Unique New York

I haven’t lived in New York for nearly ten years. I left when I was seventeen, first to go to school in Chicago, then to study in Beijing, then to work in Tokyo, and finally to follow a wild dream in Osaka.

I left because I loved New York too much – if I didn’t try to get out when I had an easy chance, I might never leave. I felt the same way about Beijing, which was how I ended up in Tokyo, and I felt the same thing about the people I met in Tokyo, which was how I almost ended up in Barcelona instead of Osaka. I never loved Chicago enough. I couldn’t bring myself to, as a New Yorker.

I don’t even really know what it means to be a New Yorker, except that anyone can become one if they want. That’s the thing that, above everything, makes me proud of my hometown. I live in a country that doesn’t accept people who were born and raised here if their parents are from another country. New York is hard, but finding a sense of belonging is not.

I can’t speak to anyone else’s experiences–New Yorkers, or others–but I can talk about my relationship with the city, at least.

New York is a city – actually a small one – on the east coast of a huge country, but it’s also a historical figure, it’s a stage, it’s a myth, it’s a dream, it’s a symbol, it’s currency, it’s shorthand. For what, exactly, I’m not sure, but when I meet people and tell them where I’m from I see them either make assumptions about me or confirm suspicions they already had – she’s cultured, she’s artsy, she’s high brow, she’s standoffish, oh so that’s why she only wears black, oh so that’s why she’s so skinny, she’s rich, she’s intimidating. Some are true, some are not, some are intended as insults some of the time some are intended as envious compliments some of the time. I usually get asked, and why on earth did you come to a little town like Osaka? (For love, mostly, but I don’t tell people that when I’ve just met them.)

New York is also: a sense of entitlement (I remember believing in school that we were New Yorkers and ipso facto were superior to the rest of our sorry country), reckless self-confidence, self-absorption, a constant habit of turning one’s head to catch one’s reflection in shop windows.

To me, being a New Yorker is a duality. One is always seeing and being seen. I have my own experience in New York – playing on the rocks in Central Park as a child, my first eaten-while-walking folded in half pizza slice, Italian ices in the summer, endlessly endlessly looking for a parking spot, trying to ride the subway as it rocked and bucked and careened without holding onto a handrail, the glass bubbled sidewalks in SoHo, imperiously correcting people on their pronunciation of Houston, winters slogging through slush with sleet whipping into your face, the ceramic cases at the Met – and I have the experience of New York from the outside.

I see my city being seeing in films and books and TV series and conversations with people from out of town whom I have been tasked to show around for the day. I have my very personal oyster-and-ballet/opera ritual, and I have the outside view of myself as an archetype – a young girl with her father, dressed like people from TV, going to nice restaurants and ambling over to Lincoln Center like it’s just another weekend, because for us it is.

To me, New Yorkers are fundamentally and inescapably narcissistic because we’re always seeing two of ourselves – me in my body and me as the rest of the world sees me. I’m sure that’s true for people in any city anywhere, but I think New Yorkers have a naked hunger for the duality. It’s toxic and it makes us crazy but we crave it.

This is different too, I’m sure, depending on your background, on your parents, on your income level, on where you live in New York. But at least this is what I feel when I go back and I let myself be carried by the thrumming energy of the city until I start to really listen to what people are saying around me and until I start to really look at what they’re doing and what they’re wearing and I think, god how does anyone live like this.

As someone who left New York, I have a hard time with the city. I love it to pieces, and I miss it constantly when I’m gone, but at the same time I have no desire to move back, and a strong reluctance to even set foot in the place from October to May. And at this point, I don’t think I could fit back in if I wanted to. New York, in abesntia, has become too much of the myth, too much of the dream, and I’m not sure where the seam of reality is anymore.

People I know from “back home” aren’t constantly thinking about New York like I am, so I’m either just naturally inclined towards narcissism (probably true; hello, blog) or it really is different when you leave the country with no intention of coming back. I am tempted to describe my relationship in Freudian terms, except I think Freud is bullshit. But maybe it comes close – that sense of longing/revulsion, constant measuring yourself against it and constantly fighting to get away, and ultimately comparing every other city you have against it and coming up short. I love Osaka, but man, it’s no New York.