Walking around the city feels so weird now. I feel like someone who is seeing the city for the first time. Everything amazes me. And I like it... but I don't. I want to see the city as I've always seen it- as my home. I mean, I have always known that it is amazing and spectacular and blah blah blah, but I've also always known that everything I want to see again will be there tomorrow. I have been allowed to take all of the awesomeness for granted... and now that the city is slipping through my fingers with each passing day I can't take anything for granted.
It's great to live in the moment and all, but when I'm packed into a subway car like a sardine, two inches away from a homeless man, and risking bed bugs from any one of the people that I am sharing my personal bubble with and I am desperate to enjoy that moment? I'm living a little too in the moment. But... I don't know how to fix it. Because all I can think is I'm here. And in three weeks I won't be here.
I think that the world has this impression of New Yorkers- that they all think that NYC is the only place to live. While I do think that there are other equally fabulous places to live, there is something about the city that sort of creeps into your blood. I have never felt so much ownership over a place. Even the town that I grew up in for most of my life didn't feel like mine, but the city does. And I think that most people who live here feel that way. The city belongs to us. We are everywhere, all over this city and it is so big, but so small at the same time. We know where everything is and how to get to anywhere.
I'll never know my way around any other place the way I do the city and that is partly because walking from point A to point B and then C and D is pretty much impossible anywhere else. Maybe that is part of the sense of ownership- the walking. You really get to know your home. And you walk through so many neighborhoods so often that all of them begin to feel like your own. Most places, people only walk around one neighborhood- the street that their house is on, or the park, or maybe the main shopping drag in their town, but that's it. We walk everywhere. The city caters to us. And when we aren't walking we are taking the subway. And we all share it, we all cram together all sweaty and angry and anxious to get home, and we all feel like it belongs to us. It is our subway. Our city.
I've never felt so proud to live somewhere. That is going to be a weird feeling, leaving the one place I have felt so proud to call home, so proud to be surviving in, thriving in. LA is cool and all, and I am really looking forward to better weather (and avocados!), more space, and being closer to family. But. The closer we get to our exit date, the more I realize how big of a piece of my heart NY has really taken.
Cue "Empire State of Mind".
don't worry, we can go visit.
im glad you're looking back, but also looking forward to all the opportunity california has for you.
love you so much my lil monster.
Posted by: Shonna Sommer | 10/07/2010 at 09:09 AM