The City in Her Flowers

Washington Square Park, spring.
Washington Square Park, spring. I walked this way to work from the subway every day.

At first I didn’t understand why New York has been on my mind so much lately, even more than usual.

It’s been almost seven months since that awful weekend I spent there, packing up my stuff to leave for good. It’s been ten months since I left it to spend the summer in Ohio with my family, expecting at the time that I’d soon be back.

Things here have been as good as they’ve ever been, and truly, they’ve always been good. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t paused at some point to think about how lovely my life in Columbus is. It’s not just the individual components that make up a good life–my friends, my partners, my family, a decent job, a nice place to live, interesting things to do, and so on–it’s the way my entire mental structure seems to have shifted shortly after moving here. I became less cautious, more optimistic, more able to connect with people, more willing to give to them, more willing to accept what they have to give. I’m able to treat challenges as learning opportunities. I’m genuinely curious about the future. I think I will generally succeed at things and accomplish what I set out to accomplish, and those are all very new abilities for me.

I never expected that leaving what I love most could be so good for me.

I think I know why I keep thinking about it. It’s undeniably spring now, and the warmth and sunlight and flowers naturally remind me of the last time it was spring, and where I was at that time. In a way I think I will always remember New York by its spring, same way you remember your ex in the dress she wore on your last night together.

My city’s dress was all flowers, and her hair was sunshine on skyscrapers.

Nothing about my feelings made any sense until I started thinking of New York as an ex. You might love an ex but leave them anyway. You might miss your ex but know it’s best for you to stay away. You might regret leaving them, but, what’s done is done and you’re with someone else now and living your own life and that’s good enough for you. I left New York out of necessity, but I’m staying away–I think–because I want to.

Since coming to Columbus, I’ve started my first Real Adult Job and kicked ass at it. I’ve started dating people who actually live locally and it’s been amazing. I’ve started performing burlesque. I’ve started biking regularly again. I’ve started making my own ice cream and subjecting my friends to it. I’ve (re)started hosting big dinner parties like I used to, before New York with its tiny kitchens. I’ve started getting involved in all sorts of local groups. I’ve started playing in a community band–a queer community band. (I can’t even express how excited I am to be marching in a Pride parade for the first time this summer.) I’ve started making peace with my own weird form of queerness. I’ve gotten over my anxiety about driving and making phone calls and going to events where I don’t know anyone (but, unfortunately, not about dating). I’ve met more people and gone to more events and seen more cool things than I could even try to list. My family, to whom saying goodbye used to completely break me every time, is now a mere hour down the highway and I see them all the time, and the fact that my little siblings no longer cry when I leave at the end of a visit feels like it means more to me than a thousand New Yorks. And yet.

And yet, and yet, and yet.

“New York it is not,” I say to myself, biting into a bagel with lox, eating a bowl of ramen, entering a used bookstore, walking down High Street, shopping for clothes, watching the skyline grow on the horizon. It’s kind of like everyone knows you’re not supposed to compare your partners to your exes and everyone does it anyway. This is not a city you fall in love with and do desperate things for; this is a city you learn to love because it’s the city that’s there.

And yet it’s precisely in its not-New-Yorkness that Columbus comforts, delights, and ultimately captures me. It’s the ten-minute drive home from work to my comfortable apartment with a kitchen big enough to actually cook in. It’s reading on the couch and hearing the rain through the open window. It’s the long bike rides through woods waking up from winter as if from a dream. It’s the way people here bring you into their circle, a phrase my mom uses in Russian that seems to mean not just including someone in your social group but letting them into your life. It’s falling asleep to the whistling of trains and waking up to the singing of birds. It’s 5 PM on Friday and all the promise that it brings. It’s Saturday night at a bar with a partner, running into people we know and catching up. It’s having a calendar so overflowing with burlesque shows and dinner plans and comedy nights and yoga classes and happy hours and band rehearsals and activist meetings that I barely have time to think about what I’ve lost.

Yet think about it I do, in those spaces between one thing and another, in the car, in the shower, in bed, in line. I’ve thought about it every single day since I left. I’ve thought about it so yearningly, so painfully, so viscerally, like I’ve never thought about any person, or really any thing, before.

In those moments, it’s like I’m still there. The metallic smell of the subway tracks, the screech of the train, the rush of wind around a corner, the architecture of all my favorite places, the exact taste of a proper slice or bagel or bowl of ramen, the softness of the Central Park lawn beneath my bare feet. The way I felt when I showed the city to my best friend and fell in love with them both all over again. The way I felt on New Year’s Eve. The way I felt sipping too-hot tea in my aunt’s apartment on a cold night, more times than I can count. The way I felt on my last night in the city, taking a few steps into that same apartment before collapsing, sobbing, in my aunt’s arms. The way I felt coming up the subway stairs into the light. The way I felt when I was so connected to the city that it was like its pulse was my pulse. The way I felt when it seemed like the city was all I had. The way I felt when I drove over the bridge into Manhattan for the first time, to stay. The way I felt when the bus emerged from the tunnel in New Jersey, the sun setting over the city for the last time.

At their best these memories are a nice distraction from daily life, but at their worst they haunt me. I even had a dream a few nights ago that I was still there, in a subway station, trying to find the downtown C and failing. I woke up angry. I always knew how to find the right train. I am terrified of coming back and finding that my mental geography of the city has faded and frayed so that I can’t do something so simple as finding the downtown C, let alone remembering how to get to Broadway from any given point.

Sometimes I think that New York is the closest thing to a romance I’ve ever had. I’m not given to thinking about other human beings in those terms; while I’ve loved many people, I’m not sure I’m capable of being in love with anyone for longer than a few days. People are wonderful but they’re indecisive and undependable. A city will always be waiting for me, which is probably exactly why I can’t seem to move on. How do you move on from something that can’t move?

I’m not so simplistic in my thinking as to assume that any of this means that I’m unhappy here, that this isn’t “the right thing,” that I should definitely go back, that whatever. I know I’ve never, ever been as happy as I am now and I’m not about to fuck with that because of a weird obsession with a city I ultimately only got to stay in for two years.

And maybe it’ll get better once spring is over and merely stepping outside stops reminding me of my last days there. Summer was always for Ohio, and I think it’ll help me feel more grounded in where I am rather than floating around in memories of where I once was.

But right now it’s particularly hard. I close my eyes and all I see is the city in her flowers, the city in her sunshine.

Central Park, spring--probably my last time there.
Central Park, spring–probably my last time there.
The City in Her Flowers
{advertisement}

The City, She Loves Me

No New Year’s Eve post this year, because this time I’m too busy to write one until tomorrow. Instead, have a story–the only piece of fiction I’ve written for more years than I’ve kept track of. 

When my partner first started to disappear, it was just a little bit at a time. I barely noticed, at first.

I visited her in New York for the first time that spring. I’d been to the city before, as a child—saw a family-friendly Broadway show, took a cruise around the island, went to the Statue of Liberty, ate a lot of pizza. I remember my little brother hated it and couldn’t stop crying at the noise, the people, at everything. Even the pigeons terrified him. But I neither loved it nor hated it; it was a place like any other.

When I came to visit her it was different. She showed me the city like I’d never seen it before. It was late April and everything was blooming, and I never knew a city could have so many flowers. They lit up the trees that split the avenues in half. They spilled out of window boxes and pots hanging from the lamp posts. They popped up in the strangest of places, like the sunflowers growing in abandoned lots in Brooklyn, where we went to visit her friends. They peered out at me from behind rusty chain-link fences, little suns adrift in the city.

That week was the first time it happened, only I didn’t know it was happening. We were in Washington Square Park, looking at the Arch and the flowers and the performers. It was a Wednesday afternoon, too late for the lunch rush. We were watching a dance troupe perform near the fountain, and I was holding her hand.

Suddenly I felt her let go. When I looked over she was gone. Just gone. A little crowd had gathered to watch the dancers, but there weren’t so many people that I could just lose her like that. I spun around in circles trying to find her, unsure whether or not to trust my own perception. But not ten seconds later I felt her hand in mine again. I turned around and there she was.

Startled, I said, too loudly, “Where were you?”

She just looked at me, gold flecks dancing in her green eyes, and said, “Exploring!”

And her mouth curled into that mischievous smile I loved, and I thought I must’ve been imagining things.

~~~

Unlike me, she had always loved the city, from her first trip there at one year old. Her parents went almost yearly to visit relatives, of whom she must’ve had dozens in the city. By the time we met in Chicago, both recent college grads, she already knew she was going to move. It was only a matter of time.

The first job she was able to find in New York, she took. It wasn’t the best of jobs, as we both knew. She’d be reporting on local news—crime, subway disasters, things like that—rather than the more serious political stuff she wanted to cover. But everyone has to start somewhere, I suppose.

At the time we were living in Lakeview. Too far from the lake to actually view it, but close enough to walk to the beach in the summers. We’d been together for about three years. Since I always knew she was going to escape to New York at the earliest opportunity, it was neither a surprise nor a disappointment when  I came home from work one day to find her beaming, phone still in her hand, telling me she got the job. I was a little sad for me, but very, very happy for her.

Besides, my job paid well and would only pay better and better, so I knew I’d be able to go see her a lot. In those weeks as she scrambled to find a spare room at one of her numerous relatives’ apartments, to decide what to take and what to leave, to say her goodbyes to her family and all the friends she’d made in Chicago, we talked a lot about how it would be. How we would be.

My friends were less optimistic than I was. “Look, I hate to tell you, but she’ll find someone else,” they would say. In fact, that possibility didn’t worry me too much. Although it’d been years since either of us dated anyone else, I figured she might meet someone, someone she could see anytime she wanted. Sure, maybe it wasn’t the most pleasant thought, but I knew that she loved me and felt confident that we would make it through whatever came next.

They said other things, too. “Watch out,” a friend joked to her at her going-away party. “That city will consume you if you’re not careful.”

I had always thought that was just a figure of speech.

Continue reading “The City, She Loves Me”

The City, She Loves Me

The Context of the Thing

[Content note: sexual harassment/assault, victim blaming, racism, police brutality, homophobia, fat shaming]

Many debates in the realm of social justice and politics are debates about context. In what context are certain things said, and can those things ever be divorced from that context? Should they ever be?

Take this Facebook post, made by a New York coffee shop I had heretofore found entirely satisfactory:

A Facebook post by The Bean, including a photo of a NYPD police car and a caption, "Thank you NYPD for protecting our great city."
Image description: a Facebook post by The Bean, including a photo of a NYPD police car and a caption, “Thank you NYPD for protecting our great city.”

 

What is so irritating about this post is the plausible deniability. Surely, a Manhattan coffee shop could just post this image apropos of nothing, perhaps in the holiday spirit, to express gratitude towards the city’s police force. It could just be a matter of city pride; certainly we all like it when there is as little crime as possible. And so on and so forth.

But why post this image now? Why would a coffee shop that has posted nothing but photos, comics, and articles about coffee, store news, six posts about local events, and one cutesy article about Mother’s Day for the entirety of the year 2014 suddenly give a shout-out to the city police department?

I think I know why. But, of course, I can only speculate.

So it is with a lot of other statements that rankle, hurt, or even trigger. “What were you wearing?” Oh, sure, you could just be curious. After all, maybe it was my outfit and not my perceived gender that drew my harasser’s attention that night. Of course, you are very worried about me and just want to make sure that I’m being “smart.” You’re not thinking about the fact that that’s often the first question authorities ask us, and that fashion advice is the only kind of prevention they seem to be able to offer us. You’re not thinking about what happens to women whose outfits were deemed insufficiently preventative. Who helps those women? “Oh, I’m not saying it’s your fault,” you say. “I think anyone who does such a thing is wrong and bad and if it were up to me I would bring them to justice.” Would you? Okay, I’ll grant you that. But historically, that’s not what’s happened, is it?

“What about black-on-black crime?” Certainly it is a tragedy that so many young Black people die at each other’s hands, presumably because of gangs or drugs or one of those other scary things, and really, if a given group wants to stop dying, maybe they should stop killing each other. Never mind that the same ignorance that causes people to ask this question is the ignorance that keeps them from seeing everything that’s already being done, by Black people, to address this issue. Never mind that most white murder victims are killed by other white people, too, because people tend to be killed by those who are near to them and/or have some sort of relationship with them, and our neighborhoods and relationships are still very segregated. Never mind that “black-on-black crime” is a derailment from what is in my opinion a much more preventable issue–the fact that police around the country are killing Black people with virtually no consequences.

Yes, violent crime happens, especially in disadvantaged areas, and that is awful. But that the people tasked with “protecting” us, according to my local coffee shop, are murdering people, especially in a systematically racist way, deserves immediate attention and resolution, because a police officer who murders innocent people is an even greater threat to our society than an ordinary citizen who murders innocent people. Why? That should be obvious: cops have power, weapons, skills, and immunity that ordinary citizens do not. Law enforcement officials can do things like plant meth in the car of a woman who accused them of sexual harassment and then have her arrested on this country’s ridiculous drug laws.

“I don’t see anything wrong with gay people, I just don’t see why they have to be in my face about it.” No, you’re right. Perhaps you are a person who believes that sex, love, and relationships should be an entirely private matter. Maybe you’re uncomfortable when your coworker tells everyone about the vacation she’s planning for her and her husband’s anniversary. Maybe it turns your stomach to see free condoms handed out on your campus. Maybe you change the channel every time a guy and a girl kiss in a TV show and you don’t feel that it’s appropriate for children to see a man and a woman holding hands in public. But you don’t mention that because…maybe people would ridicule you for it, whereas publicly stating that gay couples gross you out is still socially acceptable. I don’t know.

Or maybe you have double standards for queer people versus straight people, and you believe that the things straight people get to do–hold hands and kiss in public, chat at work about their anniversary plans, see relationships like theirs on television, access the healthcare that they need–are not things that queer people get to do. Sometimes queer people are loud and in-your-face about being queer because they are fighting against the idea that they should have to be silent when straight people don’t have to be. Your casual remarks about “I just wish they’d keep it to themselves” are telling us to get back in the closet so you don’t have to be uncomfortable.

“Of course it’s wrong to hate people just because they’re fat, but they really need to lose some weight or else they’ll be unhealthy.” You may think that what you’re saying here is commendable. After all, you must really care about this person and have great concern for their wellbeing. Maybe you even have some helpful weight loss advice that totally worked for you. Really, they should be grateful that you’re trying to help them.

Okay, but the idea that “they really need to lose some weight or else they’ll be unhealthy” is the idea that causes people to hate them in the first place. If weight is perfectly correlated to health, and if losing weight is a possibility for everyone, then only those who do not care about their health would allow themselves to be fat, and only an irresponsible person who lacks self-control would refuse to care about their health. Such a person would not make a suitable employee, doctoral student, or partner, for instance. Such a person would be a bad influence for your children. And the idea that fatness is responsible for poor health 100% of the time keeps fat people from getting the medical care they need, because doctors assume that the problem must be their weight.

Plausible deniability is how all of these statements function. We are expected to take them entirely out of context, as isolated thoughts or ideas or feelings or beliefs that have nothing to do with what came before or what will come after, and nothing to do with the horrors that have been committed in their name. You asking me what I was wearing has nothing to do with the systematic refusal to believe and help people who have been harassed and assaulted. You innocently wondering about black-on-black crime has nothing to do with centuries of white-on-black crime, and with the casual dismissal of this crime, and with the fact that it has historically not been defined as a crime at all. You wishing that queer people wouldn’t shove their sexuality in your face has nothing to do with our erasure, metaphoric and sometimes literal. You patronizingly advising bigger people to get smaller has nothing to do with their mistreatment in all sorts of social contexts, including medical ones. Nothing at all!

But that’s not how communication works. If a celebrity becomes the center of a huge controversy and I post about my love for their films or music, that can and should be taken as a statement of support for that celebrity. If a business comes under fire for its practices or policies and I post about how I’m going to proudly patronize that business today, that can and should be taken as a statement of support for that business. (In fact, I once ended a friendship with someone who did this on the day the Chick-Fil-A homophobia thing went viral, and I do not regret it.) There is of course a chance that I had simply not heard of the controversy, but in that case, I should reconsider my support for this person or business once a friend helpfully comments and lets me know about what’s going on. And in most cases people do not do this.

So if you post about your gratitude to the NYPD right after one of its officers has once again gone unpunished for the cruel killing of a Black man, and as protests march right down the block where your coffee shop stands, that has a context, too.

I suppose it can feel like this is all a huge burden. Why shouldn’t you be able to just say what you think and feel without being held responsible for decades or centuries of terrible things done in the service of the beliefs that you are expressing? It’s true that what happened is not your responsibility, and every terrible thing done by people who believe the same things you believe is not your fault.

But that is why what you say hurts people, and that is why they warn you where your beliefs may logically lead. If what women wear has any relevance to their sexual violation, if black-on-black crime is more important and urgent than white-on-black racism, if queer people being open about themselves and their loves is so unpleasant for you, if fat people should lose weight before they are taken seriously–then that has implications for how we treat people and issues. If you take the time to listen to the voices of those most affected by these issues, you might see that these implications are just as horrifying to you as they are to us.

The Context of the Thing

Spring in Manhattan

And now for something completely different: these are some of my favorite photos that I’ve taken around the city in the last few weeks. Acquiring a DSLR has made my life much happier.

Here’s a fascinating article about the building from which those street art photos are from.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Spring in Manhattan

New Year, New York

One exact year ago I stood shivering in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, waiting for the fireworks. There was a huge crowd gathered, people of all ages, kids with silly string and noisemakers, couples with their dogs, all waiting. I was with friends–some new ones, some old ones–thinking about the year I’d just had and the one I hoped was coming.

Whatever else happened that upcoming year, the most important thing was that by the end of it I would be back here in the city I love.

In a sense I’m still waiting for the fireworks. Still waiting for everything to be happy and okay. Still waiting to be completely certain I was right to come here. Still waiting for this story arc of my life to come to its perfect finish.

I know I’ll be waiting a long time, probably forever, for that.

But as the clock struck midnight a year ago, I wished to come here for good and I did. How often in life does a wish that urgent and overpowering actually come true?

I’m very lucky.

~~~

Before I moved a number of Well-Meaning Adults told me condescendingly that they so hoped I wouldn’t get disillusioned by New York once I had to actually live in it and have all my dreams shattered. That does seem like the typical young-person-moving-to-New-York narrative, but it didn’t happen.

Of course, I haven’t been here all that long yet. But I’ve been here long enough to watch one season shift to another, and then another. That means I’ve been awestruck by all of New York’s seasons now, and I feel like I’ve been here much longer than I have. I’ve played tour guide to visiting friends and done the various little things you start to do as you realize that it’s time to settle in. I’ve had my fair share of those late New York nights, come home after 3 AM to find kids still playing in the streets where I live. I’m learning where all the Chipotles and Barnes and Nobles are and which subways take way too long to show the fuck up.

I don’t know that I’m happy yet, but I don’t regret having moved, not at all.

If I ever leave New York–which, someday, I probably will–I don’t think it’ll be because I stop loving it. It’ll probably be because the rich and powerful of this city have decided to make it a place where, increasingly, only the rich and powerful can afford to live. Or it’ll be because some dream job turns up somewhere else, or because too many of the people I love will be somewhere else for it to be worth it to stay here, enchanted but alone.

~~~

The truth is that I’m pretty sad a lot of the time. I miss my old routines, my friends, my family, Chicago, college, nature, pretty much anything in the world I could conceivably miss. As I wrote in my guide to moving, it’s a process that doesn’t end once you get there and your stuff’s unpacked. I have plenty of friends and relatives and things to do here, but all my brain seems to care about is that it’s just…not what I had before.

I predicted this would happen, that this would be one of those things where things have to get much worse before they get better. I thought my first year or two here would be awful. I worried that my depression would relapse completely (which maybe it has, who knows). I didn’t tell many people this because I didn’t think they’d understand why I’d do something that I thought would make me feel awful for a while.

John D. Rockefeller said, “Don’t be afraid to give up the good and go for the great.” Sometimes “the great” is actually real shit for a while. Sometimes you never even get there, and in the real world, you don’t land among the stars if you miss the moon. You end up floating in the vacuum of space.

Sometimes I seem to do a lot of things that make me sad. This is only the latest in a long line of them. I don’t understand it except that, as someone for whom happiness has always been elusive, I don’t prioritize it very highly anymore. Living alone in New York is sad, but at least I get to live in New York.

~~~

Over the last few months I’ve watched myself change to fit into my new surroundings, sometimes in surprising ways. I’d remarked many times when I visited that people in New York are extremely helpful and kind to strangers, and while I’d never been one to refuse help when it was asked of me, I rarely offered it proactively. Now I find myself picking out the tourists and giving them directions, stopping to help someone carry something up the stairs out of the subway, suddenly sinking down onto the pavement in the dark to pick up the groceries that had spilled from a woman’s cart.

And then I think about how some of the people I’ve casually, thoughtlessly helped went home and told their friends how kind people are in New York, and how maybe when they come here for good someday they’ll carry on that custom. Maybe that’s how it gets perpetuated, despite what people think about New Yorkers.

But assertiveness and proactiveness are traits that can manifest in lots of ways. I used to shrink down and try to shrug it off when people harassed me, maybe thinking up witty comebacks hours later. But recently I surprised myself when I was walking down the street at night in Queens, listening to music, and some dude suddenly shoved an open stick of Axe in my face. (For a fun exercise, count the number of things wrong with his behavior.) I didn’t hear what he or his friends were saying, but without thinking about it or missing a beat, I yanked my earbuds out, shoved his arm out of my face as hard as I could, yelled “What the FUCK are you doing?”, and continued on my way without listening to the reply. I’m quite sure he meant no harm, but my response was mostly instinctual, and anyway, that should teach him about violating women’s personal space on the streets at night. It doesn’t really fucking matter what he intended.

I stand up for myself all the time in other ways, things I wouldn’t have done before I moved.

Another weird change, but this one I have no idea if it relates to moving to New York or not: although I’ve been playing music since I was 11 years old, I have never willingly practiced in earshot of people and have performed solos maybe once or twice. The thought of being listened to made me so uncomfortable that no matter how much I loved playing piano, it wasn’t worth it. But last week I came home to my family where I have a piano, and I completely shocked myself by sitting down and playing it in a room full of people. Even though I needed to relearn the piece that I’d forgotten and was completely out of practice. The fact that people were listening didn’t bother me a single bit, and over the course of the week I relearned the piece almost to perfection and felt even better about playing it in front of people. I am good, goddammit, and I will fill up the house with music if I feel like playing.

(One wonderful thing that came out of that was that I decided to ask my parents for a keyboard piano for New Year’s, so that I finally get to have a piano in my residence for the first time since I left for college. I think it’ll do wonders for my mental health.)

At the same time, moving here has made me crave and cherish alone time in a way I never have before. In Ohio and even in college, socialization was a sort of rare luxury and my brain operated in scarcity mode. That is, if I had the opportunity to socialize, I took it, because who knew when I’d have the opportunity again. While I enjoyed the things I did when I was alone, they always felt “pathetic” to me somehow, like I “should” be out there interacting with people instead.

Then I came here and social interaction became so easy to come by that suddenly I was desperate to cut down on it. I still felt weird about declining invitations or not going to events that I thought were cool, but it calmed me down to remember the sheer volume of things there are to do in the city, most of which recur at least semi-regularly. The world will not end because I didn’t go to some queer book club or poly party.

~~~

Usually with these New Year’s Eve posts I try to reflect on my life over the past year, in general. This year, moving to New York seems to be overshadowing everything else I’ve done with myself, which is probably not for the better. I did do a lot of cool stuff. I started speaking professionally-ish, I made a ridiculous amount of friends and started seeing a number of new partners, I went to grad school (which I rarely talk about either in my writing or to people because it doesn’t feel very important to me, but I still did it), I read a lot and revised lots of my opinions and ideas in response, I started working out again (which is a really big deal), I wrote lots and lots (and spent the entire year here on FtB, which is just awesome), and mostly kept depression at bay.

There’s not much to say about all that now but that, except at my worst moments, I really do feel extremely lucky despite how hard and sad things are a lot of the time.

Since this is after all my blog and most of you are probably here for the actual writing and not the rambling about my life, I decided to make a list of my favorite posts that I wrote in 2013. Not necessarily the most popular ones–just the ones I still find myself thinking about, linking to, and feeling proud of.

~~~

A few weeks ago, I was on a completely frozen 2 AM trek through upper Manhattan with a friend after having hitchhiked across the bridge from New Jersey (as you do), trying to get to the subway. My hands and feet were in that uncomfortable stage of freezing the fuck off where they just hurt a lot, and it was dark and almost completely deserted (some parts of the city do sleep). Had I not been with a friend, I probably would’ve honestly been terrified, but as it was, I was merely exhausted and extremely cold.

And then I looked up and saw a fire escape completely covered in Christmas lights. It shone like a beacon in the night, red and green. And though it probably wasn’t the first time I saw a fire escape decorated for the holidays, something about it went right to my heart–the fact that even something most people consider ugly and utilitarian can be turned into a celebration of something, the fact that you couldn’t even see the rust underneath all that light, the fact that folks don’t even really see their own fire escapes unless they happen to be looking out the window, so who could it even be for but for people trudging through the night in a lonely, out-of-the-way part of the city?

But this is something I’ve noticed New York does all the time. When I’m feeling my worst, when it’s the darkest and the coldest it ever gets, I find that the city shines through.

Until the fireworks–until leaving my friends and family to come back to New York starts to feel a little less like heartbreak and a little more like homecoming–I’ll keep looking for those little flashes of beauty in the dark.

New Year, New York

Miri's Survival Guide to Moving Across the Country Alone in a State of Terror and Panic

I have known I was going to write this post ever since I first stood in my stifling Chicago apartment looking at a bunch of empty boxes and thinking, “Wow, moving is going to be difficult! I’d better take good care of myself and give myself time to be a little sad and process things.”

Juuuust kidding. What I actually thought was, “Fuck me I hate this why am I doing this why am I such an idiot this is what I’ve always wanted fuck these boxes I don’t want to put my shit in these boxes I’m going to get Chipotle now.” And so I did.

Unfortunately, when it comes to emotional self-care, I’m a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do kinda gal. I’m working on it. But, to paraphrase a John Green character slightly, if you don’t say the honest thing, it never becomes true. I’m writing this as much for myself as I’m writing it for you–I’m giving myself permission to need the advice that this post provides.

I was and remain incredibly lucky. I moved not out of necessity, but out of passion. I had a loving family with the resources to help me move, and even more family who welcomed me when I got here. I moved to my favorite place ever. It continues to amaze me every day. Not everyone is so lucky when they move, but given how difficult a time I still had with it, I figured maybe someone might benefit from this advice.

To be clear, this is not a post about the logistical/practical side of moving. It’s a post about the emotional side of moving. I’m the last person who should be talking about the former, but maybe only the second- or third-to-last who should be talking about the latter. So latter it is.

Care for yourself.

I don’t just mean in the typical self-care ice cream/chocolate/funny movies/bubble baths way, although that can also help. (Good luck getting a New York bathtub to cooperate with that, though.)

What I mean is to be kind and gentle with yourself, just like you’re (hopefully) being with the fragile things you’re packing up.

Sometimes before and during and after the move, I had to talk to myself sort of like a child. “Okay, we’re going to get in the minivan and drive for a very long time. No, we’re not coming back. We’re going to a new place.” “I know this apartment feels weird and scary right now, but this is where you live now. I promise you’ll start to like it when you get used to it.” Sometimes that was the only way I could handle thinking about the immensity of the changes that were happening. Sometimes you need to let yourself be a little kid again.

But other times I was very bad at this. I berated and blamed myself endlessly, guilt-tripped myself for not being more grateful for the opportunity, played the sort of endless games of “But you TOLD me you wanted to move” and “Didn’t you SAY this was where you wanted to live” that I absolutely despise other people playing with me, and would never try to play with someone else.

Finally I had to ask myself how I would treat a friend who was moving to a place they loved but was having a lot of trouble coping nonetheless. What if it were one of my partners? What if it were Kate? What would I say to them?

I felt so ashamed when I realized that I was speaking to myself as though I resent myself. I realized that even if a random person from my friends list whom I barely know messaged me and shared concerns like the ones I had, I would still be infinitely kinder and more patient with this person to whom I have no connection and owe nothing than I was being to myself. There was no good reason for this.

Be as kind to yourself as you would to anyone you love and value.

The internet is probably your friend.

If you’re reading this, you probably use the internet at least a fair amount. Congratulations!

During this transition, just like all the previous difficult times of my life, the internet kept me sane. Not only did it help with all the logistical stuff, but it gave me something to “come home” to when home didn’t feel like home. (I mean, home still doesn’t really feel like home.) There were definitely days when I came home, threw my stuff down, closed the door to my room, went online, and talked to my friends. And the amazing thing was, the internet is the same internet no matter where you are. The same people I talked to when I was in Chicago were still there. I watched Grey’s Anatomy on Hulu in Chicago and I watched it here in New York. I read the same blogs. I listened to Citizen Radio. Finally, something in my life was stable!

It’s important not to go overboard with this, but use it if/when you need to.

But remember to go out and try to put down roots.

I am, again, incredibly privileged to live in New York. As soon as I got here I started seeing the friends and family I already had here, and quickly made a bunch of new friends. I went to lectures and films, I tentatively ventured to some Meetups (although there are still tons of interesting ones I haven’t gotten to), I went to parties I got invited to, I saw friends in neighboring cities that were once a plane flight away but now just a $30 roundtrip ticket and a 2-/3-hour bus or train ride away.

And, as always, I went out alone to explore the city. Wandering around as an inhabitant of the weird space between tourist and New Yorker is fun.

But even when you’re not sure you really want to, try to get yourself to do social things at least sometimes. In my experience, the most amazing friends/partners will appear in your life in a way that seems random, but really isn’t. Maybe you go to a party that’s totally boring except one of the people you talk to there mentions offhand a cool-sounding Meetup group and you look it up and go to it and meet a cool person who doesn’t become a super close friend but who does eventually invite you to a poetry reading where you meet someone awesome who becomes one of the people you cherish the most.

This process can be extremely frustrating. But, given enough chances, it will work.

BUT try not to fall victim to FOMO.

I got FOMO bad. Real bad. I have, in the short time I’ve been living here, somehow managed to convince myself that if I don’t do every single thing to which I am invited and/or hear about then 1) I am a Failure and 2) I will never make good friends and find my people.

Something that helped was hearing my friends talk about when they moved to new places. Some of them didn’t do social things for weeks or months, either because they couldn’t handle it emotionally or were too busy with whatever they moved there for or just couldn’t find anything to do. And yet, somehow it ended up working out. Now they have friends and partners and communities and activities. You don’t have to Create Your Entire Life all at once.

So there were also nights when I made myself stay in because I was exhausted and I needed it. I fidgeted at my desk or in my bed and told myself that I have a very long time to do All Of The Things, and that doing All Of The Things at once is not worth it if I’m exhausted and miserable. 

If you need to, get some perspective.

I’m lucky to have a family of immigrants whose stories are horrific and hilarious and inspiring enough to have kept me going at times. My aunt told me about how she moved to New York from Russia years ago and spoke no English and had no money, and ended up doing the same long walk from Battery Park to Central Park that I once took in the summer heat with no cash to spare for a bottle of water or for the bus. She worked cleaning houses before she was able to pass her medical licensing exam and become a successful physician. My mom told me about moving to Israel from Russia right before I was born and living in one of the worst neighborhoods in Haifa, while pregnant with me, taking care of my then-8-year-old brother, and trying to find work. And, of course, not speaking any Hebrew.

Their stories of awful landlords and crumbling apartments and culture shocks and exploitative jobs makes me grateful, despite all the difficulties, to have been able to move here relatively easily.

Your mileage may vary with this strategy, because hearing other people’s tales of woe may not necessarily make you feel better about yours. For me, it often doesn’t. But the way my family members tell these stories and the fact that I can see how far they’ve come since then gives me a good dose of perspective.

One thing that I’m really sensitive to, personally, is condescension. I had more than my fair share of Adults being really (unintentionally, but still really) condescending and giving me patronizing advice that I didn’t ask for and telling me that I was Doing It All Wrong. So go to people you trust for things like this. My family was great about it. Random people on my Facebook, not always.

Speaking of which, now is a great time to enforce your boundaries.

While enforcing boundaries is always important, it becomes especially important when moving, when so many other things are out of your control. It’s not too much to ask of your friends and acquaintances not to do things that really bother you, whether it’s bombarding you with patronizing unsolicited advice or constantly asking for updates on how packing’s going or (if they live in the place you’re moving) pressuring you to make plans to see them when you’re not ready to yet.

My own personal issue was that, as soon as I started making plans to move, and especially as those plans drew nearer and nearer and especially after they happened, a large portion of my Facebook friends list decided that I would be their Official Repository for “Humor” Articles About How Much New York Sucks. How expensive it is. How shitty the apartments are. How hard it is to find them. How annoying the subway is. (It’s not even that annoying.) How rude New Yorkers are. (They’re not even.) I try to think that people thought I’d find this funny because I can relate rather than doing it to piss me off. Unfortunately, though, it turned out to be a huge anxiety trigger. Because guess what! I do have doubts about moving here. It is hard sometimes. The housing situation really is a little dismal. Shit really is expensive. Do I really need to be reminded of this? No.

The entire genre of LOLOL WOW LOOK AT THIS CRAZY STUPID NEW YORK SHIT LOL NEW YORKERS ARE SO WEIRD LOL articles really needs to die out, in my opinion. But until it does, I didn’t want any more of them posted on my wall. So I told people that and explained why, and enforced that boundary whenever people broke it afterward. It made my life just a little bit happier, at no cost to me or anyone else.

If you’re someone who likes routines (and most people do), create some as soon as possible.

When you move to a new place it might be tempting to Try All Of The Different Things to try to get yourself to feel more comfortable and at home. Sometimes this can be really helpful and fun, but sometimes what you need to feel at home is routine.

That’s why I quickly established My Gym and My Deli and My Work!LunchPlace and My School!LunchPlace and My Cafe. My School!LunchPlace is Chipotle, which people make fun of me for because why would you move to New York and just eat at Chipotle. Cause it makes me feel comfy, okay? I will probably eventually get tired of my love affair with Chipotle, or its CEO will say something really bigoted, and I will stop going there and start enjoying food from Every Country In The World. (For real, right next to the building where I have class is a Mediterranean place, an Ethiopian place, an Italian place, an Indian place, a Chinese place, and a Japanese place. And that’s without walking a few blocks to where Harlem begins.)

Routines help me feel like a resident rather than a tourist. In a city of tourists, that feels nice. Knowing exactly where to stand on the platform so I get on the train at such a spot that when I get off the train I’ll be right by the stairwell that will take me to the next train I need is cool. So I stand on the platform in the same spot every time.

Relatedly, unpack as soon as you can. Unless it’s too stressful. Then don’t.

Typically, I find that unpacking helps me feel at home and gives me fewer things to worry about, since I can finally stop living out of boxes and start knowing where all my shit is. But this time was a bit different, because it was very difficult to fit everything into my limited storage space, and every time I tried to unpack I just got terribly anxious. If this happens to you, let go of any perfectionism you may still have after moving across the country alone in a state of terror and panic (that tends to really cut down on the perfectionism) and let things just lie in boxes or piles on the floor. There will be time enough to put all of the thingies where they need to go.

Avoid reminders of your past home when you need to.

The wisdom on this goes both ways; some people feel comforted by such reminders, while other people, such as me, break down crying in public. That happened today, which is actually what prompted me to finally write this post and stop putting it off.

It was the first actually cold day of the season, and the first snow. There’s a Target near where I work and I needed to get some stuff. Tights. A pillow. Whatever. I found the Target and walked in, and the glass door slid shut behind me, and suddenly…I was home.

I don’t mean home as in a shopper’s paradise, although that too. Home home. The Target was laid out exactly the way the one back in my hometown in Ohio was, with the women’s clothes and the accessories just to the left of the entrance. I walked over to some purses and scarves and just stared stupidly at them. I remembered doing my college shopping four years ago. I remembered buying Pokemon cards for my little brother. I remembered when my ex-boyfriend and I bought identical folding sphere chairs. I remembered clothes shopping with my mom. I felt like I could do a 180 and walk right back out and be in the sprawling wasteland of a parking lot with the mall across the street and the pool down the road. I could get in my parents’ car and drive home (driving?!) and my family would be there waiting for me.

If you’ve never walked aimlessly through a nearly-empty Target crying and not being able to breathe properly, I don’t really recommend it.

It just felt so stupid. It’s a stupid fucking generic store. They have them everywhere. I’ve even been to plenty of other Targets in plenty of other cities and states, without any bouts of Sudden Crying. But there it was.

I bought my shit and left the store without my coat on, thinking that maybe the sudden cold would make me snap out of it. It didn’t. The wind reminded me of Chicago and I just cried even harder. I put the coat on and went to the subway. I cried all the way back to Manhattan, half-napping part of the time. By the time I got to Times Square, I felt like I was back in New York again and not wallowing in some Midwestern past, and I felt a little better.

The point of that whole story is: I’m probably not going to go to Target again. At least not alone, or at least not until I’ve settled in better. It’s not worth it. I almost want to, because that stupid store is the only place in the five boroughs that has ever given me that visceral I-could-walk-right-out-into-Ohio feeling. I know I could chase that feeling if I let myself, but I won’t. I moved here for a reason. I left that place behind.

But remember where you came from.

I spent many useless years trying to shed Ohio and the Midwest from my identity like so many useless outgrown and unfashionable clothes. In college, I remember being extremely proud whenever anyone told me that I looked or sounded like I was from New York, which was often. And in my junior year when I was taking Hebrew, I was practicing with my teacher and asked her how to say, “I want to be from New York.” She said, “You mean, ‘I want to live in New York.'” I said, “No, I don’t just want to live there. I want to be from there.” (The correct translation, by the way, is Ani rotzah l’hiyot meh-New York.)

I am not from New York. I am never going to be. That ship sailed 22 years ago when I was born in Israel (not too shabby a place to be from), and sank somewhere in the deep sea when my parents bought a house in Ohio. So it was. Instead of a childhood in Central Park and the Met and Rockaway Beach, I had a childhood reading in my backyard and hiking and going to the pool and riding my bike for miles and miles. Oh, and unlike kids here, I never had to take a fucking exam just to get into middle school. Could’ve certainly done worse.

Even if your move is not quite like Miri’s Brave Quest To Finally Be In A Place She Belongs, you might still be struggling with the desire to fit into your community versus the desire to remember where you’re from and the way you lived there. As you get to know new people, tell them about your old life and what your past homes were like. Let people understand you as the product of all the experiences that led up to your move to this new place, not just the new ones you’re having with them now.

It’s tempting sometimes to see moves as opportunities for total reinvention, and I definitely had a bit of that going on. But sometimes that can feel very isolating, like there are huge pieces of you that you didn’t bring with you when you moved. So bring them.

Miri's Survival Guide to Moving Across the Country Alone in a State of Terror and Panic

Occasional Link Roundup

Hello! It’s been quite a while since I last did one of these, so it’s going to be quite long and include some slightly-older links. Such is life.

Speaking of life, it’s been pretty busy/weird. I moved to New York, started grad school, started my field placement (all social work students do it three days a week), met a bunch of people, did a bunch of things, and discovered the joys of going grocery shopping and carrying bags on the subway and standing with them for half an hour and then hauling them up to my fourth-floor walkup. You know.

At just under three weeks, I’m still a very very new New Yorker, and it shows when I show up late to basically every social gathering because I can’t Brooklyn or because I neglected to check the subway service advisories. Or when I try to pay with my credit card when half the places here only take cash. Or when I don’t realize that I shouldn’t have bought so many groceries at a time because I’d have to carry them on the subway and stand with them for half an hour and then haul them up to my fourth-floor walkup.

But considering what a dramatic change in my life this was (biggest move since I immigrated to the United States 16 years ago, fuck yeah!), I’m sort of dealing? I love it here so much. I love that today I went to a feminist group meeting and tomorrow I’m going to a thing called Nerd Nite which has lectures and live music and booze and on Saturday I’m hanging out with one of my best friends and on Sunday I’m checking out more bookstores and on Monday I’m meeting with the other leaders of another feminist group and on Tuesday I’m going to see this ridiculously cool-looking play about Gary Kasparov and Deep Blue. I could keep going but I don’t want to make you guys too jealous.

And on top of all that, I get to see stuff like this and this and this and this and this, and eat stuff like this.

Life is good. Hard and busy and stressful but so good.

On to the links!

1. Cliff talks about changing her name from a very feminine one to a gender neutral/male-ish one, and discovering how differently she was treated online:

I used to think people called me irresponsible, dirty, immoral, or speculated about me having diseases because I wrote about having multiple partners.

Then I changed my name from Holly to Cliff.

2. Libby Anne discusses atheist men who want to “save” women from religiously-motivated sexism:

Far too many atheists appear to think that so long as they’re not religious, they surely can’t be sexist. This is wrong. Very wrong. Sexism does not cease at the church door. If a male atheist wants to attempt to deconvert women by focusing on the sexism imbedded in many religions, he needs to make sure that he’s not engaging in sexism himself, and he darned well better be ready to address his own sexism if it is pointed out to him.

3. Tauriq explains that asking to be called what you’d prefer to be called is not “censorship” or “political correctness”:

To claim “censorship” over “compassion”, PC over politeness, is to only reinforce that you don’t actually care about language and, therefore, the other person; it’s to continue weaving the cocoon of solipsism that’s being pointed out, preventing you from actually acknowledging someone that’s not you or like you. This doesn’t mean unnecessary censorship or policing of words or phrases doesn’t exist: mockery of religion, politics and ideas – even monarchy – resulting in bans or firing is problematic.

But it’s fallacious, black-and-white thinking to claim that any time, anyone requests you not say or refrain from saying something it’s censorship: This shows you don’t recognise nuance in a complicated world; you fail to acknowledge that different things require different responses even if they appear – at first glance – the same.

4. Lisa Wade examines some gendered American Apparel advertisements side-by-side and uncovers some hilariously sad differences.

5. Tressie writes about Miley Cyrus and the use and abuse of Black women’s bodies by white women (and men):

I am no real threat to white women’s desirability. Thus, white women have no problem cheering their husbands and boyfriends as they touch me on the dance floor. I am never seriously a contender for acceptable partner and mate for the white men who ask if their buddy can put his face in my cleavage. I am the thrill of a roller coaster with safety bars: all adrenaline but never any risk of falling to the ground.

6. Jane Doe, MD on Twitter talks about the shame many women feel about their genitals and how it has harmful consequences for their health.

7. Ian may have left FtB, but he’s still off being awesome elsewhere:

Identifying as “a skeptic” does not somehow mean that all the things you do, all of the heuristics you use when arriving at conclusions, are magically imbued with skepticy power. Your brain is not better because you have chosen to affix a label to yourself. If anything, the use of a label in the place of a behaviour suggests a brain that is less engaged, not more. The moment that you stopped questioning your own assumptions, the second you abandoned the premise that you might be wrong about something, the instant you precluded from yourself the possibility that you are prone to the same errors that everyone else is, that’s when you stopped being “a skeptic”.

You are “a skeptic” right up until the point when you stop acting like one.

(By the way, I wrote something very similar [before Ian wrote this, I might add] that you might also enjoy, in case you haven’t read it yet.)

8. Alex thinks you should stop asking people for “coffee”:

The popularity of “coffee” stems, I think, from that ambiguity. It serves as both euphemism and get-out clause, putting dating or sex on the table with plausible deniability – ask to hook up, and your neck is on the line; ask them for coffee, and rejection can be parried with face-saving statements that you “didn’t mean it like that”.

[…]The trouble is, that ambiguity puts the other person‘s neck on the line. Inviting someone neither to dating or sex, nor a social event, but to something which could usually mean either places on them the burden of interpretation; of negotiating correctly an advance chosen for its disclarity.

9. Mitchell has produced a very useful guide for Freeze Peach Warriors and Brave Heroes who have been blocked on Twitter:

Second, remember that though these violations of our rights are serious, the powers that be have, in reality, only erected a proverbial Maginot line against truth and justice. Blocked on the Internet? Remember that you can still employ an army of sock puppets to do your truthy bidding! Those people in the park don’t want to hear your speech about the merits of Men’s Rights Activism? Follow them when they try to leave! Don’t stop until you’ve made sure they’ve heard everything you have to say! Family down the street doesn’t want to listen to your doorstep speech about Jesus how feminism is keeping us down? Look up all of their online accounts and make sure they can’t go two minutes without being bombarded by the free exchange of ideas!

10. The Belle Jar on being a woman writer:

When a man says flattering things about your writing, you will always be left wondering whether it is your work that interests him, or the fact that you are young, conventionally attractive and female. Most frequently it will be the former, but still, you can never shake off the fear that you are not so much talented as you are naïve and pretty. You often feel as if you are only valuable in so much as men desire to fuck you.

11. Ultra Orthodox Jewish sects in New York City have a scary amount of political influence, as Adam discusses.

12. Franklin tackles the common but ridiculous assertion that feminist men are just fakin’ it to get laid:

I don’t quite get what’s going on in the head of some guy who thinks pretending to be feminist is a ploy to get laid, but I have to assume that a guy who thinks that, probably doesn’t think women are very smart. If someone pretends to think women are people, but doesn’t actually think women are people, I suspect the ploy would be revealed rather quickly. Probably some time between appetizers and the main course, and certainly well before any clothes come off. I really don’t think it’s possible to pretend to be feminist, at least not for any length of time longer than a dinner conversation.

13. Paul Fidalgo has some of the most lyrical writing ever. Read this piece about sleep.

14. Ginny wrote a great post about anger: how it can be both useful and not useful for social change, and how, ultimately, expressing anger isn’t always about social change:

But all of that is about anger as a tactic, anger as a tool for change, and that’s only part of the story. The other piece of it is anger as simple self-expression: oppressed people have many, many reasons to be angry, and telling them to curb their anger and express themselves in a way that’s polite and acceptable to those who are profiting from the system that oppresses them — well, many words have been written on how wrong that is, and I agree with them. Anger is only sometimes, and only partly, about creating social change; it’s also about letting the damage be real, and be heard. It’s not about me at all; it’s about letting someone who’s been hurt just fucking react honestly to that hurt.

15. Aoife explains why you should stop accusing every homophobic person of being a closeted queer person:

But when you say that the loudest homophobes are closeted LGBT folks, you erase the fact that the vast, vast majority of homophobia doesn’t come from closeted people. It comes from straight people. Casual, everyday homophobia overwhelmingly comes from straight people (and yes, by the way, I know that all of you aren’t like that). The vast majority of people who vote against marriage equality are straight. The vast majority of the people who draft gender recognition legislation that enshrines gatekeeping, divorce, diagnoses and compulsory surgery are cis. The people who think that knowing we even exist should be kept from kids, because we’re too ‘confusing’? Mostly straight and cis. The people who treat us ever-so-slightly differently, who tokenise us, who judge us by how closely we conform to stereotypes? Mostly straight and cis. And, yeah, most of the people who brainwash, reject and demonise us are straight and cis too.

. This post by Melissa McEwan wins every award ever.

I am advised, by people who imagine that rape prevention is the responsibility of potential victims and survivors, that I must be careful what I wear, how I wear it, how I carry yourself, where I walk, when I walk there, with whom I walk, whom I trust, what I do, where I do it, with whom I do it, what I drink, how much I drink, whether I make eye contact, if I’m alone, if I’m with a stranger, if I’m in a group, if I’m in a group of strangers, if it’s dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if I’m carrying something, how I carry it, what kind of shoes I’m wearing in case I have to run, what kind of purse I carry, what jewelry I wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people I sleep with, what kind of people I sleep with, who my friends are, to whom I give my number, who’s around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment or condo or house where I can see who’s at the door before they can see me, to check before I open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch my back always be aware of my surroundings and never let my guard down for a moment lest I be sexually assaulted and if I am and didn’t follow all the rules it’s my fault, which I already know firsthand from having been raped and seeing about 1 in 6 of my female friends and about 1 in 10 of my male friends going through it and getting victim-blamed, at least once and frequently more.

I am persistently terrorized by the ever-present possibility of sexual assault that I am tasked with preventing and the knowledge, the first-hand knowledge branded into my memory like a scar that never quite heals from the sizzle of the iron that left it, that if I am harmed, there will likely be no one there to advocate for justice on my behalf, no matter how loudly I shout nor how deeply I dig my own fingernails into my skin to escape the agony of injustice and neglect for a blissful moment of self-directed pain.

I fear being hurt again, and I fear being a failure at surviving.

This fear is part of the backdrop of my womanhood.

What good things have you read or written lately? Share them here!

Occasional Link Roundup

You Remember The Weirdest Little Things

My routine begins with stripping off whatever uncomfortable, poorly-fitting clothes I was wearing to make myself presentable, and replacing them with athletic shorts and a tank top.

Then plain white socks, which I almost never wear except for this.

I reapply my deodorant.

I make sure my phone is charged and updated with the newest Citizen Radio episode.

I fill up my drawstring bag: wallet, keys, water bottle, phone.

I tie my hair back, ignoring the little curls that fight their way out anyway.

If I’m wearing makeup, I wash it off. Where I’m going, I don’t need it.

The last part: I step into my black gym shoes (I hate white gym shoes) and put on the drawstring bag.

But after that, the routine deviates. Before, I’d glide down the carpeted stairway, two flights, and out the front door, where the street is lined with trees and students carry bags of groceries. On the way there I pass small apartment buildings and large single-family houses with gardens that spill over with flowers. The sun is starting to set, but it’s still hot and muggy. The sprinklers keep the lawns happy.

I turn right and cut through campus, past the huge science building (one of the largest academic buildings on the continent, I heard my freshman year). To the north of it, they’re building a parking garage for the gym, and the dust from the construction site gets in my eyes every time.

But I finally make it to the gym, where it’s cool, where the windows overlook the beach, the grass, and the water. Even during the busiest times, I have my pick of the machines. When I’m doing upper body, I do pecs, triceps, delts, a few other things I don’t know the names of, and sometimes biceps. When I’m doing lower body, I do calves, quads, inner thighs, glutes, and hip flexors. And always, I finish it off with 30 minutes on the elliptical.

And then I’m back into the humid evening, darker now, a little cooler.

Now things are different. Even though there’s an excellent, affordable, 24-hour gym just five minutes away from me (compared to 20 minutes before), it took me a while to start going and it’s still hard to get myself to do it. I don’t want to walk down the stairs of Not My Building and up Not My Street into Not My Gym where I’d have to do Not My Routine because the machines are different and wrong and usually taken up by burly men who terrify me and honestly don’t need those machines as much as I do anyway. (Oh, what I wouldn’t give to feel like I belong in the gym as much as they do.)

But that’s what I have to make myself do if I want to keep working out in Not (Quite Yet) My City.

The hardest part is the part of the routine that has stayed the same. The smallest physical actions become laden with meanings that are impossible to negotiate and reconcile. Putting on deodorant. Putting on socks. Putting my water bottle in my bag. The same deodorant I used before, when I was there, the same socks, the same bag. Not the same water bottle, though, because I have no idea what happened to the one I had during the move.

Obviously, the solution isn’t to stop working out, because I love it and it saves me every time. After that first time I finally went to Not My Gym, my shoulder was so sore I could barely take my shirt off, and it was the best feeling. But if that’s the best feeling, the feeling I get as I put on my black shoes and realize that after this point, it’s not going to be the way I’m used to it being anymore, is the worst.

Why, of all things, has my brain picked the stupid gym thing to torture me with? I don’t know, except maybe that everything else here is just so different that there are no other triggers for that poisonous nostalgia. Nothing about my life here resembles what my life was like three weeks ago, except the parts of it that I spend on the internet. (But even then, it’s hard to forget, with the constant questions from friends about how grad school and life in Not [Quite Yet] My City are.)

Even my domestic routines are different; my bed feels completely different, I dress differently (sensible shoes, naturally), my apartment is very different (insert snark about New York apartments here, but actually, it’s a beautiful place), commuting no longer means walking 10 minutes through campus to class but walking 5 to the subway, waiting at the station, jumping on the train, taking it for 15 minutes or an hour or an hour and a half, getting off, walking somewhere else, etc.

Shopping is different, the city looks and sounds different, the grocery store chains are different, taking out the trash is different, doing the laundry is different. The food I eat is different (just as I looked forward to), the things I do for fun are different. The people I see are different and virtually nothing about them reminds me of my friends back home.

But one thing that has remained completely the same is the process of getting ready to go to the gym, and whenever I have to go through that process, I swear I’m convinced for a moment that I’m going to walk out that door and into my old routines. Where my friends are, where my real gym is, where everything is comfortable and safe.

You remember the weirdest little things. The cluttered desk where the deodorant hid, the mismatched socks pulled out of the drawer, the waning light through the window of the conditioning room, the opening lines of Citizen Radio as you start the first set.

Eventually I will be able to force myself to do this the new way enough times, and with a short enough interval in between, that the new routine will solidify in my head, and Not My Gym will become my gym, as will my building and the street and the city itself. Eventually I will stop feeling like I’m on some weird vacation/summer camp/reality TV show. I love Not (Quite Yet) My City enough to know that that will happen even when it doesn’t feel like it at all.

~~~

P.S. I chose to write about this particular aspect of moving to New York because that’s what I felt like writing about today, but the big picture is rather different. I love it here and I’m glad I moved, and so far it’s actually been even better than I imagined. But sometimes, it’s very hard.

You Remember The Weirdest Little Things

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

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