I sit in our New York living room for the last time for a while coincidently watching a great history channel show about the history of New York as I write this. I've made the decision to follow my boyfriend back to California...actually back from exactly from whence I came, Venice. It was my gut and things I saw as signs that brought me here and it is my gut that takes me back. I say follow because I don't think I would be going if it wasn't for him. I'm still torn. I know I will be happy in LA but not 100% ready to leave just yet. I love New York but there are lots of things I don't love about it which is also how I felt about LA. Winter here depressed the hell out of us. The time period between New Year's day and spring feels like it has no end and that the city is a quiet, muted version of itself because everyone and everything has taken cover inside. The subway is filled with sick and sniffling bundled up people. Getting around usually means walking through freezing rain so you're less inclined to go out and do something. It sucks. I was miserable and depressed until spring came just in the nick of time as if New York knows you're at your breaking point and will leave her for good if you have to deal with this shit one more day. Then you're reminded how wonderful it is when the cherry blossoms explode along the Hudson and the flowers bloom all over the park. I hadn't seen a real spring in years so that was amazing and magical...but here we go turning into winter again and off I am to LA to start a new life as it feels. This time its in an apartment he and I are really setting up together so I finally feel a sense of ownership vs moving into someone's already set up apartment filled with his history, not ours. I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to a job that I'm actually excited to start. I'm looking forward to beaches, sun, hikes and an ability to have actual moments where you are physically alone...aka in your car or when I go for my hikes.
That doesn't take away from the bittersweet feeling I've been having over leaving. I do love my coworkers and have most of my friends here. My close girlfriends are all here save two in San Francisco. I have friends in LA but not like the ones I have here. And New York is still fascinating to me. I still feel like there are things for me to see and do. I don't feel "done" with it like I felt when I left LA but so be it. This is why we're trying to be bi-coastal. So we can come back and do those things in the spring and summer. So I walked around a bit after my going away happy hour my coworkers threw for me last night. I was listening to my ipod and being nostalgic and "ghey" as my boyfriend's friend texted me as I bailed on getting more drinks. I looked up and saw the Empire State building. I've been there before with my guy and decided I was going to go one more time. One thing to know about me is I am totally and completely terrified of heights. Its the one thing that makes me immobilized with fear. I don't know why but I have always been that way. When I've been to the Grand Canyon and Eiffel Tower I got laughed at for clutching a railing far from the edge in order to even look out. So I was surprised when I got to the top and was able to actually walk to the edge and lean on it and look out on to the island of Manhattan and all the surrounding boroughs. I wasn't scared and I don't know why but it was big for me. I finally got to really enjoy a view and I did. Its amazing really. This island is home to some of the most important moments in American history...I can't even get into it. Bottom line is this place still feels magical to me and I'm sad that my boyfriend as a native has another opinion based on his own experience of being born and raised on the Upper West Side. To him its not the same town and I'll never be able to understand his perspective since I grew up in the upper middle class suburbs of Dallas. However, I sent an email from my blackberry last night to my sister in Japan who lived here while attending NYU and loved this city like someone who is experiencing youthful, un jaded love for the first time. Her email back really summed it up, the NY experience for people like us:
On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 10:43 AM, wrote:Walking around NY on my last night here. So weird. I know Gabe says its not the same New York that it was but its still magical to me. Sad
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
From: louey
To: amo@aol.com
Sent: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 5:28 am
Subject: Re: Sisternew york is magical in a very particular way for people who come from outside it. growing up there, gabe would never be able to experience the new york that we do. which is most of the reason why i wouldn't want to raise kids in new york, because it would deprive them of the experience of coming to the city. there's a lot in the great gatsby about how westerners fundamentally experience the city in a different way. and joan didion writes about it in one of my favorite essays ever, "goodbye to all that."
here is a quote from it that i used in my colloquium when i was graduating from nyu. "When I first saw New York I was twenty, and it was summertime, and I got off a DC-7 at the old Idlewild temporary terminal in a new dress which had seemed very smart in Sacramento but seemed less smart already, even in the old Idlewild temporary terminal, and the warm air smelled of mildew and some instinct, programmed by all the movies I had ever seen and all the songs I had ever heard sung and all the stories I had ever read about New York, informed me that it would never be quite the same again. In fact it never was."
you should read it.
