3 Year City-Versary

[Foreword: I had this magical plan to write and publish this post on January 26th, my three year city-versary, while sitting in the Reading Room of the New York Public Library surrounded by great literature and New York writers. Buuuut then like 7 things went wrong, starting with the closing of the library 12 minutes after I got there.. and now it's a whole month later and I still haven't published. This is, most accurately, the story of my life. So now today, on my three year and ONE MONTH anniversary of moving to NYC, and I'm just going to share what I got. It's not remotely complete nor organized, but neither is my life here. So we deal.]

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When I think about how to cohesively write about the last three years of my life, the three years that I have spent living, loving, and learning in New York City, I am as overwhelmed as the first day I arrived here. Three years ago I woke up on a friend's friend's futon on the West side of Harlem with a foot of heavy snow on the ground. This morning, three years later, I woke up in my own queen sized bed in my apartment in the middle of Brooklyn with 2 feet of heavy snow on the ground. It's different snow, and it's a different me.

Life in NYC hasn't been linear or logical so cataloging these sequence of events isn't going to be linear or logical either. Stumble along with me, and know that there is so much more to the story..

In three years, I have had 14 jobs, lived with 4 different roommates in two boroughs. I've survived countless blizzards and heatwaves, 2 hurricanes, and an earthquake. Ikea furniture has been made my bitch, and the subway system too. I have figured it all out. I have become friends with people from Alabama and Colorado and California and Texas who now feel more like family then friends. My neighborhood feels like a community and my commute to work is as familiar to me as Highway 19 in Day County, SD (which is to say, very familiar). I have made a life for myself here, and one that I've pretty proud of. It hasn't been easy, but it has been worth it.

There have been highs, and there have been lows. I have seen some amazing views while babysitting in penthouse apartments and working as a temp on the top floors of some impressive sky scrapers. For one week, I worked in the Empire State Building on the 46th floor, and I got sick from taking the elevator up and down so many times retrieving lunch delivery orders from old while men in expensive suites. I have seen firsthand what it's like to live and work at the top. I've also spent a substantial amount of my time underground in the dirty subway, waiting for a train to come with resilient rats who weave between the train tracks and homeless people with filthy clothes and tired faces. Underground feels very underground some days. I get asked for money on the train on an almost daily basis and verbally violated with more frequency than I'd like to admit. I once watched police officers in body suits on the tracks picking up body parts of a person who had jumped less than 20 minutes before. I saw his shoes. That was a low. I've been uplifted, and I've been broken down, felt light and felt heavy. Three years later I'm still surprised at how the feelings of highness and lowness can happen so quickly and intensely, but I think I'm getting better at finding balance between the two.

When I hear a song that I've loved in the last three years, I can tell you exactly where I was working, what train I took regularly, and what time of the year it was. Those songs were my soundtrack. Bon Iver's "Skinny Love" was on the D train when I taught ESL from 10am to 10pm. Florence and the Machine's "--" was when I was a nanny and I took the C train at 6:30am.  Justin Timberlake's "That Girl" was the 6 train on my way to work at Sloan Kettering. I think I'll always remember those songs and where they were burned into me for as long as I live. I hope so.

When I taught ESL and I introduced myself to the class, I would describe South Dakota by first identifying Mount Rushmore (mountain with president faces) and then I would explain that SD had more cows than people. I would tell them the statistic that in NYC, there are more rats than people. The students were abhorred by both facts. Even after all this time, it's still hard for me to convey to people how different my life in South Dakota was from how it is in the city. It's not just the difference between calling a carbonated, sugary beverage a "soda" or a "pop." The entire culture, ideology, everything is different. On January 26th, 2011, I didn't move to another state; I moved to another planet.

Population change alone has been such a shock. There are just SO MANY people in New York City, that the anonymity that comes with it has been both liberating and paralyzing at times. When I was working as a temp and living with a roommate I met on Craig's List, I often wondered how long it would take for someone to realize if I went missing. That is not a good thing to feel. It's amazing how lonely a person can feel a midst so many people. I've never identified better with the Regina Spektor lyric: "I went to a protest just to rub up next to strangers." Sometimes, I just wanted to be touched. On the other hand, I've also appreciated this loneliness at times, or at least the independence that comes with it. Though no one has been there to take care of me, I also only had to take care of myself... I've been able to come and go as I please, go out or stay in based on whatever I preferred. In the process I've become very comfortable with my own silence. Sometimes, the person I want to hang out with most is myself.

I've met famous people and homeless people. Strangers have become my friends, but few friends have become strangers. I have met some unreal characters here, people that you would swear belonged in a quirky Fox sitcom and not in real life:

• A security guard named Bob who, before I went to Atlantic City for the weekend, gave me vodka for the bus ride and a fifty-dollar bill to gamble with. He looked like Archy Bunker and loved Fox News.
• A 2-year-old who was, for a brief time, my sole companion and best friend. Dancing to Johnny Cash with him in his living room was my favorite part of January 2012.
• A Japanese student name Yoski who called me "teacher" and made me feel like I was a good one. He wrote a book in Japan and gave me an autographed copy, part of which said, "I will miss you kind of."
• A 60-year-old Puerto Rican office assistant whom I lovingly call "Maria Sangria" who wears hot pink lipstick and giant earrings that always seem to fall off and into her cleavage.
• Someone who knows someone who knows Lena Dunham.

I met someone else in the time that I've been in NYC: a woman who has learned to advocate for herself and make difficult decisions for herself.  She can walk confidently into a job interview that she is completely unqualified for, figure out how to filet and prepare a swordfish for dinner at a Senator's house, and pull herself out of credit card debt caused by an unfortunate period of time spent unemployed. She has survived hurricanes, moving disasters, more than one neighborhood shooting. She's me, you guys! I'm her! New York helped me become her, and for that, I'll be eternally grateful. Though I'm still OBVIOUSLY a work in process, my time in the city has made me more comfortable in my body and more confident in my views. I've meet a lot of people in this city of 8 million, but in the end, I'm most satisfied with the progress I've made in finding myself.