alone in new york
i don’t know if you are reading this, or if you are just opening it so you have one less email in your inbox. or maybe you are reading this directly on my substack?? or maybe you clicked it because it was the most recent one and you want a quick understanding of what all this is about.
well, unfortunately, i am not very adept at simple, surface, tying bows. my feelings are complex, i experience the world with what feels like an open chest wound prominently on display. but! but. i am learning to accept the gift that is noticing things. Letting a moment move me to tears (even if that moment is a pigeon bathing in a water fountain in the shade of Washington Square Park), going for walks without headphones, slowing down enough to witness the chaos buzzing around me.
and oh, if new york city isn’t rife with things to notice. my relationship to this city has been a long, choppy, and circuitous one, which I think does not make me unique. yes nyc is like an abusive relationship, yes it breaks you before it loves you back, yes its magical and its absurd and it is unlike anywhere else on earth. but the most consistent, and what feels like the most personal experience with this city that is shared by millions, has been that new york has always sucked me back when i had another lesson to learn.
this chapter was all about surrender. perhaps surprisingly, i really didn’t want to consider new york when i moved back to the states and began wondering where to next. new york was just so hard, plus the majority of my college peers had ended up there and i always felt once removed from them & their experiences -- the consulting, the banking, the partying + 5am fitness + 7am desk, the 6-figures by the time you’re 25. i can admit i have carried around immense shame about not being able to fit myself into that life. and piled on top of it more shame about not knowing quite what other life i did want to fit into.
back to surrendering. i think i have known all along (no, not i think. i have. i have known. i think we all know. but we don’t listen). i have known who i am, what i want to do, the life i want to live, since i was a bug-eyed toddler sitting behind the sofa in a puddle of light streaming in from the window, observing the dust bunnies and utterly bewildered by the magic of the world that exists just right there, behind the sofa. and i had spent my teens and early 20s running as far away from that truth as i could, trying to be something else, be for someone else, stuff down the pain that comes hand-in-hand with being a highly sensitive, highly intuitive human being.
enter: new york city. i couldn’t quite shake the feeling that i needed to be there, that that’s where things were happening even if i didn’t know what ‘happening’ i needed to find. not even necessarily in the ‘networking’ sense -- just the pure truth of thousands of bodies all squished together on this island, living and dying and crying and creating, doing all of the things that we humans do to get by, to find joy, to make our mundane lives slightly less mundane. this was the reason i needed to be there. to notice. to witness. to let the energy and rawness of all these people, living on top of each other, break me open so that i could rediscover that rawness within myself.
yes i hate it and then i love it and then i hate it and then i love it until i accept that you only ever truly access the wisdom that this city has to offer, which I’d argue is really the deep-seated wisdom within yourself, when you surrender to it.
surrender to the tides, to the ebbs and flows. the pits of hell that is a new york city summer, the absolute peak of the metaphorical mountaintop that is a crisp fall day in Central Park. surrender to the noise, surrender to the uncertainty, surrender to the train schedule, to the hiked-up prices and the downtown buzz.
surrender.
this video is a little window into what has been one of the most raw, enlightening, exorbitantly lonely periods of my life. something about new york - whenever i have been pulled here, it has always been a solo excursion. a self-discovery, an exhibition, an unfolding, an old skin shed and a new one not-quite-yet-acquired. and if i know anything, it’s that this chapter has given me the tools to step into the most beautiful, abundant, whole, vibrant skin I’ve worn to date.
this one is for anyone who has ever felt the ache of loneliness in your bones. who has discovered the immeasurable pleasure of your own company, your only true permanent residence. and yes, of course, this one is for you nyc. thank you for being my own personal lily pad.
xx
mm