And sometimes, I still can’t believe that I’m here.I had been to New York twice before moving here— once for a day trip while visiting my friend in Connecticut (she had a broken toe, so we kind of sat around the Met) and the second time was to visit some friends less than a month before I decided over the course of the two scariest days of my life to give away 3/4 of my belongings and take over a sublet from a friend.
I am not well-travelled and there are times (less often now) when I can be cripplingly shy, so I think most people who know me thought I had gone nuts when they found out I had moved. There really wasn’t any other option in my mind. I had been saving money for years. It was going to move to a city, and if it couldn’t be Paris, it was going to be New York.
Six months before that, I had taken my first trip out of the country when I went on a January term trip to study in Paris. My roommate was extremely noisy, and I think I got less than three hours of sleep each night for two weeks. I also had trouble finding time to go to places other than bodegas, so with lots of food allergy concerns, I mostly subsisted on potato chips, macaroons, and sardines. Despite that, I had never been happier in my life. As embarrassingly corny as it is to say, I finally knew what it was like to be alive.
It is strange. A giant city— lost in a sea of people with buildings towering overhead is where I’m most comfortable. Constant change, a city cobbled together by varying architectural styles, cultural subsets, and histories…we are a patchwork people.
Sometimes I will see something that breaks my heart and haunts me for days, but I’ll turn a corner, and I will be faced with such beauty— sunlight breaking through the clouds over Central Park, a curious building, an unlikely couple in love… And every day, something to do. This past Friday, escaping the rain by walking into a museum, I got roped into watching a lecture on WWII.
There are people who ask, why New York? You could live more comfortably and safely, even in a smaller city. We’re not here to be comfortable and safe. We’re here to slug it out in the city that greeted our ancestors— mine escaping potato blight and a bleak future— hoping to find the better life that they knew had to be here. We need the constant hum. The heavy traffic, clogged sidewalks, and cramped subway cars. The struggle is where we find our fun.
I love New York.
