Friendsgiving 2012.

Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday growing up. It was a time when dozens of us would gather at my grandparents' house, in matching outfits when we were kids, and watch movies and laugh and eat. There was something simple and fun about the evening, something that set it apart from the other times we would gather to watch movies and laugh and eat.

Things were already changing when I left for college, but I knew that turning point would never be the same. I've missed four years of holidays and birthdays and other family events--from sicknesses to celebrations. Leaping across the country after graduation was another major step away from everyone I knew and who knew me.

Thanksgiving last year in Albany was lovely; this year, I wanted it to be just as wonderful here in the city. It truly was beyond any expectations, and I forgot how wonderful it was to spend time with people you never thought you'd be looking in the eye on a Thursday night and thinking, "I love them."

For the past month or two, I'd been feeling like New York was another dead end, a place I wanted to run away to only to be chased and hurt within the walls of my own home. I'd already run from the west coast, run from every place that held too many memories that cluttered my mind, and I was looking to start over. When that was taken from me here, I thought there would be nothing that could help ease me away from the stinging pain of loving back into the joyful pain of living.

The city is changing in a slow yet subtle way and I, with it, can only imagine a future where everything that once burned is now bright.

I think New Yorkers are more expressive than a lot of people because they're constantly having to deal with and confront their, and others', emotions. New Yorkers are used to living, working, breathing in a city that throws you into crowds with zero hesitation, and they never get a moment of privacy while they're out and about living their lives. That argument on the train, that tear-soaked confession on the sidewalk, that really funny moment in the park...it's all there, on display, and it's not just yours to enjoy; it belongs to the city.

I remember the first time I had a panic attack on the train. It was in the early days of moving to the city, and there was something overwhelming about the events in between work and my apartment, and I fought back tears so hard that I ended up blinding myself and having to let them loose anyways.


And nobody really noticed. One look around a subway car on any commute, and you'll see a thousand different emotions on the faces of the tired, the angry, the heartbroken, the joyful. It's not weird to sit on the subway and cry, and once in awhile, a kind stranger offers you a tissue or napkin to dry your face.

In California, people find sanctuary in their cars. You get inside and you turn up the music until whatever it is you're feeling subsides. People don't stand on sidewalks in California and cry like lost five-year-olds. I've stood on many sidewalks in New York and fallen apart. But so have a lot of people.

Earlier, after work, I got on the F to Brooklyn and immediately fell apart. Three seats down, there was another girl doing the exact same thing.

Living in New York has made me more emotional than I've ever been in my life. Through college, I was guarded (for many reasons), but there's something about this city that has forced me to open up. Perhaps it's the fact that the city literally fights its residents every day, with subway delays and other minor inconveniences that add up to a lot, until your soul splits open and your mind screams, "WAIT, but don't you know me??" Or maybe I've just changed so much from the person I was when I left California more than a year ago, and only now have I finally caught up to the pace of the world I live in. Or maybe it was the oddly-timed arrival of a shadowy figure who turned out to be nothing more than a metaphorical sledgehammer to my whole being (warning, friends: be careful who you trust to carry your deepest, darkest secrets) and left me with these thoughts to share, and nobody to share them with.

New York is supposed to exhaust you as much as it exhilarates you too. It's supposed to drain you and make you feel like you've given everything you have until you have no choice but to sit on a subway and cry. I think that's how you know you're doing it right: when the pangs of growing and changing, and the challenges associated with it, hit you over and over each day until you become numb, and then one day--somehow--you stand up a little bit taller and hit back.

I'll get there someday, I think.

Being cooped up for days, alone with nobody to talk to but a fluffy and fickle cat as a monstrous storm wrecks your city, makes you think. It makes you crazy to stare out of two walls of windows as day turns to night, and in that insanity, it makes you breathe creativity. At least, that's how it feels as a writer. All of those emotions and thoughts and visions pour out of your head and hover above your living room as you struggle to write it all down before it disappears. I am filled with more words now than I was just three days ago.

I've always said that New York City is a place that makes me want to write. It's a place filled with stories on every block, and I always feel inspired by the sights and the sounds.

As full as this city is, it's also isolating. I sat through Hurricane Sandy alone.

Every time an accident happens or some story on the news of a fatality arises, I think about how small I feel. Every time I'm asked to fill out an emergency contact in this city, I hesitate. Would anyone notice in this city if I didn't show up? Work, yes, but that's because it's work and they have to see me every day.

I didn't go to college here, or anywhere on this coast. The family I do have on the East Coast is too far away and too out of reach. My first three months in New York were quiet. I was broke anyways, so I had nowhere to go.

The funny thing about that solitary time was the perspective I gained: I knew eventually I would have people in my life in this city who were friends with whom I would love, inspire, laugh, celebrate, cry...and I was right. It doesn't matter that I don't have a vast spiderweb of contacts like I did in college, and it doesn't matter that someone very important to me promised, "I wouldn't move to New York and then just abandon you" and then did; what matters is that we find our people sooner or later. We find the ones we can grow with, the ones we can learn from, the ones we can lean on. We understand why it's important not to settle.

And, just as important as those who are 30 blocks or 30 minutes away, are the ones who are thousands of miles away and checking in to make sure you're alive during a hurricane--from family to best friends to friends I haven't heard from in a year or even a decade. I am blessed to have all of these people in my life, and I recognize how lucky I am.

So that makes it okay that I picked up and left my home state on my own. It's okay that I still feel unfamiliar. And it's okay that I lost a very important person along the way. Because I think it's noteworthy that, in leaving and in losing, I've pushed myself to become more open, more honest, and more resilient to the pain of living.

Cheers to my friends riding out the storm up and down the coast! We're surviving.

I sometimes feel like I'm "doing New York" wrong.

When I moved here in January, I gave myself three days to find a place to live. It took me five. I was on Craigslist non-stop for the week leading up to my move, and I visited places all up and down the city. In the end, I settled in Harlem, and I've enjoyed it. The commute from some of my favorite places can sometimes feel like forever, but it's never been impossible. The subways move beneath the city like an endless pulse, and it's nice to be able to indulge my introverted side and get away from the chaos of a crowd.

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong by not living in Brooklyn or in the bowels of the Lower East Side. Perhaps the dream is to live in a shitty studio apartment with five of your closest friends and drink every night until the realities of the real world press in. I don't think that's ever truly the case for anyone though, as much as we can all talk and joke about it. In the end, I believe that I can find passion and chase dreams in this city while still having a room to call my own and enough food to get me through the day.

"Was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was. All I could do during those three days was talk long-distance to the boy I already knew I would never marry in the spring. I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.

1. The last thing I ate was a free bagel, which was not very good, but it was free and it was 6 a.m.
2. The last time I went to the beach was over a year ago ... I don't think I've been to a beach since I moved east.
3. My last vacation was about a month ago when I flew home for a few days to celebrate a bunch of birthdays and Father's Day with my family.
4. The last place I drove was somewhere in Sacramento, when I was still living there.
5. The last song I listened to was "Ticket to Ride" by the Beatles.
6. The last thing I watched on TV was The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell (ha, how fitting for this theme), because it was the last show I worked on last night before leaving work. I did watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother last night off Michael's laptop, but that doesn't really count since it wasn't on a television haha...
7. The last time I said "I love you" was yesterday.

(via lauren @ the little things we do)