I recently spent a week in New York City, and while there is not much that can be said about this place that hasn’t already been said, indulge me.
I moved to NYC in the spring of 2014, freshly broken-hearted. I arrived with 2 suitcases and a whole lot of moxie— hellbent on making my dreams of a career in fashion come true. I left exactly 8 years later, in the spring of 2022, freshly broken-hearted, with only 2 suitcases, the dream achieved and retired.
The last 2 years have been a lifetime. I’ve been roving around new-to-me places. Since moving back to the East Coast in the beginning of this year, I’d been dreaming about returning to NYC for a proper visit as I was now just a drive away.
A part of me knew I had been really homesick. I didn’t realize it was for New York. When I was there, I stayed with a friend in his brownstone in Park Slope, a stone’s throw away from the last apartment I lived in during my tenure there. With so many people and places I can’t (or don’t want to) go back to, returning— especially to such a familiar place— was a balm for my soul. While I continue to cultivate home, peace, and safety within, retracing so many familiar steps felt like a deeper layer of integration of these many moons. (I wrote about a more subtle version of this when I returned to the East Coast back in February.)
Nothing had changed. Everything has changed. With me. With the city.
We drove in at night, passing the very first apartment I lived in: on Ryerson Street on the boarder of Fort Green and the Navy Yards. It’s easy to pass and easy to spot because it is essentially on the BQE. It was living there in mid-2014 that I learned what a jake break was as they became my bone-rattling alarm clock each morning.
As soon as my feet stepped onto the loop in Prospect Park— that I used to walk every single day— a portal opened. There were the high speed cyclists that rip around that loop while scream-talking at each other. All at once, scenes of all of the lovers and friends I’d walked around that loop with, especially when I was unemployed and wanted to suggest something free to do, can rushing back like a psychedelic montage. Walking in and out of Subway entrances that used to be part of my daily commute. Being careful to avoid certain spots. I set massive layers of protection against seeing some of them again, knowing they’re likely still nearby, and prayed/wished/hoped to see a few. I didn’t see anyone I hadn’t planned on seeing. Instead, catching up with old friends, friends from shitty corporate jobs. Coworkers who turned to soul family.
I got to eat at all of my favorite comfort food spots. New York ruins you for restaurants. It was a week-long, mostly carb-fest of all of the burgers, bagels, sushi, tacos, pizza, and ice cream my little heart could desire. Returning to some beloved places, and venturing to a few new ones.
I would have fleeting moments, seconds or less, of timelines fusing. Looking into windows and realizing I’d looked in that exact same window before and admired that paint color or lighting choice. The full body remembrance of the way the subway smells when it's humid and 90 degrees above ground. I was taking the train into Manhattan to meet a friend for a burger and museum date, wearing a dress I’d looked down on the subway wearing probably dozens of times and …. oop!… I would forget I didn’t live there. I wasn’t going back to *my* home, I was going back to my friend’s place because I’m just visiting.
Went back to Rockaway Beach and swam in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in a couple of years. That used to be a weekly summer ritual of mine. It felt really good to have it sort of upgraded since we drove this time, instead of the very long subway ride.
I went back to Waverly Avenue; 9 short blocks in Clinton Hill, from Flushing to Atlantic. These blocks where the punctuation to a story I didn’t know was being written. To a story I didn’t know I’d need as a lifeline one day. Something, and someone, was coming all along. (A story to share another time.)
I reveled in the agency, ease, and adventure of a walkable city. Enjoying the way of moving though a place where I didn’t have to Google map everything just to leave my house. It's something I’ve really been struggling with in the shift to rural life— to do anything I have to get in a car and drive.
It's really the best time of year, I think. Sure, it's humid but it stays light out late. The streets are enrobed in a lush canopy of leaves that dampens the hum of the city a little bit.
I was also reminded about the sheer madness of conversations being relegated almost exclusively to talking about labor. On the beach, on the subway, in restaurants, in the park. One friend group was seemingly so exhausted talking about their own work, and their own jobs, that they started talking about the jobs of people that weren't even present. I heard one very lengthy conversation about a friend's boyfriend's sister's job. (She does graphics for The Sphere in Las Vegas, and previously was at MSG doing the same and but went to Vegas when the company split into two entities, FWIW.)
I’d rejected the notion of home for a long time. Home was a place of immense pain and trauma. Of endurance and survival. But New York is home too. I’ve spent most of my adult life so far there. Sure there were some bumps and bruises, but mostly I felt incredibly held yet free there. My chosen home. A place I was always more excited to come back to than to leave. My Being was able to reorganize itself finally, being at home. I needed the immense energy center of the Lenape homeland to calibrate to all of the shifts and changes that have happened since I was last home.