When I arrived thirteen months ago, I was intoxicated with the thought of what my life would become living in this city. I quit my stable job in Austin and left all of the people that I loved, along with a life that I built through iron resolve, all to fulfill a decade-long dream of living in the city of bright lights. And then I was dumped with my suitcases next to a comically-high pile of garbage bags.
Thirteen months later, I am a writer and editor at one of the world's most prestigious museums. I have been on a red carpet, escorted filmmaker Davis Guggenheim to his table at dinner, and seen nearly the entire cast of HBO's Girls on the L train. I know Central Park with the intimacy of a lover; my mistress in this city.
I have tried every day to love this city. And there are times when I can't imagine being anywhere else. Like in the early summer, standing at the East River in Williamsburg at dusk, looking at the monstrosity of Manhattan just across the water. Or while walking through Greenwich Village. Or Central Park in autumn.
But New York, I don't love you.
In the summer, the city is unrelenting with it's stench of sweating garbage and urine. Subway stations become sauna-like with an approaching train as the only source of ventilation. And everyone invades my Central Park. And the summer is so much better than the winter. When everything dies, there is never enough sunlight, and the cold settles into bones for months.
The city is a daily grind. It is pushing, pressing bodies into strangers, avoiding eye contact, hoping that someone on the subway home won't get onto your train and call out, "It's showtime, ladies and gentlemen!"
It's being too tired to make dinner, but too tired to walk to the store. Not wanting to stand in line for fifteen minutes just to enter the Trader Joe's at Union Square. Feeling crippled and isolated when your subway is undergoing construction or maintenance. Realizing that you pay the same rent for a single bedroom in Brooklyn as a two-bedroom cottage in Maui. Recognizing that here, people live to work instead of working to live.
Knowing that you can't say that this place isn't for you. Because you live in New York! You are some contrived definition of fabulous. And everyone around you can tolerate it so why can't you? Knowing that if you let slip, just once, that you are not happy here, then people will be offended. Because acknowledging your own unhappiness, giving it a voice, will open the floodgates for everyone's doubts about their own level of happiness or the scale between happiness and "fabulous."
And for what?
No, New York, I don't love you.
So, in typical Lukin fashion, I'm fleeing.
In the process of saying goodbye, there are things that I want to do. Things that every person who lives in New York believes they have endless time to do. And as winter settles in again, my time in New York is now finite.
Here is what I want to see before I go:
The Lion King
The top of the Empire State Building
Guggenheim Museum
New York Public Library
9/11 Memorial Museum (if it ever opens)
Ellis Island
Battery Park
Wall Street
Coney Island
Botanical Gardens
Prospect Park
Yankee Stadium
FAO Schwartz
Katz's Deli
Frozen Hot Chocolate at Serendipity
Show at Radio City Music Hall
Ballet
The best slice of pizza
