new york

812 Miles

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Mile 1

Of all the car doors I’ve shut in my life, this one feels the most final.

Mile 31

I can finally breathe properly for the first time in days or weeks (I’m not sure). As soon as we got on the road, I instantly felt better, so instantly that I’d call it miraculous if I weren’t already so familiar with my own patterns.

The last fourteen or so hours have been some of the worst of my life. I was up till past 3 AM, crying and panicking too much to sleep. Everyone I knew nearby was either out of town or asleep, not that I’d ask to see them even if I could. I wanted to quit everything. I regretting signing my New York lease more than I’d ever regretted anything. If only, I thought, I could unsign that piece of paper, drop out of grad school, go home to Ohio, get a boring job, and never have to leave anyone or anything again.

I was online and made a bunch of rather miserable tweets that you can probably find if you wanted to, and luckily there were a few people around to talk me down from it. I suddenly remembered that my friend Andrew had, earlier that day, brought me a chocolate muffin and I’d left it in the disheveled kitchen. That got me out of bed, and I mechanically walked–though it felt more like crawling–through the ghost of an apartment until I found it and brought it back with me. For some reason this made all the difference.

But the morning wasn’t much better. I got less than three hours of sleep. I woke up at 6 AM when my alarm went off and realized this was not a nightmare. Through the gaps between my drawn curtains, I saw that it was sunny, beautiful out. My soon-to-be-former home was waking up and starting the day with complete disregard for whether or not I would be there by that day’s end.

I could barely open my eyes all the way and I cried about everything. I cried when I saw my room completely empty, I cried when I had to throw away some things that wouldn’t fit, I cried when I walked down the street to get a bagel (with lox), I cried in the shower, I cried when I hugged my roommate (and friend) goodbye.

For one morning I was the world champion of crying. I could cry at literally anything. I could cry about taking my apartment key off of my keychain. And I did.

Mile 85

I’m lucky that the biggest moves of my life–from Israel to Germany back to Israel and finally to the United States–happened before I was 7 years old. I was too young to understand what I was losing, too young to remember more than the fuzziest outlines of the architectures of my former homes.

The only time I start to understand is when I visit Israel and walk through its streets. Suddenly, unbidden, an alternate universe unfolds in front of me and I start to wonder–who would my friends be? Which cafes would I write in? Would I even be a writer? What would I sound like, speaking Hebrew fluently and without an accent? How different would I look and dress? What would I study?

(All I know about that alternate-universe me is that they would still call me Miri, because that’s how Israelis abbreviate my name.)

And I start to mourn a self that could never be. I idly consider moving back, even though I know it wouldn’t work, I could never get back what I’d lost.

But the life I’m leaving now is not hypothetical. That me existed. I had friends here. I had routines. I had places I loved to go. I pelted my friends with snowballs and read by the lake on summer evenings and cried on benches surrounded by gardens that were more beautiful than I felt I deserved.

I loved people there, and I was loved.

Mile 116

There’s not a single cloud in the sky in northern Indiana today. We drive past fields of soybeans and ripe corn, interrupted here and there by patches of woods. The sunlight flashes off of silos and tractors standing idle in the fields. Occasionally, there are solemn wooden barns in various stages of disrepair.

Soon enough these landscapes will be a sight as rare as a good bagel outside of New York.

Mile 147

But actually, the second-worst part of this morning was the shower. After we’d packed everything into the van, my dad and I each took a shower so we wouldn’t be all sweaty and hot in the car. He went first, then went to wait outside. I took my shower and couldn’t make myself get out of it.

Not that I’m by any means an expedient showerer on the best of days or anything, but this time I really, really, really didn’t want to get out of it. At the other end of that shower awaited the rest of my life. After I got out of that shower and got dressed, there’d be nothing left to do but to say goodbye and get in the car and leave. There would be no more excuses. I had thrown away everything there was to throw away. I had vacuumed very carefully. There was no way to delay it anymore except have a tantrum and refuse to go like a four-year-old.

I didn’t do that. I turned off the water with shaking hands, leaned against the shower wall to try to catch my breath, dried off, reapplied my clothes, and left.

Mile 165

My dad wants to prove to me that the iPhone car adaptor he has is jacked up, so he tells me to play some music. He has an idiosyncratic music taste (everything from classical to Amy Winehouse), so I went with something safe: the Russian music I grew up with.

The song is called “We’re Leaving” (except in Russian) and I obviously chose it on purpose. I can’t do it justice in translation, but I’ll just say that it’s a sweetly optimistic song about leaving and going somewhere you know you’re loved, but leaving behind people who love you too. There’s also some stuff in there about not really knowing what lies ahead, and about understanding that time will heal you, and about, basically, getting your shit together and helping other people. So, needless to say, it’s at least a tiny bit relevant to my particular situation.

It also talks about how quickly time always passes when you’re about to leave, or when someone is about to leave you. That’s the part that always hurt me the most about leaving. I’d know that I have just a week left and that it’s killing me, but that soon I’d feel like I’d do anything to still have a whole week left. And then there’s a day left and it’s killing me, but soon I’ll wish more than anything to still have that day. And then an hour, and then half, and then no time at all.

For the last few weeks I’ve been terribly worried that when my dad arrived to pack up my things into the van, they wouldn’t fit, or some other calamity would happen and we’d fight about it and arrangements would have to be made and it would be a huge mess. This thought was extremely stressful, but there was little I could do about it because I couldn’t exactly visualize how much space the van would have or how much space my things would take up once they were all packed up.

But then my dad showed up, looked over my things, and made absolutely no comment about the glaring possibility that they would not fit and a Disaster would occur. We carried the stuff down the stairs quickly and easily because I’d packed it into many small boxes rather than fewer large ones. It fit into the car easily, without anything fragile being squished, and with space to spare. I was sort of dumbfounded.

Then during the drive my dad mentioned to a few people on the phone that I’d packed very well and everything had been easy, and I realized an embarrassing truth: I had been hoping that the things wouldn’t fit and there would be fights and it would be a Disaster.

After all, it would delay the inevitable moment when I’d have to leave.

Mile 247

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Harder than any academic program, harder than hiking the Negev in August, harder than band camp in 95-degree heat, harder than applying to college or grad school, harder than any breakup, harder than getting into (and staying in) treatment for depression. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. There will be harder things in the future, but for now this is it.

Mile 293

Last night at some point I went on a bit of a rant about sexual assault and victim-blaming, because it’s been on my mind lately since I’m completely terrified of going anywhere alone in New York after 11 PM.

As I tried to explain to someone who has never had to worry about it: imagine going through the WORST thing that could ever happen to you, and imagine knowing that no matter how it happened–no matter HOW–people you love, people with legal and social authority, people with power would blame you for it. The first words out of their mouths would be to blame you. No matter how it happened. You could be sitting on your fucking couch in your ratty sweatpants, eating popcorn, when it happened, and they would tell you that maybe you were sitting too attractively.

That, to me, is worse than the sexual assault itself. Much worse. I can probably deal with physical pain and trauma, but the social isolation that will follow is a different beast.

That, to me, is why it doesn’t actually matter that New York is totally safe these days and come on stop acting like it’s such a terrible place when it’s totally not anymore. (I know that. I love it, after all.)

If I get raped or mugged in New York, people I care about will ask me why I was out alone in New York. Full stop. If I get raped or mugged in New York, my options are 1) hide this from people I care about, including lying about any injuries that result, or 2) get blamed.

That many people find it acceptable that half of the world’s population is terrorized and trapped indoors at night by the threat of gendered violence is a testament to the dismaying power of cognitive biases to create and perpetuate oppression.

Mile 423

The Midwestern farmlands have gradually turned into nearly-unbroken deciduous forests and lazily rolling hills. The sun is setting. I’ve just eaten chicken nuggets with barbecue sauce, which I generally end up eating at some point on just about every road trip.

I mentioned once before that the first time I went to New York City on my own, it was for a stupid reason. I’ll elaborate: it was for a guy. The same one I could barely make myself stop hugging back in Chicago this morning. (Was it really just this morning?)

That was the reason I went, but it wasn’t the reason I stayed. New York eventually helped me rediscover the person I used to be, before depression and before I started clinging desperately onto people in an attempt to avoid the misery I felt. I used to love being alone. I used to take long walks and write for hours rather than in short bursts. I used to treasure my own company. I used to need no one else to have fun.

In New York I started doing all these things again. During the summer that I spent there two years ago, I’d hole up in bookstores and read entire books in a single city. One time I walked from Battery Park all the way to the northern end of Central Park: nine miles in a day. I took the bus to Rockaway Beach alone. I sprawled on the grass in Central Park alone. I even went to Times Square alone, although in Times Square you can never be alone.

As terrified as I still am of being alone in the city, I know that it’s my favorite place in the world to be alone.

Mile 482

For the past four years I’ve believed earnestly that coming to Northwestern/Chicago was a huge mistake, one of the biggest I’d ever made. Although over time I stopped imagining what life might’ve been like had I chosen better, I never really stopped believing that it had been the wrong choice.

Until last night. Only last night, sitting on a cold rock at midnight while Lake Michigan danced beneath me, did I realize that it had not been a mistake, and I had been in exactly the right place, and there was no reason to regret anything.

But all I could do with that realization was go home, try to sleep, wake up early, and move far away.

Mile 692

It’s dark now. We’re driving through the mountains in Pennsylvania. They’re black silhouettes against a slightly less black sky, full of stars I’m not going to see again for a while. We’re not talking much anymore, but my dad is playing me some music he’s discovered recently.

We thought that love was over,
That we were really through
I said I didn’t love him,
That we’d begin anew
And you can all believe me,
We sure intended to,
But we just couldn’t say goodbye.

This brings up all sorts of memories of my now-former life and I almost choke up again.

Mile 743

For the first time this entire trip, we hit traffic. We inch forward painstakingly until the traffic jam clears up. It does so right as we pass the “Welcome to New Jersey” sign. Go figure.

Mile 789

I can tell we’re close. The sky is a dark, dirty orange, and more and more signs for New York City are zooming past us.

Now I’m thinking that this is a huge mistake, that I shouldn’t have moved to New York or I shouldn’t have decided to study social work or neither. I know why I feel this way, though. The move is triggering memories of college, of how sure I was that Northwestern was the right place for me to go and journalism was the right thing for me to study, of how dearly both those decisions ended up costing me.

But I have to keep reminding myself that this isn’t like that. I did my research this time. I found out what the social work curriculum is like and what my professors research and what services Columbia offers and what I can do with my degree and what sort of starting salary I can expect and which agencies Columbia works with to provide field placements and how to get licensed to practice therapy afterward and whether I can transfer that license to another state should I leave New York and how much it would all cost and how long it would take me to pay back the loans and what loan forgiveness programs are available and so much more.

I researched New York, too, by traveling there so much and visiting different parts of it and becoming very, very well-acquainted with Google Maps. While my love for the city is probably not very rational, my decision to move there was very much so. I did my research. I will not have to regret this. I will not.

Mile 800

In the distance, I see the skyline.

Mile 810

We’re speeding over the Hudson River on the George Washington Bridge. Literally speaking, I know what lies before me (it’s Manhattan), but other than that I have no idea. I might love it, I might hate it, or–most likely–I will have some complicated combination of feelings about it.

I do know that across that bridge will be a graduate degree, maybe even two. Across that bridge, barring any huge setbacks, will be two licenses that will allow me to do the work I want to do. Across that bridge are people I love, people my family has known for years and years. Across that bridge are people who will eventually mean the world to me, but I haven’t even met them yet. Across that bridge are the places I go every chance I get.

Across that bridge is a city where the lights never go out and the trains run all night. Across that bridge is a city I know is home, even if I don’t feel it quite yet.

But the rest is largely a mystery. In a few minutes I’ll be there.

812 Miles
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On Memories Of Former Homes

Miri, , , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

The market is swarming with people on Friday afternoon. Tables covered with piles of fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, bread, and household goods beckon as their owners shout their prices into the din. Feral cats dart beneath the tables, dodging people and cars to snatch scraps of food. Shoppers haggle: “Ten shekels for this? No way. I’ll give you eight.”

If you listen closely, you’ll hear Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, English, and probably more. You’ll see men with kippas and black hats. You’ll see women, including young girls, with every inch of skin covered but their hands and faces, and women with miniskirts and crop tops. You’ll see schoolchildren shopping for their families and old men and women dragging bags of groceries on their own. There will always, at any given moment, be an old lady standing at the curb and shouting at a bus driver because the bus route has changed, and the rest of the passengers are shouting to her which bus to take instead.

More than anything, you’ll notice the heat. It beats down from the sky and rises from the pavement, seeps out of buses and cars and into your body like a poison. It’s a dry heat, which may seem like a small comfort, but it makes all the difference.

Past the market stalls and down the mountain, the Mediterranean glimmers. By this time of year it’s nearly impossible to actually swim in thanks to the jellyfish, but if you swim in the bay you’ll be fine.

The hours pass and the market starts to shut down. By the time the sun is setting, the whole city has slowed nearly to a stop: buses don’t run anymore, stores have closed, and the last few stragglers are rushing through the streets to get home. As night falls, the smell of freshly-baked challah flows out of open windows along with the prayers and songs of Shabbat.

To you, this may be unfamiliar and weird and even uncomfortable; to me, it was home.

~~~

When I was 13, I returned to Israel for the first time since my family moved away seven years earlier. That trip, at the time, meant absolutely everything to me. It was a chance to rediscover my history and heritage. It was a vacation from the boredom and bullying that made up my school days. Most of all, it was an escape from the horrible new feeling–not even just a feeling, but a way of being, really–that had seeped into every little corner of my life. Six years later, I would learn to call it depression.

Those two weeks in Israel caused mood swings the likes of which I’d never experienced before (but that would become too familiar over the following nine years). I felt ecstatic to be back in what I then considered my Real Home and full of wonder at the things I was seeing and learning. Being there caused a flood of old memories to resurface and I delighted in them.

But at the same time, I balked with increasing fear and horror at the idea of returning to my miserable American existence, which I was certain I could cure only by returning to Israel after high school. (I did not, obviously, know about antidepressants.)

Although I knew I’d miss the food and the stunning beauty and the beach and all that, what I knew I’d miss the most was just that feeling that I had there, that unmistakeable thereness.

I told my mom in tears that I was terrified of forgetting what it was like to be there, and in response she told me about a trip she took to southern Russia as a teenager, a trip that grew fuzzier in her memory over time, but that she could never truly forget. Maybe the details were gone, but the essence was not and never would be.

Somewhat comforted, I tried to capture the “thereness” in any way I could. I associated it in my mind with certain smells and songs. I kept a detailed diary. I took photos. I recorded it in poems.

Ever since, I’ve been chasing that feeling.

~~~

Summer is probably the best time of the year to be in Ohio. It’s hot and muggy as hell, but everything becomes soft and beautiful in the summer. The fields of ripening corn ripple over hills left by glaciers long ago, and the streams that wind through the woods–assuming they haven’t dried up–are perfect for dipping your feet into.

My mom and I, and later my siblings once they were told enough, would often explore the paths that lead through these woods. Many of them separated different subdivisions from each other, or they were part of school grounds or parks. One such path led to a mysterious mansion far away from any other houses; another was strewn with paintballs that my little brother eagerly collected but that my sister was for some reason terrified of.

Summer in Ohio is anything but quiet. Cicadas can keep you up at night if you’re not used to them, and early in the morning you’ll be woken up by neighbors tending to their lawns more meticulously than my family ever did. Once or twice a week we’d drop whatever we were doing because we’d hear the ice cream truck coming down the street, and that was our favorite summer sound of all. (That, and the lifeguard’s whistle when breaktime ended at the pool.)

For a good twelve years or so, that’s how all my summers felt. Nowadays they’re quite different.

~~~

More wisdom from my mom: the summer before I started college, I was dating my best friend and we were about to go off to different schools. Although I’d spent the previous summer in Israel, away from my then-boyfriend, this was the first time I’d be in an indefinitely long-distance relationship and I wasn’t taking it well. His school started a month before mine did, so he was the first one to leave. My mom told me, explaining that my anguish was perfectly normal: “It’s always harder to be the one who stays.”

Maybe that’s a small part of the reason it’s so much easier now for me to love places than people. With places, I always get to be the one who leaves. Places don’t “grow out” of me and leave me; I grow out of them and leave them. People change suddenly, without warning; places usually change slowly and very predictably, if you know anything about sociology.

That’s not to say that my relationships with places are easy or simple. It took me a long time to understand that I love my town in Ohio in some way. It was painful to realize that I couldn’t stay there and still be myself. It was even more painful to come to Northwestern and realize that what I thought for five years would be a safe haven was actually rather cold and unwelcoming, and not the sort of place I would ever learn to belong in. Yet there were things I loved about it too.

When I was little I played a game with myself. It was very simple. All I did was pay careful attention to my surroundings and pretend that I was seeing them again after having been away for a very long time, perhaps because I’d been transported to a magical alternate universe and had just now found my way back (I liked fantasy novels as a kid; can you tell?). This game made me see ordinary things like my house or my backyard through an entirely new lens. I was able to make myself feel as though my boring white-bread neighborhood was the most amazing place in the world, simply by pretending that I’d been forced to leave it for a while.

Later on, that actually sort of happened. No, I didn’t get transported through a wormhole to an alternate universe; I just went back to Israel for a whole summer (the aforementioned summer). When I returned to Ohio, I instantly fell in love with it in a way I never had before. It was so green. So quiet. So comfortable. I could understand the language strangers spoke to me. How had I ever taken that for granted?

I never really lost that feeling, and I carry it with me now as I move to a place that’s almost as different from Ohio as Israel is.

~~~

Everyone whines that they hate snow, but you can feel the energy pick up on campus as the flurries turn to snowflakes that grow bigger and bigger. Just a few hours ago it was sunny and above freezing, but that’s Chicago weather for you.

As Deering Field turns from green to white, students on break from class (or maybe just skipping) show up to throw snowballs and make snowmen. Past the field, Deering Library towers imperiously like a set from Harry Potter. In fact, we’d often jokingly call it Hogwarts.

If you walk past the library and down to the lake, you’ll see the hundreds of huge rocks that line the coast. Most of them have been painted by students to celebrate friendships, relationships, student groups, or just their lives at Northwestern in general. Sometimes I see marriage proposals, sometimes I see my favorite song lyrics, sometimes I even see Russian words; I’m not sure which of those makes me happier.

Ever since I first saw the painted rocks the summer after my seventh-grade year, I knew I had to get into Northwestern and paint my own rock someday. I managed the first half of that, but, for some reason, not the second.

~~~

You might think that, as a person with depression, I tend to focus and ruminate on the negatives of things. Although I do that sometimes, I also have a remarkable ability to find the positive in just about everything. Usually this ability serves me very well; although I’m fragile during transitional periods and dislike change, once I’ve had some time to process things I’m able to adapt to just about anything. That’s because I find the good in it.

Ironically, though, when I’m depressed this turns into a sort of weakness. Like a lifesaving medicine that becomes a deadly poison in overdose, my happy memories of past homes become so potent during depression that they rob me of my ability to appreciate the present. When I’m depressed, I’m tortured by these memories, which play over and over in my mind like faded old movies that I can’t turn off. I remember the most insignificant little things: the worn-down steps to my grandma’s apartment building in Haifa, the porch swing on the deck back in Ohio, the hard and scratchy couch in my old dorm where I’d watch football games on TV in the fall, the sound of kids jumping off the diving board at the pool my family went to (still goes to; I’m just not there anymore), the snow falling around University Hall, the taste of a sudden mouthful of Mediterranean water, the slam of the door to the garage when my parents came home from work, the music of my high school marching band echoing through the muggy summer night.

I think of these things without wanting to and I hear the same cruel thought over and over: You will never feel these things again.

I have these memories, but the places they come from are lost to me forever.

Oh, sure, I could return, physically at least. I have returned. But the feelings are gone. That thereness is gone.

~~~

Another season, another (very different) campus. It’s a summer night in New York City and I’m sitting in front of Columbia’s Butler Library and crying for too many reasons to explain. Students–my peers, theoretically–walk past me in chattering groups and I wonder for the millionth time what’s wrong with me. I’m finally exactly where I wanted to be and somehow it still feels awful.

After a while I pick myself up and walk somewhat mechanically off of campus onto Broadway. The sun has just set, which in most of my previous homes would mean that things have either died down or will shortly. But here, the city is just coming to life. The restaurants around campus are still full. People are standing around in front of bars and on street corners talking. The 24-hour pharmacies and grocery stores and diners (I’m still amazed at the idea of a 24-hour anything other than Burger King or 7-Eleven) are full of customers.

The night is warm, but not hot, and I feel better.

There are, right now, over 8 million people in this city who are just like me and also not like me at all. All of them have, at some point, been as terrified and lonely as I am right now. All of them have places that they love and miss. All of them have friends that they rarely see, or might never see again. All of them have parts of their pasts that they wish they could relive, and parts of their pasts that they wish they could forget, and maybe even parts of their pasts that they wish they could both relive and forget, if only because forgetting would end that burning need to relive.

It’s hard to feel alone when I think about that.

~~~

People tell me that the new memories I’m making can replace those old ones. That the new home I’ve found makes up for the loss of my previous homes. It doesn’t, just as new friends can’t replace the ones I’ve lost. Love just doesn’t work that way.

For what it’s worth, I’m glad that I’ve moved to a place that I adore so much. I’m glad that I could live here for the rest of my life and still be learning new things about it all the time. I’m glad that I’m a just a subway ride away from sprawling parks you can get lost in and from some of the loudest, most crowded city streets I’ve ever seen, from stores that sell the food I grew up with and stores that sell food I’ve never heard of or tasted before.

But those memories continue to haunt me and I know that I have to live with them somehow.

The best I can do is to try to capture them in writing so that I don’t have to carry their weight on my own, but it seems that I can’t. At best, writing provides a facsimile, a movie-set version of landscapes that were endlessly deep and rich. They didn’t end with a painted backdrop.

Sometimes I feel like I’d give anything for just one more day to inhabit these old places, homes, selves, lives. I want to feel like I felt when I lived there. I want to feel like the person I was, even though I don’t actually want to be that person anymore.

Isn’t there any way I can come back?

Most of all, though, I don’t want to lose yet another home. But it’s too late. I made the decision to move months ago, and even if I’d chosen to stay in Chicago, it wouldn’t have been the same. College is over. Those lazy days in coffee shops and bookstores are over. Running down the hall or down the stairs to see my friends is over. I will never again feel like I felt when I did those things, and I will never again be the person who did them.

I have to keep telling myself this so that it’ll sink in, even though telling myself this feels like shit. Otherwise I’ll keep feeling like any minute now I’ll wake up back in my old apartment and realize that this whole New York thing was just a weird and kind of scary dream, and it’s time to throw on some clothes and get to class.

But the funny thing is that someday this, right now, is what I’ll miss. Someday the memories I’m making right now will have a “thereness” of their own and I will miss them just as terribly as I miss Israel and Ohio and college now. Someday I’ll look back on my first days and weeks in New York and smile and cry about them.

It is probably true that whenever I travel between these four places in the future, I will simultaneously be leaving and coming home. I’m trying to make my peace with it, as awkward as it feels.

It’s weird, isn’t it? Loving more than one person feels completely natural to me.

Loving more than one place, though, feels like betrayal.

On Memories Of Former Homes

Excited, Worried, Scared Shitless: How I Feel About Moving

Miri, , , , , 20 Comments
Photo May 08, 19 16 27
Apartments in SoHo, April.

As I’ve certainly mentioned here countless times already, I’m moving to New York City at the end of the summer–in just three and a half months. I’ve wanted to do this for years, and I’ve visited the city so many times while I’ve been in college that it’s long felt like a second home. Or third. Or whatever.

My love for the city is like nothing else I’ve ever felt. I’m not really one to be a huge “fan” of things–TV shows, book series, comics, games, drinks, anything–but when it comes to New York I’m like one of those obsessive fans, an aficionado, a groupie. I read about its history and geography. I trek through its streets and make my own mental maps. I follow its news and politics. A particularly stunning photo of New York will often make me tear up, and when Hurricane Sandy hit last fall it was like getting punched in the gut. But each time I travel there and see the lights of Manhattan through the plane window yet again, it’s like reuniting with one of those friends–you know, the ones you’ve only known for a few years, but feel like you’ve actually known since childhood and wonder how you ever lived without.

So in many ways, when I move in three and a half months it’ll feel less like moving and more like coming home.

Who’s cutting onions in here, by the way? Yikes.

Most people who know me know all this, because I talk about it all the damn time. You know those people who won’t shut the fuck up about Beyonce or cats or beer or whatever? That’s me with New York. Many people have even mistakenly assumed that I’m from there, which puzzled me until I realized that in this country it’s customary to love the place you’re from. If I love New York so much, that must be my hometown.

So, when I got into graduate school and told everyone I’m finally-finally-finally moving to the city I love, people were happy for me because they knew how much this means. And as the still-undecided date nears, conversations with people often go like this: “So you’re moving soon! Isn’t that SO EXCITING? Aren’t you SO EXCITED?”

Yeah, I am, and that’s obviously a reasonable assumption to make. But that’s not at all the only thing I’m feeling right now, and when people ask me that it makes it impossible to talk to them about what this is really like for me, in all its complexity. (When I’ve tried it with people I know well by saying things like, “Yeah, I’m really excited, although it’ll also be pretty stressful finding a place to live,” they usually wave it off with something like “Yeah but you’ll figure it out I mean come on NEW YORK ISN’T THAT EXCITING?”)

Of the two extremes, this is by far the better one. There have also been people in my life before who seem desperate to make everything into a negative: “Oh, boy, just wait till you see what it’s really like. Unaffordable, hot, loud, and smells like garbage. You’ll be back in the Midwest before you know it.” Uh, thanks, dude, but I think I know where I’d prefer to live.

It’s true that I dislike small talk and prefer conversations that actually go somewhere and result in people actually learning things about each other, so maybe that’s why being compelled to grin and talk about how excited I am rubs me the wrong way. Maybe people don’t really want to hear about some of the other thoughts I have about moving. Which is fine.

That’s why I have a blog.

So yeah, I’m excited. But I’m also scared shitless. How will I find a place to live? How will I be able to afford the things I need, let alone just a few of the ones I want? How will I find a job in two years?

I’m also proud. Because despite being scared shitless, I’m doing it anyway, and I might not’ve at an earlier point in my life. I might’ve chosen to stay close to my family and the friends I already have and decided that the risk of moving somewhere new and dealing with those new stressors was too much for me to handle. And I wouldn’t blame anyone for doing that, but I still get to be proud of myself for overcoming those fears.

I’m also just unsure. Will I miss the leafy streets of the suburbs I’ve lived in? Will I miss the quiet? Will I miss the smell of freshly mowed lawns, and the joy of running through sprinklers in the summer? Will I miss lying by the pool, everything silent except for kids laughing somewhere in the distance? Will I miss going to parks in the fall? I don’t mean like Central Park. I mean big state parks with trails and rivers and ravines and fallen trees you have to step over. People have told me my whole life that I belong in a big city, but were they right?

(Sometimes I miss my parents’ house so much I can’t breathe. Sometimes I just wish I could call it mine again.)

I’m also curious. Who will my friends be? What will my routine be like? Which subway stop will become “mine”? Where will I go thrifting, where will I buy groceries, which bookstores will I fall in love with? Will I ever find a coffee shop that has wifi and outlets and at least one empty table? I know I won’t get to do all the things I want to do, but which ones will I get to do? Will I take up martial arts? Will I volunteer somewhere? Will I join some queer/poly groups?

I’m also worried. Which of my friends will I never see again? How will I be able to visit my parents? Will I still be able to go to conferences? How will I work out? Will I have to choose between eating healthy food and buying clothes when my old ones rip?

I’m also sad. I’m sad to be leaving everyone and everything behind, and sad that I didn’t grow up in New York so I wouldn’t have to abandon my life just to live there. I’m sad that I can’t look at my room anymore without imagining it already packed up into boxes. I’m sad that, to a certain extent, wanting to move to New York so much kept me from just being happy to be here.

All of this I cannot say when people ask me if I’m excited, expecting an unhesitant “Yes!”. And although I’m happy to talk about how much I love the city and how much I’m looking forward to moving, sometimes the weight of the unspoken fears and regrets and uncertainties feels heavier than the boxes into which I’ll pack up my life and send it–by car or train or plane or all three–800 miles east.

But, yes, I’m excited. I’m excited to drive over the bridge to Manhattan for the last time, excited to check out CFI-NYC and meet all the people here, excited to help lead my school’s feminist student group, excited to start my classes and my internship. I’m excited to finally get a pet, if my lease allows it, and to have a creature to love and take care of.

I’m excited to finally explore all the places I’ve wanted to explore and all the ones I haven’t even heard of yet, and to return to the ones I already love. I’m excited to see the new World Trade Center when it’s finished. I’m excited to watch Central Park turn orange, red, and yellow in a few months.

I’m excited to take the subway to Queens or Brooklyn to see my family. I’m excited to get to know even better these distant relatives whom I nevertheless call “aunts” and “cousins” because that’s a better approximation of how it feels. I’m excited to get out of the city sometimes–to Long Island to go to the beach, upstate to go camping, to New England to go skiing, to Boston and DC to see friends.

I’m excited for all the nights out, the lectures and talks, the yoga classes, the concerts and operas and ballets, the sports games, the dates, the shopping trips, and the days at the beach that are in my future. But not only that–I’m excited for the nights spend cooking and watching TV with my roommates, the weekends spent writing at my desk, glancing out the window to see the snow fall. I’m excited to feel like I can just relax at home for as long as I want without the pressure to go out and explore, because my days in the city won’t be numbered anymore.

I’m excited to finally put down roots somewhere for the first time, because for my whole life I’ve known that “home” is only temporary. I don’t want to move anymore. I don’t want to move for years and years, if ever.

I’m excited for the day when someone asks me where I’m from and, for the first time, I instinctively say, “New York.”

Railroad tracks to Manhattan
Railroad tracks to Manhattan
Excited, Worried, Scared Shitless: How I Feel About Moving

Learning Racism on the NYC Subway

Miri, , , , , 5 Comments

I spent this past week in New York City with my mom and little siblings, who are six and nine years old, respectively. Aside from a few times that they were too young to remember, this was their first time in the city and they had a great time.

On our last day in New York, however, they were confronted with a situation that they would never have encountered back home in Ohio.

We had just gotten on the subway in Queens to go to Manhattan. The train was full, but my  brother and sister found seats next to an older lady. My mom and I, meanwhile, stood facing them.

As my siblings sat down, the older lady mumbled something in their general direction. “I’m watching you,” she growled at them.

None of us paid much attention to this at first. I took out my phone and started reading on it, just as many other commuters on the train were doing.

And then the older lady started saying something that made me consciously notice her race–African American–for the first time.

“Are you takin’ pictures of me? You takin’ pictures of me? I can call the police on you for that. I’ll blow your brains out. Look at your ugly white face.”

I calmly ignored the diatribe, as is the unspoken code of conduct on the New York City subway. It’s impossible to spend even a day in the city without encountering at least one person who is drunk, high, schizophrenic, or otherwise in a state that makes them spew nonsense. The thing to do is to just let it go.

My mom and my siblings took note as the lady kept going.

“You bunch of white trash. I’m watchin’ all of you. You and you and you.” She gestured at my brother and sister.

She kept going in this vein right up until the train reached her station. She stood up and picked up her purse. “Finally I never have to see your ugly white faces again,” she said, and left the train.

I sat down in her seat next to my siblings, glanced out the window, and saw the lady walk off. I turned back around and relaxed. As the train was about to pull out of the station, I heard a thud on the window behind me. My siblings and I, startled, turned around and saw that the lady had come back and hit the window where we were sitting.

This experience made quite an impression on my brother and sister. They talked about it to all the friends and family we saw that day, and they were still talking about it on the plane home the next day. I tried to tell them that some people are strange or disturbed and say weird things, but that these people are not the majority. I’m not sure what they thought about it, but I’m afraid that they’re too young to consciously, coherently think about it at all.

As a young adult who purposefully tries to stay educated about race relations and the history thereof, I can’t say that this experience changed my opinion about anything. I’ve met and been close to enough black people to know that most would never say such things–just as most white people would never say such things to them.

But my siblings have not. In the leafy Ohio suburb where my family lives, diversity is almost nonexistent. We’re one of very few Jewish families here, for instance, and when I Iived here I knew only a handful of black people and no Latino/a people. (Asians are probably the only minority that’s well-represented here.)

This trip to New York was probably my siblings’ first experience with seeing such a tremendous diversity of races and ethnicities (not to mention orientations and gender identifications). The fact that one of their only verbal interactions with a stranger in New York happened this way can’t be a good thing.

Furthermore, unlike my little siblings, I’ve read enough about race relations to understand the circumstances that cause people to develop the views that the lady on the subway had. Perhaps she’s watched friends and family members being unjustly stopped and searched by the police. Perhaps she’s been denied housing or other needs because of her skin color. Perhaps she’s witnessed white people refusing to sit down next to her on the subway at all. Perhaps her calling us “ugly” is a response to a mass media that depicts whiteness as the only variety in which beauty can come.

I know all of this and more, but my siblings don’t, and they’re way too young for me to try to explain it to them. With all the difficulties they face because of learning English as a second language, having a culturally nonconforming family, and, sometimes, even simply being Jewish, the idea that someone might view them the way they view kids who taunt them for their accent or curly hair, is probably a confusing one. They don’t know what it means to be “white” in America. I don’t think they’ll know for a long time.

And that’s the real tragedy. If these two kids develop the unjustified fear of black people that many white people have (even if it’s only subconscious), it won’t be from the surrounding culture, as many would assume. It’ll be from a concrete experience that happened when they visited New York City for the first time and encountered people who don’t look like them. They’ll remember feeling trapped on the subway as a woman they don’t know threatened to “blow their brains out.” They’ll remember being told that their skin color makes them ugly. They’ll remember that the woman was black, because she pointed out that they were not.

And so, racism is perpetuated. Even if my siblings end up forgetting this particular experience, there may be others, and there will be many other kids who encounter a situation like this one. My brother and sister weren’t to blame for this woman’s distress, but to expect her to “rise above” it would be presumptuous. Whatever happened that made her say those things is real.

For once, I have no solution to propose. My purpose in sharing this story was only to illuminate the importance of teaching children how to empathize and how to keep themselves from forming stereotypes–much easier said than done.

They should also be taught more than just that slavery “happened” and is now over (if only race relations were really that simple). The woman on the subway was a racist and she was wrong, but people don’t become racists in a vacuum.

I can only hope that when my siblings are old enough to understand all of this, they will still be open-minded enough to learn it.

Learning Racism on the NYC Subway

I ♥ NY

Miri, , 5 Comments

Consider this a love letter to my favorite city.

Looking down 5th Avenue towards southern tip of Manhattan, from the top of the Empire State Building

New York City was the first bit of America that I ever saw, fourteen years ago when my family immigrated from Israel. I can only imagine how my parents felt. They had escaped from social and religious oppression when they’d left Russia, and now, two casualties of Israel’s faltering economy, they looked to America for help. New York welcomed them with open arms.

And now, it welcomes me. Growing up wedged between four cultures, I never learned to speak the language of just one. I’m always some combination of Russian, Jewish, American, and Israeli. I’ve never felt at home anywhere. Except New York.

I don’t have to identify myself here, perhaps because there are plenty of people here just like me, who grew up in one culture, speaking the language of another, observing the religion of a third, and finally settling into a fourth. Here I don’t have to get into a car and drive far away to find the food I grew up with or a place to practice my religion. I don’t feel awkward when I pick up the phone to talk to my parents and a dozen sets of eyes immediately turn to stare at me. (You’d have to try pretty damn hard to get people to look at you in New York, and speaking Russian–there are 300,000 Russians there–definitely won’t do it.)

I’ve lived in six cities on three continents, and New York is the only one in which I’ve felt comfortable and accepted. I feel like it speaks my language.

Abandoned lot near Rockaway Beach, in Queens

It seems that achieving the American Dream means living in a way that you can forget your fellow dreamers even exist. My parents’ house in Ohio is located in one of the best neighborhoods in town. Backyards sprawl around their houses; often they’re larger than the house itself. They are usually surrounded by a fence,

You don’t really see many people out and about. You don’t have to; you have your own backyard to hide in. My mom and I are instantly recognized by many residents of our neighborhood because we take lots of walks. On the rare occasion that I actually talk to someone, they often point this out.

Interaction with people is minimized in many parts of the U.S., and that’s considered the ideal. There’s no super to pay the rent to, no neighbors to stomp on the ceiling above you, no musicians on the street corners or on the subway cars (since there aren’t any subways), no bus stops full of people, no beggars asking you for change. People move to the suburbs and count their blessings that they no longer have to deal with all these pesky people.

I don’t like it that way. I like it the New York way.

There’s nothing worse for me than silence and aloneness. In New York, you are never alone. Look down the street at night and you see hundreds of glowing windows peering back at you. People sit on porches, stoops, benches, balconies, and railings. They lean on buildings, cars, and fences. They eat, smoke, talk, read, play chess, embrace, make music, or do nothing.

When you’re feeling lonely, which is most of the time for me, there’s nothing more powerful than this reminder that you’re never really alone. Even if it feels that way.

The Manhattan Municipal Building

So yeah, I’ve done all the tourist stuff. I’ve been to the Met, the MoMA, the Lincoln Center, and the Museum of Natural History. I’ve walked all the way through Central Park and been to the Bronx Zoo. I’ve been to the top of the Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, and the Twin Towers, when they were still standing. After they weren’t, I went to Ground Zero. I’ve been to Wall Street and seen every inch of Broadway from Battery Park to Columbus Circle. I’ve been in Times Square, Washington Square, Madison Square, Union Square, and probably a lot of other important squares. I’ve been to both the Strand and Macy’s, Columbia and NYU, Chinatown and Greenwich Village, Brighton Beach and the Upper East Side. And I know I’m still not even close to being done.

But my favorite thing to do in New York is just to walk. You can lose yourself in the streets of Manhattan without ever really being lost, because getting lost in Manhattan would require not knowing how to count. It’s easy–the avenues go up and down the length of the island, and the number of the avenue increases as you go from east to west. The streets go perpendicular to the avenues, counting upwards as you go north. Below Houston Street things get a bit tricky, but you still can’t really get lost.

The reason I can’t do this anywhere but New York is because no other city has such a vast amount of walkable territory. In Chicago, you can find the nicest neighborhood you’ve ever seen, but walk a mere ten blocks in any direction and you’ll start to see housing projects.

Anything that chocolate, music, and sex can’t heal, walking can. New Yorkers know this, which might be why they’ve built a city that makes walking so easy.

L'orange Bleue, a French restaurant in SoHo

My parents have a friend who works two blocks away from my aunt’s apartment, where I stayed for the past five weeks. When I told her that I’m planning to become a psychologist, she said, “Come to New York! There’s no better place to be a psychologist.” She said that elsewhere, people still believe that psychotherapy is something for crazy people to do. In New York, however, people understand that it can be a valuable tool for attaining self-knowledge and becoming happier. My impromptu adviser proudly pointed out that she herself has an excellent therapist.

Of course, psychology isn’t the only subject on which New Yorkers, generally speaking, have progressive views. In New York, it’s legal for a woman to go topless in public. Chain restaurants were required to provide calorie counts for all of their menu items even before Obama’s healthcare bill made that mandatory nationwide, and trans fats are illegal in restaurants. Homeless people don’t sleep on the streets anymore now that the city has a network of homeless shelters. Smoking is illegal not only in restaurants and bars, but also in parks, public squares (i.e. Times Square),  sports stadiums, and beaches. Cars are almost entirely unnecessary thanks to the constantly-improving public transit system. Gay marriage is legal.

When I hear about all the things that New York has and Chicago (let alone Dayton, Ohio) do not, I feel like this is a city that takes care of its people. It’s one more reason to feel welcome there.

Underneath a bridge in Central Park

Leaving New York sucked. On my last evening there, after I came down from the Empire State Building, I kept hanging around in Herald Square because I didn’t want to get on the subway and go home. That would put a note of finality into it.

On the plane the next day, I kept thinking about all the people I’d interacted with in New York. Not just my friends and family, but the nameless people–the Russian lady who asked me for help in CVS on my first night there, the stewardess I talked to while I was in line to buy snacks at the airport, the Spanish-speaking woman who offered to take my picture on top of the Empire State Building, the Bukharian Jew working for the Russian car service I used to get to the airport (we talked about family and the places we’ve lived), the giggly 40-year-old woman who approached me in Barnes & Noble in Union Square to ask me for help loading music onto her new laptop, the 16-year-old high school student from Florida who started talking to me about books in the Strand, the U of Iowa student I talked to about football in Washington Square, the street cart owner who chatted me up while making my chicken and rice on my first day out in the city, the gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair wearing a really nice suit who talked to me as we looked at male sex toys in the Museum of Sex.

I was so worried when I first set off for New York that I would be terribly lonely there. Everyone warned me that people are cold, that they ignore you, so I wasn’t at all prepared for the incredible variety of interesting and complex people I would meet there. And, despite having been in New York before, I had no idea of how the loneliness melts away when you find yourself actually walking through those streets.

Now I do, and now, more than anything, I just want to be back in those streets again.

Midtown and the Empire State Building, from the top of the Rockefeller Center
I ♥ NY