Returning to New York City after being away is like seeing that ex who simultaneously infuriates you and has this irresistible magnetic pull on you.
Having been back in town for over three months now, it has become a daily exercise to remind myself that the rest of the world exists; for one of the most metropolitan cities on the planet, New York is strangely inwardly-focussed, and there is a bizarre sense of constant self-congratulations for living there. The rest of the city will validate you for your choice to move to the Greatest City on Earth, and crucify (or worse, pity) those who left because they "couldn't hack it". It is easily assumed that anyone who leaves, leaves for this reason. I suspect more than a couple of the city's unhappiest people are stuck thinking they can't return to the small town they moved from because they will be failures. Instead, they stick it out in the midst of millions of others struggling for a seat on the subway. Today, Easter Sunday, one of my flatmates returned to the small town in Indiana that he grew up in. He had been here for six months, having moved to be with his girlfriend while she attended acting school. Classic, right? They were high school girlfriend/boyfriend, she eighteen and he twenty when they left, and both sure that they could one day get married. If they believed in that kind of thing, you know. His dad, an absolute caricature of a mid-western cop, came to pick him up and take his tv, x-box, and DVD collection home. As sad as it was to see his heart broken and plans shattered, he was never someone who was going to live in this city. He never seemed to give two shits about anything further than the people he was surrounded by, and while his girlfriend was enough for a while, the more grounded she became in a life she was building here, the more isolated he became. While she made friends, he stayed at home and smoked and waited for her to get home. A life in which friends and family were replaced by passive-aggressive co-workers and basically friendly but busy roommates stopped being worth it when the girlfriend he moved for started meeting her boss late at night. Without a community, this boy had nothing to offer to Bed-Stuy, and Bed-Stuy had nothing to offer to him. I have no idea what his life in Indiana was like, or what it will be like again, but it's gotta be better than waiting for a girl in an apartment you can't pay rent for at your shitty job selling jeans to tourists. However, whatever his life may be, it will keep going in a place that is not New York.
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AuthorStill me, Indigo Want to occasionally get octopus emojis and blog updates in your inbox? Leave your email and your dreams may come true.Archives
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