A love letter to New York City

Something magical happens when you cry in a New York City taxi cab.

Something magical happens when you cry in a New York City taxi cab.

The first time it happened was in March 2014 when I moved to New York. I stepped out of the airport armed with big dreams, little money, and an optimism so delusional that it can only be attributed to me being dumb, naive, and 22 years old.

I had arrived, and I was determined to find an apartment in one day. By some insane miracle, I saw three studio apartments, two of which were objectively unlivable, but the third was what my New York City dreams were made of. (That dream apartment is pictured below. It was on the first floor with a stunning view of a parking garage across the street.)

My first apartment in NYC. It was perfect.

I had made it. Just a few days prior, I was living on my mom’s couch in Atlanta, and all I had wanted in the entire world was to move to New York City.

But I was just dreaming. I didn’t have enough money to live in Manhattan. I didn’t have a job. And I certainly didn’t know if I would survive the city that chews you up and spits you out.

With that naïveté came a ferocious determination that is hard to describe in words. All I did was live and breathe New York City while still in Atlanta. I changed my desktop background to a picture of the city’s skyline, I made a Pinterest board of scenic NYC photos, and I consumed TV shows set in New York City (notably, ”How I Met Your Mother”) every single night before I went to sleep. So my love affair with the city began way before I set foot on the island.

But once I was there, that love quickly morphed into fear. I’ll never forget having a full-blown panic attack in the “Meatball Shop” on the Upper East Side asking my mom what I was going to do if I wasn’t able to make it in this city (which was a valid concern given that more than 50% of my paycheck went to rent). She told me I could always move back to Atlanta.

But here’s the thing: I couldn’t move back. I couldn’t move back because the first time I set foot in New York City, I knew. I knew that this was my city. It was the city where I felt fully myself, fully alive, and fully inspired every single day. I would never leave.

Until I did.

At the end of 2020, my husband and I moved to Miami, where our daughter was born. Miami was lovely — warm, comfortable, and scenic. We had a routine, and every day was predictable. We didn’t have to contend with subway delays, freezing sideways rain, and the never-ending sounds of honking and sirens.

A year into it, I began feeling restless. Why was our neighborhood so quiet? Where were all the bookstores?

Don’t get me wrong — New York City has its problems. It’s not perfectly manicured and its blemishes are evident on any city block. But there’s only way I can possibly describe it: It’s extraordinary.

So one day, my husband and I came across this Casey Neistat video from the week he moved back to New York from Los Angeles. Neistat says, “I think the thing I missed the most about New York City when I wasn’t here is this idea that anytime you step outside, a story just smacks you in the face. What that means to me as a filmmaker who loves stories, it’s my whole world.”

I also came across Rachel Syme’s ‘ESB’ essay, which characterized it this way:

“As a friend was moving away, he told me that he wanted to go somewhere where he can still build things. ‘What,’ he asked, ‘am I building in New York?’ I didn't know what to tell him then, but this is what I would tell him now: in New York, you are demanded to build yourself. The environment calls for it. You build on pure speculation, a foundation up from the salty bedrock built upon something that was there before, as many stories high as you want to go, as fast as you can get there. It is possible to fail, possible to outpace yourself, to not turn a profit, to remain empty inside with your lights still blazing for show. But when it works, what you build becomes a beacon.”

Captured on a recent walk in Central Park

Every Sept. 11, I share Colson Whitehead’s Lost And Found essay, which was published two months after the Twin Tower attacks. The article is a moving tribute to New York City and the Twin Towers, but it’s also about how our identities are shaped by our own, personalized memories of the places we live. “There are eight million naked cities in this naked city — they dispute and disagree,” he writes. “The New York City you live in is not my New York City; how could it be?”

This is the part that gets me every time:‌

“Our streets are calendars containing who we were and who we will be next. We see ourselves in this city every day when we walk down the sidewalk and catch our reflections in store windows, seek ourselves in this city each time we reminisce about what was there 5, 10, 40 years ago, because all our old places are proof that we were here. One day the city we built will be gone, and when it goes, we go. When the buildings fall, we topple, too.”‌

I recently found a note I wrote to myself when I was interviewing in New York City for jobs in 2014, and it was this:

It is 8:26 p.m. on Jan. 14, 2014. I am writing this because I never want to forget this moment. Right now, I am sitting on a bed at the Comfort Inn at 18 West 25th Street, New York, N.Y.

New York City is absolutely magical. You can get lost in a sea of people, but if you follow your dreams, you will stand out from the crowd. That’s what I plan on doing. We need to go for our dreams more often. When I stepped out of that cab, I knew this is where I belong. I am so thrilled and terrified at the same time.

Just as Whitehead predicted, that Comfort Inn on West 25th Street doesn’t exist anymore. It’s been replaced by a Heritage Hotel, whatever that is. The ‘Meatball Shop’ where I had my existential crisis? Permanently closed, likely to be replaced by a new restaurant where another terrified 22-year-old will worry how she’ll make rent this month.

What I always take away from Whitehead’s essay is that New York City doesn’t wait on you. It doesn’t wait on anyone. It just keeps going and changing and evolving. As he writes, “Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us.”

But what my husband and I have realized is equally as valid: Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that *we* cannot go on without it.

I’ve been waiting to say this for a while: New York City, we’ve missed you, and we’re back.

If you have a cool event, dinner, podcast, or conference in NYC coming up, let me know! Excited to meet you all in person.

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