Hello

About 2 years ago, in the summer of 2019, I woke up one day and realized I was really fucking over living in this city. For 4 years I had woken up with the undeserved superiority of someone who left their small hometown and thought there was no greater place in the world. I mean everything I needed was at my fingertips. I could get food from a different country every night of the week. I had a cool job that allowed me to brush elbows with wealthy people from all walks of life. I even loved my apartment which was in my dream neighborhood. Nevermind that my credit card debt was slowly growing due to my spending habits. Nevermind that I felt like all the wealthy elite people I was throwing events for could see right through me and knew I would never be one of them. Nevermind the fact that I had to move into my dream apartment because I went through the worst friend break up I’d ever experienced and would continue to mourn for the next year.

None of the inconveniences of New York mattered to me. Until one day when they did. I moved to New York with $700 in my bank account and the sheer survival strategy of a cockroach. Survive. Don’t die. Pretty simple. I had accepted a job living in the dorms with some international students over the course of a language workshop they were to take in Midtown Manhattan. Housing for 6 weeks provided. I only ate with the students in the food court. On my 1 day off a week I took the J train to Bed Stuy to look at apartments as cheap as I could find them. By the end of the six weeks ( and a very well timed tax refund) I was able to sign a lease, buy a bed with a little left over to buy a real winter jacket. And so my life in New York began. 

The first six weeks I barely slept. What if I ran out of money and had to go crawling back to my parents who would have gleefully shouted I told you so. Why were apartments so expensive? Why was a coffee $8?! I was so terrified of failing I took on 3 separate jobs. I existed in survival mode for a while until one day a friend, a new friend, asked if I wanted to go get drinks. I was used to turning people down. I barely had enough money to buy groceries. I couldn’t afford anything more than a happy hour beer paid for in cash because it didn’t even meet the credit card minimum. But I looked at my bank account. Wait. I actually could allow myself to have some fun. 

New York was fun! And when it wasn’t- when the subway made you an hour late for work, when your grocery bag splits and you’re still 5 blocks from home, when you look at some strung out dude on the street wrong and he follows you home- well that was part of the charm! It hardened you. Gave you bragging rights. You take the bad with the good. As long as the good outweighs the bad it’s worth it. But something about waking up drenched in sweat because I hadn’t bought an AC unit yet at the beginning of the Summer of 2019 was my breaking point. I tried to tell myself it was simply a phase I needed to shake myself out of. I went to the Rockaways or Brighton almost every weekend to swim. I went upstate to hike. I put fun brunch bills on my credit card and surrounded myself with my friends constantly, never letting my mind rest for a minute so as not to think about how sad I was in this city. I did everything I knew would make me happy but when my weekend adventures were over and I knew it was time to get on the train or prepare for the week of meetings and happy hours and general New York City life, my heart would drop and I would feel a sense of dread. A sense of fight or flight. My own stubbornness always chose to fight. ‘You worked so hard to get here’ you’re not giving up now. But I finally had to ask myself what was I giving up? You’re unhappy! Who cares what you’re giving up! 

I won’t go into the absolute shitstorm of an emotional journey I went on during the pandemic. I will say that no one being able to relate to anyone else’s pain because we were all suffering in such unique ways was extremely isolating in and of itself . I isolated at my parents house for the first 3 months and quickly realized not using my brain for something was causing me to spiral so I signed up to take a TEFL ( Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course. That was in July 2020. Now a little over a year later I’m moving to Budapest to teach English. 

I think the reason I’m feeling extra sentimental about moving out of New York even though I’ve moved away from other cities before is I actually have a lot more to say goodbye to this time. 

I’m still finding that I’m holding on tightly- white knuckles tightly- to the life I built for myself in New York. But I know- I’ve known for a while- that it’s time to let go. And do something else. 

I have a tendency to do something whether it’s accept a job or move somewhere, build my life around that thing, then pivot and change who I am completely without properly acknowledging who I was in different stages of my life. And I was scared that that was what I would do again. I would feel so sad about leaving that I would just let go of everything and make a new version of me and make myself forget about all the good times here because I didn’t want to feel any sentimentality or nostalgia towards it. But with adulthood comes therapy. And with therapy comes growth. So I am choosing to document this change in my life and celebrate the milestones that I hit while in New York. I am choosing to celebrate the people I met and loved and the person who I became while living here. 

In an effort to combat homesickness and culture shock I’ve decided to write about my experiences. I hope whoever finds this will follow along with me. And I’ll be back. I mean… all my stuff is in storage so I’ll at least have to come back for that.