It’s not you New York, it’s me
Knowing how to write this without it reading as a boo-hoo me diary entry feels almost impossible, except to explicitly state that this is positively not a boo-hoo me diary entry.
What it is, in fact, is an admittance that I royally fucked up my move to New York, in every way that one can fuck up uprooting their life and moving across the globe.
Speaking on this more than a year on from the fact has allowed a cheeky old thing called perspective to rewrite the narrative I’d been spinning about my move to New York City.
So often we see in our social media feeds the romanticised lens of trading your home roots in for something more; something bigger and better only attained through kissing your old life goodbye. Re: the girl who sat behind you in English who is now a London local, snapped on a weekend getaway to Greece with her English beau. Or that old work colleague who has now climatised to their new LA routine of hiking and Erewhon kale salads. It’s easy to be seduced by the idea of a new life and identity when your own seems plagued by mundanity, especially when it’s sold by those who do so as a done deal to greener grass.
But it seems we almost never see the flip of the coin - the people who left behind their former ordinary lives in search of that charmed je ne sais quoi and fail to find it. The people who are simply outrunning themselves and land in new countries, indefinitely miserable in their new homes but unable to face their failure: people like me.
On first landing in New York, with a visa in one hand and a box of de-gas in the other (atmospheric pressure, am I right?) there was a pesty tug at my ribs (not gas), but an inclination that something was amiss. I passed it off as misplaced excitement, though I’d known that it wasn’t. It was the part of me that I’d hoped had missed the flight – the anxious and ordinary part that had for the last 23 years narrated my existence. On the taxi ride into the city, I had the first of what would be many bite-sized breakdowns. In between bated breath I realised that while I was in a new city, I was unfortunately still the same old me.
I hadn’t known that in the city that never slept, I wasn’t the exception to the rule. I’d spent the first week or so unpeeling myself from the leather seats of cabs, into bars with eclectic wall hangings and shit wine. I was trying on new personalities to see what fit, but I’d soon retire into myself, with night’s spent on my coil-spring mattress, listening to the symphony of sirens and horns of irate taxi drivers below. Perhaps that’s where the problem began – maybe I wasn’t having an existential crisis, maybe I just needed a fucking Valium.
It was on a street somewhere between Canal and Chrystie when I first allowed myself to accept that I’d made a mistake in moving to New York. It was summer in the city and the air was opaque and laced with the scent of hot garbage, as apartment blocks trash bags cooked on the city’s sidewalks. I felt stifled and lost and lied to by HBO – no one on TV ever mentioned the unavoidable stench of urine that plagued subway stations.
“I’d walked these same streets before, often times blanketed in a sheet of snow, drunk off the possibility of making them my home one day. But now, I could see what lay beneath all that momentary stardust and I was finding it hard to remember what I ever loved so much about this city. ”
I’d walked these same streets before, often times blanketed in a sheet of snow, drunk off the possibility of making them my home one day. But now, I could see what lay beneath all that momentary stardust and I was finding it hard to remember what I ever loved so much about this city. Much like when you watch a potential love interest lick an ice cream or say ‘yummy’, the ick was becoming too strong to fight.
The sidewalks were littered with suspiciously human looking faeces, subway rats the size of rabbits staggered past unflinching commuters and passing strangers walked with the vigour of a drunk girl hell bent on starting a fight. That’s to say, people seemed indefinitely incensed and unphased by the overwhelming scent of shit. In my romanticisation of New York, I’d once found this grunge and unapologetic moodiness to be charming, but now I spent my days just craving the smile of a stranger on a sidewalk. The hustle of the city didn’t feel lively and inspiring anymore, it felt monotonous and exhausting.
Within my first few weeks I’d lost every sense of security I’d acquired before the move – chalk it up to talent, folks. On that note, I bid the following advice to those making an overseas move to avoid the dumpster fire that was my experience. Do not sign a lease before seeing the apartment in real life, ever. I’d signed on to live with a French woman who lived off a diet off cigarettes, mayonnaise and sardines, in what appeared to be a walk-in wardrobe disguised as an apartment.
Don’t ghost anyone, it’s very 2010, but especially don’t ghost your employer. Abby Lee Miller said it best: ‘Everyone’s replaceable.’ Most importantly, do not expect some huge, earth shatteringly visceral change within yourself to come out of merely moving, that’s not how it works.
New York is ruthless and as I watched the chain of dominos come crashing down, I wasn’t sure that I even cared. I was one blow away from grabbing a bucket of popcorn and watching everything go up in flames. In hindsight, I think I’d been waiting for a valid reason to leave that would damage my ego the least, and it was coming in in spades. No expat wants to admit that they’d made a mistake and grossly misjudged their capabilities in surviving a new city, but no apartment or job, what choice do I have but to come home?
I could never have anticipated just how homesick I could feel for a place I thought I’d loathed. I’d worked so hard to leave it behind but now I ached for the mundanities of listening to my parents bicker over how much salt a recipe called for, or to bury my head into the sweet little cowlick that swirled in the centre of my dog’s chest. It’s funny how those little comforts of home grow two-fold once they’re no longer accessible to you. I’d chased my happiness across the world, and it was only on arrival that I realised it had never been there. I was 16,662km away, but I’d never felt closer to everything and everyone I’d left behind.
When I consider why it is that I moved to New York I think it was to do with my ego more than anything else. New York had felt like a human entity to me - a bad boy with commitment issues – and I wanted to make him love me. To conquer him. But I’d come to learn that I wasn’t the exception. He chewed me up and spat me out and rightfully so. I’d expected to be swept up into a city’s arms that I’d only ever held at arm’s length.
I realised I had no compelling reason to stay, except to say that I hadn’t failed. But I’d grafted so much of my identity within New York that leaving felt a lot like tearing myself apart. I didn’t know who I’d be without it, but I didn’t know who I was with it either. On my return home, I’d been bitter for months. I felt betrayed by a city that owed me absolutely nothing.
“ New York is harsh and dirty and big and beautiful; it is perpetually flawed. Those who know themselves well survive there, and those who don’t, well, they lose a shit tonne of money. ”
Now when I think of New York, I think of it fondly. I’m no longer a scorned lover. I can see now that New York was never the problem; it never pretended to be anything it wasn’t, it was me that had been pretending. New York is harsh and dirty and big and beautiful; it is perpetually flawed. Those who know themselves well survive there, and those who don’t, well, they lose a shit tonne of money. I’ll always love you New York and maybe one day we’ll find each other again, and maybe this time I’ll have the balls to stay.
Words — Taylor Richardson
Image — Arch McLeish via Pinterest
