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I love New York.
I love dressing up and trying new things and living in a place with so many different people from all over the world. I love walking and bodega coffee and the unique, less-than-obvious camaraderie and friendliness of New Yorkers. I like overpriced, average martinis and eyebrow threading salons. I love walking home by myself, late at night, and nodding silently at people I pass on the street. I love the Union Square farmers market and how different so many of the neighborhoods here feel. I have lived in New York for almost 14 years (with a few, brief sabbaticals- I never really moved away) and New York, at this point, is my home and the only place I really know how to live.
I was excited to come back to New York and I am delighted to be here. I have a beautiful apartment in a perfect neighborhood and my friends are here and I look and feel better than I have in years. And yet, for the first time since probably 2011, I am not sure that New York is for me, forever. I think that this year will determine whether I live here for the rest of my life or try something else. I am not exactly sure what that something else would be. I have considered (to a trivial extent, you mustn’t hold me to any of these) Portugal, Texas, applying to the Peace Corps, and moving to some beach somewhere.
The feeling started about a week ago, I was walking home from a workout class and I felt a sense of longing for something stable but different. Could I be more impactful, experience and learn more, find myself, in a place more rural? Was I too used to New York? Am I complacent or at home? I started googling counties where I might move abroad. I am tremendously fortunate to have no real anchor to any place, to any life, but I cannot decide if I should grow up and select a home or continue to let myself wander and indulge my impulses. I don’t know if I am already living in my perfect place. I was born in Texas and I think a part of my soul always craves open landscapes but I do not know how to work or date or dress or live in a place where cars are required and socializing is done largely in backyards. (When I say I do not know how, I mean I don’t know how to do these things very well and with zeal, of course I know how to put on Lululemon leggings and drive to a grocery store.) But maybe I could learn and maybe I would have more mental space to volunteer and learn new hobbies. Everything in New York is a process.
I do not know if I have a wondering soul and need to learn to bloom where I am planted (where I plant myself) or if this yearning means that New York and I are on our last leg. But here is a nice thing about endings that we see coming: they allow us to savor moments in a way that feels impossible when we believe they will continue forever. Have you ever had a last date with someone you loved? There is something beautiful in the sadness of eating roast chicken and drinking wine with someone beautiful who you know is only for now. I have spent the last year reveling in the bittersweetness of laughing at someone’s jokes for the last time. Nostalgia before an ending happens. But I may be romanticizing and self-aggrandizing. I have left New York three times and moved to New York four.
At the very least I know this- whether it’s New York or elsewhere- it is New York or somewhere else very different. There is one thing I am not, and that is a suburbanite.
I love you so much!!
Hannah
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Home is a place you can always go. A place you can always return to. So, yeah - maybe you will leave New York for a bit, but from reading your newsletter content, I definitely think it's your Home. You can *always* go back home 🤗
Interesting! How do you deal with this feeling as you are simultaneously buying furniture for a new place etc. I find myself hesitating but it’s nice to see you do it despite knowing you could leave in the near future!