what if I'm falling out of love with New York?!
I came to live to the city of my dreams. It's not what I expected.
“I feel like I have a toxic relationship with New York,” my friend stated during our brunch. I asked her why, but deep down I already knew the answer. I felt the same way.
It was a sunny Saturday morning, and we had bagels at Leo’s, in Williamsburg. We moved to the city together, almost at the same time last year. Also, we came together the first time we visited New York. Since then, we both fell in love with it and once a year stated, “One day, I’m going to live in New York City.”
Ask every person who has lived in New York for more than six months and I assure you almost everyone will tell you, most days, New York feels –and makes you feel– like shit. Streets are dirty, there are rats everywhere, and restaurants and cafes always have a line or are full of people pretending to live here (but you know they don’t because they’re trying too hard with their outfits). Also, New Yorkers are always working, running with their Sweetgreen salads from the office to their homes, and talking on the phone. Tourists walk too slowly, take pictures everywhere, and take up the entire sidewalk.
However, just like a toxic partner who hurts you every week, drains your energy, but gets you back with love crumbs—just one “sorry” or “I love you”—, New York can win you back in just a matter of seconds, allowing the love/hate cycle to start all over again.
New York can also be compared to a first love. That one person you used to love from afar but once you got to know them better, deeper, you only discovered a dangerous level of intensity and structural issues that need long-term solutions and attention.
This city energizes you, but not like a healthy relationship would; not like the cute boyfriend who always answers your texts. New York belongs to everybody and nobody at the same time. I guess that’s why you can’t stay too long. That’s why there’s a certain point in your life where you decide, “I’m done, I need to leave.”
Some people come back, others don’t.
This whole conversation with my friend, and my further stream of consciousness crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, made me wonder: what if, just like I have chased emotionally unavailable boys, I’m chasing an emotionally unavailable city?
Is realizing this part of my process of falling out of love with New York?
Maybe I am falling out of love with this city. Or maybe I’m just growing into a more mature kind of love. A stable one that transforms you slowly but deeply because most times love doesn’t look like we thought it would but it is always possible. “Anything is possible. This is New York,” Carrie says.
In New York, all worldly activities (walking home from school and seeing the sunset, riding a Citi bike drunk after listening to shitty readings in a bar, finding out I’m closer to Gramercy Park than I thought, applying and actually getting a job, taking the train to a Latin supermarket to buy Argentine products, finding that someone in your building has left one of your favorite books for you to grab for free, taking the J train to Bushwick on a Sunday morning with rain and riding back home with the sun) and casual encounters (having an overpriced martini with your gym attire in a fancy bar, watching a jazz show with a guy you’ll probably never see again, pretending to be friends with your date’s friend just for a few days) make me feel like my life is being transformed in a way I have never felt before. There’s some weird magic spell this city puts on you — it’s crazy but true.
So, whether I stay or leave, one thing will always stay with me: New York. I don’t know what will happen, or if I will be here next year or five years from now but New York changes you and becomes part of you whether you like it or not. And I know that if I don’t live here, if I get to escape its magnetic pull, New York will find a way around the back of my mind begging me to come back.