The Long Goodbye

I’m leaving New York early in the morning and I still don’t know how you officially become a New Yorker. As far as I can tell, there is no official certificate. Different people have different definitions. Some say it’s 10 years, some say it doesn’t matter, some say that it’s the inability to imagine living anywhere else, some say that just having an official residence there is enough. But, my favorite answer comes from a cab driver. He asked me how long I had lived in the city. “Almost 2 years,” I replied. “Well then, you are 50% a New Yorker.” I asked for a further explanation. “You get 25% per year that you live here. And you can go over 100%. I am 275% New Yorker.” By that math, I am approximately 75% a New Yorker, leaving the city after 3 years. And I suppose that’s not bad. But part of me is bothered that I didn’t get to 100%.

I haven’t slept much in the past 10 days or so. I’ve woken up early, gone to bed late, and spent as many moments as I can out of my apartment. Rain or shine, I made it a point to be elsewhere – to immerse myself in New York. I wanted to soak up as much of the city as I possibly could before I left. Thinking that maybe I could squeeze out some of that missing 25% during my final days in NYC.

Everyone pointed out that what I was doing was silly for two reasons. First, New York will always be here. Second, I can always come back to visit. Technically, these things are both true. But when I come back to visit from now on, something will always be different.

I will no longer roll out of bed on Saturday mornings and spend the hour until my roommates wake up looking at the millions of places we could go for brunch before we decide that maybe just this one time we don’t want to exert any effort and so let’s just go to Bubby’s again. I won’t see that it’s a nice afternoon and call a friend to go for a walk on the West Side Highway. No more random days will be spent wandering around open air markets in Union Square or Chinatown taking photographs. We won’t walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to wait in line at Grimaldi’s, since we heard it had the best pizza in the city. Maybe I’ll never ride the subway again because after all, I’ll only be there for the weekend and so surely I can afford a weekend of cabs. I won’t have an apartment and neighborhood here that feel as much like home to me as my parents’ house in Nashville.

Instead, my time here will be cut short. Reservations will be made far in advance, some of the spontaneity will be lost out of sheer necessity, activities will have to be squeezed in to the few short days of my visit. The parts of New York that I like the best – those aren’t the parts that you usually get to do when you only visit for a weekend.

I will miss my morning subway commute (believe it or not), where I am allowed to put on the meanest face I can muster (I am not a morning person) and know that no one will judge me because no one is paying attention. I’ll miss having 374 restaurants available to deliver dinner to my apartment. I will miss the guy that I get my coffee from on my way to work who calls me “hon.” I’ll miss wandering around the city listening to music, and the feeling of anonymity and energy that comes with being here. I will miss the homeless, blind man who is almost always singing on my subway home from work and his familiar medley, beginning with “I’ll Be There” by the Jackson 5 and ending with “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” by Rod Stewart. I’ll miss the undeniably arrogant feeling that comes from living here. I’ll miss living in this city which is so vastly individual and different from every place on earth.

As my last weeks, then days, then hours in the city wound down, I found myself consumed with thoughts of all of the things I never did. I find myself regretting every weekend away, every time that I went to a restaurant I had been to before, every night that I decided to stay in instead of going out. I never saw the balloons for the Macy’s Day Parade being blown up (or the parade itself now that I think of it). I never went to Blue Hill. I never saw the elephants walk through the tunnel to the circus.

So what exactly have I done with my time here?

I’ve been to a ridiculous number of museums in the city. We’ve hosted dinner parties on our rooftop. I’ve given cab drivers directions and corrected them when they tried to go a different way. I’ve been to countless concerts, plays, musicals, and the ballet. I’ve paid taxes to the state of New York. I’ve spent weekends in the Hamptons, afternoons at Cyril’s, and nights at The Talkhouse. I’ve mastered the subway (finally). I’ve discovered my favorite cupcake shop (Crumbs), gelato bar (L’Arte del Gelato) and pizza place (DiFara’s or Grimaldi’s). I dated an Australian. I’ve told tourists how to get to where they are going. I’ve eaten at La Esquina, The Lion, and Waverly Inn. I’ve found a regular dry cleaner, an alterations place, and a corner bodega. We rented a puppy for the day. I went to games in the old and new Yankee stadiums and took the day off work to go to the parade when they won the World Series. I went to Ground Zero the night bin Laden was killed. I spent days with friends in Sheep’s Meadow at Central Park. I had a Red Snapper (Bloody Mary) at the St. Regis and red velvet cake at The Waldorf=Astoria (where each was apparently invented). My friends have become my second family. I’ve adopted the jaded stare of someone who has seen everything and is shocked by nothing (even though neither of those statements are true). I have made this city my home.

I was a 21 year old girl from the south, fresh out of college when I moved here. I’m leaving as an-almost 25 year old girl who wonders how any other place will ever compare. The city, if it ever knew that I was here, will forget me. It will have changed and evolved by the time you finish reading this (if you made it this far) and replaced me with some new girl who has no idea what the city holds for her. I’ve left no indelible mark here. Instead, I’ve done what literally millions of people have done already. Worked my way in, found my way around, and given it every piece of me that I could. In return, I’ve taken as much of the city as I can. It’s become a part of me, embedded in my personality and thoughts as much as any other place I call home.

One day soon, I will come back and marvel at how the ever-evolving city has already changed, how different and yet oddly similar it is from when I lived here. I will always wonder if I left too soon. I will seamlessly find myself falling in to old patterns, maybe even gravitating toward TriBeCa where I’ve spent most of my time. I will always think it’s slightly odd to live in a small town, wonder how people repeat the same things night after night with the same people even though that’s probably what’s in my future. I will still have friends here who will be like family. I will always believe that New York is the greatest city in the world. I will always consider the person I have become here as the first true adult version of myself.

Maybe I haven’t accomplished everything that I wanted to do here. Maybe that’s not possible. Maybe at every ending, there are things you feel like you missed. And, maybe, that’s enough.

Maybe I’m more of a New Yorker than I thought.