Today is a good day. It’s the first day in over 6 months that I actually have the desire to go out and reconnect with people without having a constant frenetic worry in my head about my family & their health & whereabouts. The sun is bronzing our front yard, the mild breeze feels like snuggling with newborns, & my endorphin levels are at some unprecedented high. I used to scoff (until it affected me..sorry about that) at the whole seasonal depression thing. I figured that if people in London weren’t all down & depressed their entire lives considering their lack of natural Vitamin D providers, then weather really wasn’t what was affecting your mood. Just kidding. The past couple of weeks have made me realize that Mother Nature, that little vengeful woman, has had my head in a vice all winter long. Blizzards, gray skies, polar vortexes, & gloomy rain, combined with family health issues, had me downer than Debbie and more negative than Nancy.
I don’t know if it’s the weather, I don’t know if it’s the fact that (knock on wood) my family is feeling better, I don’t know if it’s because I’m starting to (excruciatingly slowly) get my shit together, & I don’t know if it’s because I absolutely refuse to have to take any anxiety medication (I have no stigma against it, it’s just a personal preference that I would rather not take anything), but I’m stage 5 clinging to whatever is causing this upswing in my mood & positivity & general infatuation with the good and happy in the world. Next winter, I’m flying south with the winged & this summer, I’m absorbing rays like I’m a God damn human greenhouse (wearing SPF 100), but as for the present moment, “it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life..for me. And I’m feelin’ good.” 😎
MY.NY. I’ve called it that for the past 8 years, lived in it for the past 32. It’s home, it’s always been home, I’m pretty sure it’ll always be home. I’ve been in love with the whole state, but mostly my city, my whole life & when people speak of their excitement or their “dream” to visit NYC one day, I get it. I feel lucky that I’ve lived in the center of the chaos; I feel lucky that now I’m only tens of minutes away on the outskirts of the hubbub. However, recently, things have had a subtle shift. The geographical love of my life has begun to fray at the edges, blurring my vision from behind my rose-colored glasses, adding an anxious thrum to the usually enthralled pulse that runs through me at just the sight of the concrete jungle.
New York, NYC, MY.NY., The Big Apple, The City That Never Sleeps is..amazing. It’s awesome. It’s incredible. It’s a world of its own with the population of the city being so diverse, you might as well have a passport for the island. You can be proffered a taste of a little bit of everything, a little bit of something, but sometimes that can transform into a little bit of nothing. New York has an inherent electricity far different from the literal Times Square sense. Even the subways have an energy, even the sidewalks have a story. New York, the emotional oxymoron; a place with over 8 million people that struggle to find just one or two true connections. The palpable nature of the city can either be arousing or overwhelming, sometimes both. Opportunities call kindly to you from every neon sign, from every sky-scraping window, from every glittering marquis; but they also dangle temptingly in front of you like a carrot, making you walk blindly & aimlessly that one extra step after another in the hopes that you’ll be allowed to take a bite someday. Someday. Nightfall in NYC can be a startlingly different experience from one 12 hour gap to the next. One night you’re out at a restaurant, a jazz bar, a club, & life is good and jubilant and you’re a firecracker about the town without a burden to shoulder. The next, you’re home in your shoebox studio that’s costing you your pension eating Ramen noodles & watching Sex & The City’s glossy glammed up version of a very different reality, & wondering why you feel alone in a city full of promised promise.
Don’t get me wrong, I am still thoroughly obsessed with my town. I love the “melting pot,” the variety, the camaraderie (it does happen sometimes!). I live for feeling alive when I walk through Central Park in the summer or 5th Avenue in the winter, Union Square in the fall, The Met in the spring. The sparkling lights still set something ablaze in the pit of my stomach (that is not attributed to the spices from an NY slice), my colorful memories leap out at me from every psychic-resided corner. I roam my undergraduate hallways of Washington & Waverly, gazing at the billowing purple NYU flags that are now ubiquitous at every turn from FiDi to SoHo to The Village to Midtown, reminiscing about that first day that my address read “New York, NY 10003” & how I was ready to embrace the place like a long lost love that I never knew I had. The creativity, the individuality, the temperament that is solely New York still tugs at my heartstrings like a child determinedly pulling a mother into a candy store. But now & again, I wonder if “MY.NY.” will forever be in the throes of a lifelong identity crisis.
“I carry the place around the world in my heart but sometimes I try to shake it off in my dreams.”-F.Scott Fitzgerald
Today’s Interlude(s): “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra & “Empire State Of Mind” by Jay-Z & Alicia Keys
champagne & cookiedough 