I’m from a small town where there is still no pizza delivery, and the student of the month at the local middle school has a good chance of being first-page news, if there’s no competing car accident or church rummage sale.
I don’t miss it at all.
New York gives me the anonymity to love and live loud without caring who hears, the guts to try out new styles, both in fashion and life. Moving here knowing no one, all my possessions in two suitcases, was intoxicating.
Slowly, it happens. You build a life with a job, dwelling, and community. The network of friends happens somehow in the midst of that. When you’re young and energetic, you may decide to shed one life for another every six months or so, like a very calculating reptile. “Who do I want to be now?” you ask yourself as you hunt for jobs or guys or sample sales or cheap yoga classes. I think it all fulfills the same purpose.
I’m a few years older now than I was when I first moved here. The early Christmases made me a little homesick and culminated in tearful, crowded flights home to family and other people who have already made up their minds about who I am.
This year, I’m fine. I can finally afford an apartment with more than two rooms. Someone is in love with me. In a shaky economy, I still have a job and insurance and day-long access to the Internet. Something inside me has settled in the best way.
There’s one tiny heartbreak I’m nursing, though. The man who passed out AM New York at the subway station by my apartment has gone. For over a year, he greeted me every weekday and was often the first person I spoke to when I woke up. The AM New York man didn’t seem to mind that I only took the paper from him when I had nothing to read or saw that Michelle Obama was on the cover. We moved to the next level, when he gave me candy on Halloween. (It felt better than when the cleaners actually remembered my name, and close to when the fruit cart man near my office didn’t charge me).
A short woman who shoves the papers at everyone has replaced the AM New York man. She won’t learn my face, nor I hers. It seems silly for me to even romanticize the bond I had with her predecessor. We never exchanged names and maybe had nothing in common, besides one point in geography. But this is a large, aloof city. People like him who keep an eye on me, who notice when I’m late to work or change my hair, make home now feel more like home then.
I guess I do sort of miss it.
