LOW-FI SUBWAY RIDES

If I had to explain my time in New York in one sentence, it would be: "New York at night."

Everything I loved and hated about the city, the worst and best memories I have of it, and the experiences that broke and made me can all be encapsulated in that one sentence. I came of age in the city; I moved there straight out of high school, my first time leaving home, being on my own. The first time I was free to be completely me or become the me I wanted to be.

Since this coming-of-age story does not take place in my teenage years, it would make sense that it would mostly happen at night. Not in a creepy, "it's 12 a.m., do you know where your kids are" way, but in the "taking a train from Manhattan to Dumbo on a winters school night after you and your best friend both got dumped so you can look at the skyline" type of way. Or the "deep conversations on a random bench within the city streets at 3 a.m. because you and your roommate both can't sleep" type of way. The "walks to Washington Square Park to hit your nighttime joint and watch college students on a first date fall in love" type of way. Or even a "Friday night Met trip at 7 p.m. because the Met closes at 9 on the weekends and no one else will be in the galleries with you, especially the tourist" way.

My nights with the city that never sleeps, a bedtime story.

I had never felt true relief until my first night in New York. From my dorm, I walked to Washington Square Park where I talked with my newly made friends all night. Besides this being the first time I had ever made friends so quickly, it was the first time I felt like I belonged somewhere; it was also the first time I found what I can only describe as a soulmate, someone I was destined to meet, who would change my life forever.

These nightly walks became a tradition. I'd walked the Highline or maybe to Washington Square Park, visiting the same places I went my first night. And if I wasn't heading to one of those places, I would most likely be at the Met or Fordham Lincoln Center for my and a friend's weekly Friday night trips to the Met via Central Park, a path I still remember by heart.

I began branching out with my nighttime walks, traveling to new places and finding new adventures, turning my original spots into safe havens I visited when I needed reminders that I was alive and that I was growing. It was on the same bench on the Highline where I had sat with my roommates that first night, that I experienced my most painful break-up. The first time I ever blacked out in an attempt to forget who I was, was at Washington Square Park. On my 22nd birthday, while walking around the Met, I realized I hated my life.

I began to believe that New York had given all it had for me, that I had learned everything I needed to, and it was time for me to move on. The busy streets I once loved now gave me anxiety to step foot into, the freedom I found in the night left me paralyzed with fear, and addicted to partying, a drug dependency as a side effect. The public transportation I was so thankful for during my nightly excursion now left me feeling scared and vulnerable: alone.

I had many conversations with people about the tug of war I felt with this city: do I stay or do I go? One of the most specific nights I remember was sitting in an old friend's apartment, looking out at the Empire State Building, talking about leaving, wishing to get out of the city. The thing she said still haunts me, because it was accurate, it was true; she was one hundred percent right. I hated her for it too because if she had been wrong, my life would have been much easier. In her words, I wasn't trying to escape the city, but rather myself.

I argued with her, told her the city was too loud and there were too many people; I was afraid to leave my house and do basic things alone. I blamed New York for my nicotine addiction, my lack of ability to go to the grocery store or do laundry, my need to be high every hour of the day, and my non-stop panic attacks. Even during the night, which was once a time of solitude for me, now felt no different from the day.

Every corner of the city bore memories of joy and pain, as well as emotions that defy description. I didn't know nor understood how to stand in these places and allow both sides of my memories to sit together, how to recognize the hurt but see through to the light, somewhere between the happiness and fulfillment and the desire to escape. So, I left New York because the same thing that raised me had also managed to break me.

I sit here now, in my apartment somewhere out west, and can tell you that it wasn't the city's fault, not entirely. It was a combination of things: the freedom, the stimulation, and me. But I was the biggest problem.

There's so much to say about a subject like this, about attempting to run away from oneself and the journey of discovery that you're trying to. The human brain is 80% unconscious, always giving us little clues as to what's happening behind the scenes. In high school, one of my favorite movies was The Edge of Seventeen. I saw it in theaters three times, quite the accomplishment, considering it was only shown in select theaters. My favorite scene, the one that played in my head on repeat, even finding its way into my dreams, was a scene of the main character, Nadine, sitting in her teacher's classroom monologuing about wanting to leave her hometown to get away from everything, but when she was done daydreaming, she realized that even if she were to leave, she would still have to take herself with her. This obsession with this movie and this scene was my unconscious' clue to me.

Nadine's monologue soon became my new dialogue, a diagnosis I began giving to everyone, but didn't allow anyone to give to me.

In an attempt to prove that I wasn't the issue, I did everything that everyone told me not to do. I left New York the night of February 15th. I moved out west and began pursuing a degree in psychology. And one lonely non-New York night, after going cliff diving and paddle boarding and being miserable, I realized I had been running away from myself this entire time.

As I sat in my closet crying, I scrolled through my phone, looking at all the photos I had taken during my adventures in the city, I found a playlist I made during the time I was actively searching for a way to leave New York, a farewell love letter. That West Coast night, I found myself sitting in my closet, listening to that playlist.

This is that playlist.

I don't regret leaving the city; I would have never realized the things I did if I had stayed. One of the many hard truths I learned in those nights, and later once I left, was that nothing is linear and nothing is simply the "perfect match" nor is there such a thing as wrong timing. Just like the night I sat on the bench on the Highline after having been broken up with, or my blackout night at Washington Square Park, or even my birthday at the Met, leaving New York was what I needed at that time in my life, it had to happen.

And just like my Friday nights with my old friend from Fordham, whom I no longer talk to, New York was perfect for me when I was eighteen but not when I was twenty-one or twenty-two. These little moments there and here have led me to where I am today, allowed me enough space to start figuring out who I am, and pointed out the things I had been ignoring my whole life, keeping me from becoming the person I wanted to be.

I look back now on these memories, and I still cry, but it's no longer just sadness that I see and feel; it is a blurred line of all the different sensations I had the opportunity to experience in all the places I made my home in the New York Nights. Just one of the skills I would have never been able to develop if I hadn't decided to leave New York that night.

The funny thing about life is that once you figure out something, it implodes the way life is intended to, especially when you figure out how much you don't actually know about yourself and how much you've been keeping yourself from knowing.

People change, and people grow; they become new people, a mixture of the old and the new. You learn how to navigate shit that stressed you out, and you learn hard truths, like how moving to a new place on the complete opposite end of the country, that is vastly different from the place you just left, will not fix your problems, especially if the problem is you. If anything, it will make you much lonelier, like you're cosplaying a life that was never intended for you. So you take the old and mix it with the new and you contemplate moving back to New York because you now know how to navigate the shit you didn't know how to before.

New York Nights taught me how to be an adult, while West Coast Nights reinforced those lessons.

Here's to growing up and no longer making excuses. And here's to my New York Nights.