I’m in Manhattan this week. I was born and raised in Houston, I went to school in State College, I work in Boston, but every single time I’m Manhattan bound, I still manage to shake with the anticipation.
See, here’s the thing: when I was 17, my dad drove us all the way from Texas to New York City for spring break because I had never been and I was a junior looking at colleges and it was an experience and travel was cheaper for us by driving. No sooner than I had first seen the nighttime skyline from the turnpike, my heart started racing. The adrenaline started pumping. Something about this felt bigger than me, and it wasn’t until we made it through the Holland Tunnel and found ourselves in a deserted Times Square at 3 o’clock on a Tuesday morning that my father turned to me and wondered what I thought that I had to ask him to repeat himself because I didn’t make out what he had said over one of the planet’s loudest cracks I’d ever heard in my life. He gave me a funny look, sure enough repeated himself, and followed it up with a quiet, “What crack?”
I blinked at him and said something along the lines of it’s as cool as I had imagined, but you guys, it wasn’t. The crack I had perceived was completely internal. Tectonic plates and worlds and galaxies and parallel universes had collided. It was a crack that changed my life. Stepping foot in New York wasn’t cool. Cool couldn't nearly encompass the sensation. It felt like I had finally come home.
I've done plenty of touristy things now that I've brought my friends along with me, but this might only be the second time I've ever come without an explicit purpose. Done concerts, friends in off Broadway shows, Pride, Thanksgivings, Christmas, limited film releases -- and I think this might be the most lowkey excited I've ever been to just be. I can't tell you guys how much I live for those few moments on each of those trips where I could grab a coffee and just sit in the Park or by the library or on the steps of the MET and embrace the sonder. To hold the city and its people in the palms of my hand, and to truly feel like I'm a part of it. To finish that last drop of dark roast, get up, and flow with the bustle like I belong. To don the all black, the hardened walk, and the brazen confidence that has tourists assume I'm a native and ask me for directions.
I've gotten to the point where it's hard for me to keep track of all the times the city and I have met. I'm sure if I made the effort, I could rope off every trip and all its corresponding events, but I don't want to. There's a cozier feeling in letting all those memories -- all the people I saw and places I visited and things we did -- blur together. It makes it the very idea of New York more abstract. Clustered together as if it was eons ago and the Big Bang had our particles muddled and I vibrate with an increasing frequency when I'm here because we've been trying to find each other since the beginning of time. God knows the concept of home isn't really set in stone then, it's an undefined feeling, some sort of almost tethered belonging. It's the feeling that, no matter where you are or who you're with, there's a string attached that will lead you to safety.
It's not currently in the cards for me to live there, but I'm working my ass off to make sure I end up home. And I hope you all find the place or person or thing that gives you the feeling like you've made it back, too.
