Things I’ll Miss About New York
Recently, I decided that I was going to move to Los Angeles at the end of the summer after living in New York for five and a half years. I even wrote about it on Thought Catalog. My friends have teased me for announcing my departure six months before I actually move but it’s hard not to blow my emotional load. Leaving New York is something I’ve known was going to happen since the day I came here but that still doesn’t make it any easier. Despite everything, I love this beautiful nightmare of a city. It doesn’t have my heart. It has my dick.
Lately, I’ve been having a lot of “OMG, obsessed!” moments with New York. They creep up on me almost like a mugger once did in Alphabet City! (I got mugged by two crackheads before I even moved here but that still did not deter me from coming, obviously.) All of a sudden, I will just be overwhelmed with gratitude to New York for destroying my life and rebuilding it again, for encouraging me to never be boring and for once tricking me into spending $7.50 on a latte. Ah, what a prankster New York is! Of course, no one loves New York as much as it loves itself. If it could, New York would be taking selfies on Instagram 24/7 (“And here’s Central Park. Aren’t I freaking gorgeous?!”), and have the most Twitter followers out of any of the other metropolitan cities. It’s basically the most popular kid in school. Everyone wants to be its friend and try to get it to fall in love with them, but it’s fruitless. New York doesn’t fall in love. It will give you 10,000 orgasms and maybe even give you cab fare back to your apartment but it won’t be soft. It takes a major disaster (hurricane, terrorist attack) for it to put its guard down.
I will miss it so, so much. I’ll miss walking around the city hungover, all dazed and confused, only to then look around at all my surroundings and feel euphoric. (Am I the only one this happens to? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked around the city on the verge of puking before I’m just like, “Oh my god, I love it here. I am so blessed!”)
I’ll miss all of the people I’ve met. Even the boring ones because chances are they’re rich and will invite you to hang in their amazing apartment! Right now I’m sitting in a dumb coffee shop in Williamsburg and the girl next to me is wearing a giant fur hat, even though the heater is on full-blast, and she’s probably an idiot but I love her! She looks like a Mischa Barton psycho and chances are she can’t carry a conversation but I’m obsessed! Yay New York!!!
I’ll miss exploring the East Coast and going away for the weekend. Then, after 48 hours, always being like, “Okay, I’m ready to go back now!” I always feel more of a relief driving back into the city than I do driving out of it.
I will miss sticky summers, delicate springs, and spooky falls. I will never miss winter. I will miss seeing strangers sob because, yay, emotions! People often confuse New Yorkers for being cold but I find it’s quite the opposite. We feel things. Intensely. We just don’t ever apologize for feeling the wrong kind of feelings.
I will miss being so, so poor but somehow always feeling decadent. That’s the weird thing about New York: no one ever has any money but you always find a way to indulge. After all, we didn’t move here to feel deprived. No, we moved here because we wanted all of it, all of the time. We want all the sex, all the love, all the food, all the friends, all the nights. All the jobs, all the opportunities, all the feels, all the pain, all the ecstasy.
You take it all in here. You fill yourself up and you occasionally overdose and then maybe you leave. It’s not exactly the healthiest way to live but then again, being healthy has never been a primary focus of anyone who lives here. We can be healthy anywhere but to be here, to live in New York, you have to be a little sick.