and stormy my thoughts and feeling become, that day is the center that everything else swirls around, the eye of the storm. It's where I go when I'm lost. It's where I go when I need to remind myself who I am and what I love. I love dancing. I love being drunk in the sunshine. I love my friends more than anything in the world. And no matter how bad things get, no matter how cold it is outside, I still love Coney Island, and I always will.